Christina Toepell, MAAPPS // April 1, 2015
One of the most effective ways to communicate the work of EITI to civil society on a sub-national level has been through workshops and trainings. In Nevada, two teacher workshops are being held each year to improve classroom knowledge on the role of mining and the mineral industry on a local level. In the Philippines, the NGO Bantay Kita is holding local workshops for all stakeholders – including the general public. What should EITI Mongolia do? Which communication venues are ideal for Mongolian engagement on a sub-national level? As any follower of this blog might notice, we have explored different approaches in the past weeks. Today I would like to make the case why workshops in vocational schooling are both relevant and necessary to boost EITI awareness and promote EITI literacy on a sub-national level.
Vocational education enrolment has been quadrupling in the past ten years, with numbers continuing to increase due to the help of a myriad of development projects. The focus on applied education on a secondary level played a major role during the socialist years of the second half of the 20thcentury but witnessed a harsh decline after the transition to market economy in the 1990s. When the nadir was reached with only 7,555 students remaining in vocational schools, the Mongolian government and outside development agencies started to see the need for skilled blue-collar workers and actively increased the quantity. Today, more than 40,000 students are enrolled in vocational education, but the demand is still not met. The NGO “Vocational Education & Technical Partnership” combines 31 development projects working on a qualitative and quantitative increase in vocational education with a total of USD 90M financial resources. Thus, vocational education is deeply entrenched in the values of the older generation, with a huge potential to grow in the upcoming years.
Approaching vocational students that are involved in the mineral resource sector themselves provides an important link to the issue and guarantees engagement and knowledge of the mining sector. Mining students are potential direct and indirect stakeholders: They will work as skilled labour employees in Mongolia’s mining sites and live in nearby town centers with their families. Thus, they will play an important role linking their mining company’s reports to EITI awareness of the general society in the region. Educating these crucial students on the work of EITI on a subnational level, financial literacy of the subnational reports and mining revenue flows to local projects will provide the students with sufficient knowledge to be more engaged into their work and act as EITI ambassadors in their local Soum.
Thus, the educational approach of EITI Mongolia cannot simply focus on university engineering students as development projects in Mongolia have done until the current day. EITI also needs to include vocational students and acknowledge their role as an increasing base of direct and indirect stakeholders in the country.