Good evening!

Distinguished guests!

Ladies and gentlemen!

First of all, thank you all for being with us, joining us, and supporting us.

Welcome to our Fundraising Auction event “the Path to a Healthy Future”.

We have organized this event for the first time together with the world-leading mining company Rio Tinto, which is our biggest investor in Mongolia.

I am very honored to open this charity event at this place today for the well being of our Mongolian young girls, who are our nation’s future mothers.

This is my second talk on my fundraising initiatives after the seminar  “One World -the Role of Women”, which was the event organized by us – the Association for the Development of Mongolian Women in Europe (ADMWE) – on 8 March 2012 in London.

I would like to introduce briefly some information about our association.

The Association for Development of Mongolian Women in Europe is a non governmental, non profit organisation which was formed in 2011 with the support of highly skilled and educated, professional Mongolian women working in Europe. The ADMWE operates an open membership policy without prejudice, age, citizenship, disability ethnic origins, gender, health status, marital status, medical status, race, religion, and freedom of thought, residency status, profession, education or sexual orientation.

It aims to protect the interests of Mongolian women living abroad, to increase their participation in social and political arenas and to build successful networking between businesswomen in Mongolia, Europe and the United Kingdom.

Our members, and women who are interested in our activities, all come from different professional backgrounds, and they are already working or running their businesses in areas such as banking, law, media, public relations, working as linguistic professionals, in creative design, music and art, beauty therapy and many more.

Although they live abroad, far from our homeland, Mongolian women, the modern day queens, continue to contribute to our country’s development. I could name many strong, powerful Mongolian women and some of them are with us today, Mrs. Altansuvd, who is lawyer and CEO of our association, helping many fellow Mongolians in legal advice and Mrs. Oyuana. She is one of our Board members and made her name Oyuna worldwide by running her successful cashmere business ” Oyuna Cashmere”. Her products are sold in the largest cities of the world, London, Milan, Tokyo, Moscow and many American cities. You will find her designs in Harrods here in London. I really praise them and am inspired by these women’s initiative to devote their lives to Mongolia.

Since November 2011 we have organized a number of events that have been enormously supported not only by British but also international institutions. They are internationally well known organizations such as the House of Lords, the LSE, the EBRD, Bloomberg, Westminster Business Council, Clyde Co, PWC, and many more.

Our activities will not be successful without the generous help and assistance of other non-governmental organizations and their leaders like Mr. John Grogan of The Mongolian British Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Robin Marsh from the Universal Peace Corporation, Mrs. Marta from the Mongolian Cultural Centre in the UK, and Mr. Adshaajav, of the Social Democracy Mongolian Youth Union in the UK.

Our Mongolian business communities also sponsored our initiatives: we are proud of the donations and sponsorships of Monipolimet, Khongon Beton Company, Monrostsetmet and the Mongolian Universal Food Corporation. Thanks to the sponsorships of Sarosh Zaiwalla, George Wraw and many more, our last event “the Best Mongolian Women in Europe award 2012” was a huge success.

When the Board Members were thinking about a project to run which would be beneficial to our fellow Mongolians back in our home country, we all agreed that the vaccination of young girls aged between 10–14 years against cervical cancer is an essential matter in Mongolia. As a result we have contacted the Ministry of Health of Mongolia to get more detailed information.

The Population of Mongolia is approximately 2,7 million. Young people aged 10-24 years of age account for more than half of the population. This shows that Mongolia is a young people’s country.

Among the female population, cervical cancer is the second most common cancer and it has become a major health concern in Mongolia. Hence, one of our priority projects aims to protect future Mongolian mothers. So, our intention is to gather as much support from our friends and allies as possible to do our research and make funding available to vaccinate Mongolian girls.

I would like to seize the opportunity to congratulate everyone involved in launching this outstanding fundraising campaign in which many business organizations and private people are involved.

Our goal is, firstly, to increase awareness of this issue in Mongolia and attract business communities to help. Secondly, to decrease the number of women’s deaths in Mongolia. To achieve this noble goal, we have organized many events over the last few months such as charity seminars, business conferences, trade-investment opportunities and networking fairs.

Donations received in the March and May events have amounted to £ 3800- this sum will be transferred together with your donations today to the Ministry of Health of Mongolia. The money donated will go towards the vaccination of Mongolian girls aged 10 to 14 years against HPV (the Human Papillomavirus) to prevent cervical cancer.

Using this opportunity, I would like to thank all of you for your generosity and great support, and I thank those businesses and people who have kindly donated products and their services for our fund-raising auction.

In this auction, we are trying to promote our Mongolian artwork and traditional cashmere and wool products. We are encouraging and supporting the disabled Mongolian artist Ms. Gungaa Tuvshinbat, whose painting is impressively modern with passionate colours, yet contains the subtle feminine features of Mongolian reflections.

A big thank-you goes first to our host Rio Tinto Plc, and namely Mrs Anne Stevens – Vice President for People & Organisation, Copper, Rio Tinto Plc and her executive coordinator Renata Loj. Without their support and commitment, this event would not have been organised.

We are also proud of the fact that Rio Tinto exclusively provides the metals (some of them mined from Mongolia, Ouy Tolgoi) to produce the 4,700 gold, silver and bronze medals at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and thus helps Mongolia go for Gold at the Olympic games.  I hope we will meet again soon to celebrate the success of the Mongolian National Team and the victory of our athletes.

We, and all Mongolian women, very much appreciate His Royal Highness The Prince Of Wales’s personal donation of an Artist’s proof of one of his watercolours entitled ”The Southfront, Highgrove House”. This is amazing wonderful. We would also like to thank Ms. Yvonne Abba-Opoku, secretary to The Prince of Wales’s Charitable foundation. Thank you for your great dedication and deeds.

Today’s event is not the first but also not the last one for us. We are committed to building women’s leadership and to addressing women’s issues. The aim of our association is to empower Mongolian women at all levels of governmental, economic and social life; to promote the interests of Mongolian women and help them to succeed in business and in life.

The “Mongolian Women in business” forum organized by ADMWE in May of this year was a part of this series of events, and it created opportunities for Mongolian businesswomen in Europe to meet both Mongolian and European Businesswomen at the same time and the same place, thus increasing their business links. It allowed these successful women to benefit from each other due to their different fields of expertise in businesses in the Mongolia, UK and Europe.

Our next major initiative is to join the Global Truce 2012 campaign and the “Peace One Day” event, which has been proven as an opportunity for life-saving activities and action by individuals worldwide calling for and working towards a day of ceasefire and non-violence.

Therefore, we will organize a conference for Mongolian women in London for Peace Day on the 21st September 2012, preparing the same event in Mongolia under the auspices of the Mongolian Prime Minister. The organizers and ourselves hope that this will be the largest global reduction of violence ever recorded on one day – and the largest ever gathering of individuals in the name of Peace.

I look forward to more cooperation and partnerships to empower women, to enhance the recognition of women’s success in society and to facilitate women’s networking in the UK and Europe.

In closing, I wish to thank all of you, our sponsors and donors, for your donations.

To all, to each, I wish all the very Best!

Монголын үрс олон болтугай! (Mongoliin urs olon boltygai) !

Wish Mongolian children to become many!

Thank you.

Leave a comment