Clean air in Mongolian kindergarten
Donación protegida
**JAN. 2019 UPDATE** - We raised enough for indoor purifiers and replacement HEPAs for the kindergarten. They will be installed next week with an info session event, photos to follow. Additional funds will go towards either 1) buying and distributing children-sized N95-rated pollution masks, or 2) additional purifier purchases for organizations in need (e.g., a maternity ward or orphanage). Thank you for the support!
Ulaanbaatar - the capital of Mongolia with 1.5 million people - is the world's most polluted city in the winter. Particulate matter concentrations are sometimes over 130 times higher than the World Health Organization's 24-hour exposure guidelines, with serious impacts on health and mortality. In partnership with Namaste Yoga in Ulaanbaatar, I'm raising money to purchase affordable, effective indoor air purifiers so the NGO Eco Town's newly constructed kindergarten and passive greenhouse facility can provide clean air and a safe learning environment for its students.
Read on for more context:
Over the past 60 years, Mongolia’s average annual temperature has increased by 3.9 degrees Fahrenheit, at a rate twice the global average. Partly in response to the increasing frequency and magnitude of climate disruptions and ecosystem degradation, nomadic herders have steadily moved to the capital – Ulaanbaatar – in search of economic stability. These populations move into Ulaanbaatar’s “ger” area, a reference to the traditional canvas-and-felt tent dwellings in which they tend to live. The ger area now comprises 60% of Ulaanbaatar’s total population, which itself houses half of Mongolia’s 3 million inhabitants.
The ger area’s rapid, unplanned growth has led to multifaceted and severe infrastructure and public health issues. Ger-area neighborhoods typically have no connection to centralized heating, water, and sewage systems that serve the remainder of the city. The lack of public services is troubling given Ulaanbaatar’s winter temperatures frequently reach minus-40 degrees Fahrenheit. Ger-area residents have to burn raw coal in household stoves for heating, driving high particulate matter (PM) emissions that have created a city-wide air quality disaster. One out of every ten deaths in the city is directly attributable to poor air quality and the direct and indirect financial costs of air pollution-attributable diseases in Ulaanbaatar's children are estimated to increase by US$ 18 million between 2017 and 2025.
In the winter I often walk to work with smog like in the photos below. On those days, when I can't even see my apartment building from my office less than 1 km away, the air quality index (AQI) is far, far above the US EPA's "hazardous" level.
But I don't even have the worst of it.
Already burdened by the minus-40 degree winters and lack of connection to central heating, water, and waste/sewage systems, ger district residents must also live in the middle of the worst of the pollution crisis. They breathe toxic air every day, every night, for six months of the year. Kids sometimes have to walk outside for an hour to get to the nearest school, or are stuck in the city's gridlock traffic for just as long. And most families don't have the income to be able to afford indoor purifiers to at least clean the air inside their homes.
Many people and groups are working to improve life in the ger district. Eco Town, a local NGO with a mission to promote community participation in and awareness of sustainable technology, planning, and behavior, recently constructed an extension to an oversubscribed kindergarten in the ger district. The facility features two connected schoolhouse gers constructed within a passive greenhouse exterior. The greenhouse design will keep the ambient temperature above freezing in the wintertime, reducing heating needs and allowing the kindergarten's children to learn about growing plants.
When my parents visited Mongolia last month, my Dad wrote up a travel book about the experience and he had the following to say about the Eco Town NGO and the guy who runs it, Odgerel:
"Odgo is an amazing person, only 35 with two kids under 3, who in his spare time has started a non-governmental organization (an NGO) dedicated to improve the lives of people in the Ger District economically, agriculturally, environmentally and health-wise. He runs a garage door business out of the Ger District ... He is a community champion who is spending a lot of his own money on things like starting the pre-school and building a community center, and also getting grants, to do what he feels is right for the community. In my mind this guy deserves a medal; for providing vision, optimism, hope, and most importantly, real action - in a very depressing setting. He wants the community to be a better place for his kids, and he’s working hard to achieve that. An inspirational leader."
It's inspiring, right? I'm friends with Odgo too, and have seen his projects. But, like many schools and community centers in UB, the facility Eco Town built unfortunately does not have indoor air purifiers.
Here's where this fundraiser comes in.
In my free time in UB I'm involved in an air pollution social enterprise called Smart Air Mongolia. The organization's mission is to promote air pollution education and awareness through free workshops as well as to improve access to indoor air purifiers by providing low-cost yet effective purifiers. Early on in its history, Smart Air broke down expensive indoor air purifiers into their component parts to figure out how exactly they worked, and as a result it is now able to sell no-frills purifiers that are as effective as - and in many cases more effective than - purifiers on the market that can cost over almost 2,000 USD for the unit and for replacement filters. Until now, Smart Air Mongolia has focused on purifiers suitable for single rooms or small apartments. But they're also launching a few new, more powerful purifiers capable of cleaning the air in larger spaces.
My goal with this gofundme is to raise enough funds to enable purchase and installation of two purifiers in Eco Town's recently-constructed kindergarten extension to effectively filter the air within the passive greenhouse classroom facility. Each purifier unit will cost about $330 (lower than retail price), plus four spare HEPAs will be purchased so the facility has enough filters to last several winters. By then, hopefully the multitude of other projects and programs led by the Mongolian government and international development organizations, banks, and NGOs will have begun to resolve Ulaanbaatar's air pollution crisis.
Each purifier unit will be a Smart Air Blast, shown below. These units are designed with HEPA filters with high surface area and thickness to filter out particulates, and with a larger and deeper fan to increase the volume of air flowing through the HEPA. They're able to outperform other more expensive indoor air purifiers on the market in terms of their "clean air delivery rate" - a measure of indoor air purifier efficiency. Each one is sufficient to filter a room of up to approx. 80 square meters. The passive greenhouse facility (with the two schoolhouse gers inside) is about 143 square meters in area. And it's taller than most typical bedrooms or apartments with a door that will be opening more frequently as students go in and out a few times per day. So we're opting for two Blasts, plus the replacement HEPAs to last a few winter seasons.
These kids already breathe dirty air in their homes and while they walk to school. Why should they have to breathe dirty air in the classroom? Please help me help Eco Town make the facility a safer learning environment. In doing so you'll also help improve awareness of air pollution's harmful health effects, help people experience the difference that clean air can make, and improve awareness of affordable indoor air purifier options.
If you have any questions or just want to get in touch, reach me at [email editado]
Thanks
Greg & Namaste Yoga
Ulaanbaatar - the capital of Mongolia with 1.5 million people - is the world's most polluted city in the winter. Particulate matter concentrations are sometimes over 130 times higher than the World Health Organization's 24-hour exposure guidelines, with serious impacts on health and mortality. In partnership with Namaste Yoga in Ulaanbaatar, I'm raising money to purchase affordable, effective indoor air purifiers so the NGO Eco Town's newly constructed kindergarten and passive greenhouse facility can provide clean air and a safe learning environment for its students.
Read on for more context:
Over the past 60 years, Mongolia’s average annual temperature has increased by 3.9 degrees Fahrenheit, at a rate twice the global average. Partly in response to the increasing frequency and magnitude of climate disruptions and ecosystem degradation, nomadic herders have steadily moved to the capital – Ulaanbaatar – in search of economic stability. These populations move into Ulaanbaatar’s “ger” area, a reference to the traditional canvas-and-felt tent dwellings in which they tend to live. The ger area now comprises 60% of Ulaanbaatar’s total population, which itself houses half of Mongolia’s 3 million inhabitants.
The ger area’s rapid, unplanned growth has led to multifaceted and severe infrastructure and public health issues. Ger-area neighborhoods typically have no connection to centralized heating, water, and sewage systems that serve the remainder of the city. The lack of public services is troubling given Ulaanbaatar’s winter temperatures frequently reach minus-40 degrees Fahrenheit. Ger-area residents have to burn raw coal in household stoves for heating, driving high particulate matter (PM) emissions that have created a city-wide air quality disaster. One out of every ten deaths in the city is directly attributable to poor air quality and the direct and indirect financial costs of air pollution-attributable diseases in Ulaanbaatar's children are estimated to increase by US$ 18 million between 2017 and 2025.
In the winter I often walk to work with smog like in the photos below. On those days, when I can't even see my apartment building from my office less than 1 km away, the air quality index (AQI) is far, far above the US EPA's "hazardous" level.
But I don't even have the worst of it.
Already burdened by the minus-40 degree winters and lack of connection to central heating, water, and waste/sewage systems, ger district residents must also live in the middle of the worst of the pollution crisis. They breathe toxic air every day, every night, for six months of the year. Kids sometimes have to walk outside for an hour to get to the nearest school, or are stuck in the city's gridlock traffic for just as long. And most families don't have the income to be able to afford indoor purifiers to at least clean the air inside their homes.
Many people and groups are working to improve life in the ger district. Eco Town, a local NGO with a mission to promote community participation in and awareness of sustainable technology, planning, and behavior, recently constructed an extension to an oversubscribed kindergarten in the ger district. The facility features two connected schoolhouse gers constructed within a passive greenhouse exterior. The greenhouse design will keep the ambient temperature above freezing in the wintertime, reducing heating needs and allowing the kindergarten's children to learn about growing plants.
When my parents visited Mongolia last month, my Dad wrote up a travel book about the experience and he had the following to say about the Eco Town NGO and the guy who runs it, Odgerel:
"Odgo is an amazing person, only 35 with two kids under 3, who in his spare time has started a non-governmental organization (an NGO) dedicated to improve the lives of people in the Ger District economically, agriculturally, environmentally and health-wise. He runs a garage door business out of the Ger District ... He is a community champion who is spending a lot of his own money on things like starting the pre-school and building a community center, and also getting grants, to do what he feels is right for the community. In my mind this guy deserves a medal; for providing vision, optimism, hope, and most importantly, real action - in a very depressing setting. He wants the community to be a better place for his kids, and he’s working hard to achieve that. An inspirational leader."
It's inspiring, right? I'm friends with Odgo too, and have seen his projects. But, like many schools and community centers in UB, the facility Eco Town built unfortunately does not have indoor air purifiers.
Here's where this fundraiser comes in.
In my free time in UB I'm involved in an air pollution social enterprise called Smart Air Mongolia. The organization's mission is to promote air pollution education and awareness through free workshops as well as to improve access to indoor air purifiers by providing low-cost yet effective purifiers. Early on in its history, Smart Air broke down expensive indoor air purifiers into their component parts to figure out how exactly they worked, and as a result it is now able to sell no-frills purifiers that are as effective as - and in many cases more effective than - purifiers on the market that can cost over almost 2,000 USD for the unit and for replacement filters. Until now, Smart Air Mongolia has focused on purifiers suitable for single rooms or small apartments. But they're also launching a few new, more powerful purifiers capable of cleaning the air in larger spaces.
My goal with this gofundme is to raise enough funds to enable purchase and installation of two purifiers in Eco Town's recently-constructed kindergarten extension to effectively filter the air within the passive greenhouse classroom facility. Each purifier unit will cost about $330 (lower than retail price), plus four spare HEPAs will be purchased so the facility has enough filters to last several winters. By then, hopefully the multitude of other projects and programs led by the Mongolian government and international development organizations, banks, and NGOs will have begun to resolve Ulaanbaatar's air pollution crisis.
Each purifier unit will be a Smart Air Blast, shown below. These units are designed with HEPA filters with high surface area and thickness to filter out particulates, and with a larger and deeper fan to increase the volume of air flowing through the HEPA. They're able to outperform other more expensive indoor air purifiers on the market in terms of their "clean air delivery rate" - a measure of indoor air purifier efficiency. Each one is sufficient to filter a room of up to approx. 80 square meters. The passive greenhouse facility (with the two schoolhouse gers inside) is about 143 square meters in area. And it's taller than most typical bedrooms or apartments with a door that will be opening more frequently as students go in and out a few times per day. So we're opting for two Blasts, plus the replacement HEPAs to last a few winter seasons.
These kids already breathe dirty air in their homes and while they walk to school. Why should they have to breathe dirty air in the classroom? Please help me help Eco Town make the facility a safer learning environment. In doing so you'll also help improve awareness of air pollution's harmful health effects, help people experience the difference that clean air can make, and improve awareness of affordable indoor air purifier options.
If you have any questions or just want to get in touch, reach me at [email editado]
Thanks
Greg & Namaste Yoga
Organizador
Greg Zegas
Organizador
Winchester, MA
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