Two teams are returning from Mongolia after completing eventful but ultimately successful projects. These two teams had in fact been preparing for a year to carry out their projects in Rwanda in July this year (2026) - installation of solar panels and running STEM workshops (including AI) for children. Then Ebola broke out in May in D. R. Congo, on the west side of Rwanda. Rwanda took serious precautions quickly and the disease has not spread to Rwanda so far. But people are worried. We had to scramble to move the teams to other sites.
Earlier, and separately, our team had made an explorative excursion to Mongolia in March, initially hoping to set up some new projects there onwards from 2027, in collaboration with a big international NGO over there. With the Rwanda projects now at risk from the Ebola threat, we sent another small team to Mongolia in early June, to see whether we can move some of the Rwanda teams there. Things turned quickly. It turned out that the big international NGO wasn’t a good match for us in Mongolia.
However, a quick but short visit in March to Don Bosco Technical School in Ulaanbaatar, run by the Salesian Brothers, began to look much more promising. While the exploratory team was still in Mongolia in early June, we made the decision to move the two Rwanda teams to Mongolia, with the projects scheduled to take place in July. We have less than a month to work out the details of the project, purchase the needed solar panels, controllers and batteries, other materials and tools, book hotel accommodation, buy the airplane tickets, …
The workshop teams, in particular, have to make a lot of changes to the material, changing the language from Kinyarwanda to Mongolia, etc., and making appropriate changes to the curricula to suit the new site.
The Salesians are really great. They put a lot of effort in helping us solve all these problems, recruit the children for the workshops, …, to make the projects happen. We also happened to have two students from Mongolia in the team that was going to Rwanda! They turned out to be invaluable now.
The upshot is that the solar panel team installed 20,000 watts worth of solar panels on the roof of the gymnasium, providing lighting for several classrooms. The system saves the school quite a bit of money. It also provides an object lesson for the organizatio, particularly the electrical engineering students in their school, and a prototype with much room for expansion, and application in other sites. The team also installed a much better WiFi network for the school.
The STEM/AI workshops were fun for the children. AI proves to be very popular, not only with the children, but for the Salesian Brothers and Sisters. In the future, we may aim more at empowering their teachers, and strengthening some of the technical courses with AI. With a successful first collaboration, we are looking forward towards the coming year. PolyU actually has also been sending teams of students in rehabilitation sciences to Mongolia for several years, on challenging projects in remote areas.
All in all, a very satisfying summer in Mongolia.
