UNAA holds innovative community workshops in Ulaanbaatar
GerHub, one of our local partners in Ulaanbaatar, organized innovative community workshops with ger area residents to uncover and understand travel accessibility challenges faced by ger area residents. The participants were limited to khoroo kheseg leaders due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.
Community (kheseg) leaders are appointed by local government offices in Ulaanbaatar and directly work with residents to deliver public services in their community. As residents of the ger areas surrounding their administrative offices, kheseg leaders face travel accessibility challenges on a daily basis while on duty. Building on their practical expertise in the ger area development issues, we held in-depth consultations to identify problems and possible community-based solutions using a mix of exercises.
For instance, a mapping exercise was designed to pin down frequent travel locations in their daily lives, such as commuting to work, fetching water from kiosks, doing grocery, dropping off and picking up children from kindergartens and schools and traveling to downtown. In addition to mapping, participants did field observations and partook in a fun exercise to plan their ideal inclusive street with solutions that require infrastructure development and community-level initiatives.
Each participant was able to identify problems ranging from lack of roads and public transportation, bus stop signs, to unsafe driving of public bus drivers to locations with stray dogs restraining their mobility in their neighborhood and across Ulaanbaatar. The exercises also looked into the seasonality of their challenges such as icy hills in cold months and muddy roads on rainy days.
Findings from the workshop will inform the next steps of the workshops to come up with easy yet innovative community-level initiatives and social media campaigns of the UNAA project.
