We’re in the heart of summer—a lively season for our small ger café, where we’re enjoying a flow of visitors and the chance to share hospitality. At the same time, this season gives us a brief pause from our other activities.

The first half of this year has brought its share of challenges. Over the past several months, we made the difficult decision to pause our two main projects: the Homeless Outreach and the Community House. These pauses came as a result of various factors—including limited staff, needed internal changes, external circumstances, and the gradual departure of our community house participants this spring.

Moving Forward: A New Chapter for the Organization

While pausing our projects was a tough decision, it has given us an important opportunity for deep reflection. As a board and staff, we’ve come together several times to reassess our direction, review our vision, and prayerfully consider how to move forward – into a new phase of the organization. Through this process, our commitment has grown stronger: to invest in meaningful, high-quality care projects that truly make a difference in people’s lives, while keeping the Gospel at the heart of everything we do.

As we move ahead, we’re excited to share our plan for the coming year—one that we’re approaching with both realism and careful thought. While we are aware that much also depends on outside factors, spiritual battles and God’s ways—often taking us in unexpected directions—we are ready to step into this season with faith and determination.

Shifting Leadership: Embracing New Roles

Our local director Bayaraa will take the lead in implementing this plan, while I, Corrie, as founder, will step back from daily operations and management. Over the past two and a half years, Bayaraa and I have worked closely together, often side by side. Now, we are entering a new chapter—one where the leadership of our Mongolian team will take the forefront. After a sabbatical starting next month in my home country, I will focus on providing behind-the-scenes support where needed.

This new season will bring its new challenges, especially with uncertainties around the staff needed to relaunch our social projects, the adjustments needed to adapt to a changing society, and the evolving needs of those we serve. It feels like stepping into deep water, as the changes we seek, the goals we aim for, and the conditions required to offer care and maintain a balanced organization are the same ones we’ve pursued before. Yet, these efforts have often been short-lived, leaving us in a repetitive cycle. Will this time be different?

Despite the challenges, we believe this is the right moment for this step, trusting that God will guide us and fulfill His will and purpose on this journey.

Our Focus After the Holiday

After the holiday season, we will focus on several key initiatives:

· Offering counseling for large groups of individuals struggling with alcohol dependence and homelessness, as well as one-on-one meetings and small “AA” groups

· Hiring a new social worker(s)/coordinator (preferably live-in) to restart our outreach to the homeless, as well as to live and work among our community house participants

· Strengthening relationships and partnerships with like-minded organizations and local congregations to provide ongoing support for those we serve

We also aim to launch a new project focused on supporting vulnerable families and children in our Gachuurt neighborhood who are facing addiction, poverty, and neglect.

We believe that with your continued prayers, support, and partnership, this next chapter can be one of renewal and impact. We are grateful for all you’ve made possible so far and we look forward to seeing what God will do in the year ahead!

With gratitude,
Corrie van der Esch

Sergelt Ood Team

As 2025 begins, we look back with gratitude on 2024, when we had the opportunity to bring a little help and care to the lives of homeless and underprivileged citizens of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Again a year in which we were privileged and blessed with your involvement and support. Thank you so much!

LOOKING BACK
Through our drop-in bus we were able to continue reaching out to various groups of homeless people.
Almost every week it was possible to offer people personal attention, care and a listening and understanding ear. Many received assistance including first aid, wound care, hospitalization, hot meals, showers and clean clothing.

We were able to welcome several contacts into our Community House to follow a trajectory to rehabilitate from a life of homelessness and addiction, followed by a reintegration program, to ultimately take their place back in society and continue in a stable manner.

Our ger-café or coffeehouse has been expanded with an attached kitchen, allowing us to add more meals on the menu for our neighborhood and other visitors to Gachuurt. Participants in our Community House regularly work together with us in this. It is still a fairly new venture in which we are gaining experience, including the necessary trial and error and fun.

We were blessed in purchasing a new stove, which helps enormously to reduce our heating costs. This coming spring we hope to connect it to our ger-café so that this can remain open throughout the winter as well.

Many of you have made all the above possible through various contributions. It makes us humble and grateful for your participation and trust!

While beautiful things have happened, improvements and complete changes; there is also the suffering and loss that can be so painfully unfair and sudden, and in some cases irrevocable.
Both the joy and the grief keep us passionate to continue to commit ourselves. Every contribution, no matter how limited, every loving gesture or act, can make a world of difference to someone stuck in despair, need or harmful patterns. And don’t we all find ourselves more or less in such moments? May we once again care for each other with kindness and grace in this new year!

What this new year will bring we do not know, we make plans but cannot determine the outcome. And so our expectation and hope is once again in God and in His help, guidance and favor.
We also wish this for you with all our hearts, and invite you to join us again in this new year 2025! 

Corrie van der Esch
and Sergelt Ood team

And just like that – we have come to the end of yet another year!
We look back with joy, gladness and gratefulness; we made it through another year!

Grateful that we could continue reaching out to the homeless people groups through our Drop-in Bus project. Our Community House (rehab-reintegration project) is fully operating with people participating and graduating. Also, finally our neighborhood can get a good cup of coffee as our Coffeehouse opened its doors this summer!

The search for a plot of land was not easy but, in the end, we were rewarded with the best plot we could have imagined: perfectly suited for our purpose to set up our office and reintegration centre for recovering addicted homeless people.

It has been for sale a long time and for us it seems it has been reserved for us all the time: perfectly located with many opportunities for us. We are very grateful! The start of the construction work is planned for next week.

A garage will be build for our drop-in bus, attached to our main building which will be completely renovated. We hope to move in before winter starts. After that is completed, we plan to rebuild the smaller building next to it into a coffeehouse to become our first small business project. 

The land purchase and renovation has been made possible through fundraising done by EO Metterdaad (filming our activities in 2019 and broadcasting on the Dutch TV early 2020) and the generosity of many viewers that donated to our cause. THANK YOU!

We are thankful to GNS for the opportunity they gave us to start and develop this project under them, and for being a stepping stone for us to become independent and local. Our aim has always been to work towards locals taking complete ownership and responsibility for this work. Therefore, we believe continuing as a local NGO with local leadership will greatly help in achieving this.

We are looking forward to what lies ahead of us. We believe with this move new opportunities will open up so that we can support and empower the homeless to an even greater extent. Our goal is for them to take the journey out of homelessness and addictions and reaching a stable independent life back in society.

We thank you very much for your partnership and the support we received from all of you while we were under GNS. New challenges will surely lie ahead of us, and so we hope that you would like to continue being part of our work among the homeless!

The restrictions to prevent a corona outbreak made life for the homeless even harder. They are among the most vulnerable to catch and pass on the virus and are now also shunned even more. Addiction care centres and hospitals are more reluctant to receive homeless people in need. Many recycling points have closed so also less money can be found with collecting bottles.

Since end of January gatherings of more than 3 people are forbidden, so we meet our contacts without the comfort of our drop-in bus and in small groups away from the public. We hand out meals and mouth masks and provide wound care on the spot, no privacy of a first-aid tent. We hope this situation will not last much longer…

Thank you for standing with us!

Sadly we have seen many persons’ lives also going from bad to worse and many lost their lives due to dangerous living conditions on the street and addictions. It is not easy to deal with the suffering we see, or to watch how someone makes a wrong decision again. We want to see all of this fixed but the harsh reality of life shows that not everything is solvable. Due to the complexity of problems, external factors and an insufficient social care system, there are simply no lasting and certainly no easy solutions for the vast majority of homeless people.

In July this year we received a visit from our coach Sjaak Monster from ‘De Hoop’ Addiction Care, The Netherlands. Together we reflected over the past years of ‘Sergelt’. In order to bring the project to the next level and continue in a healthy and long-term way, we realized change is needed. The work on the street has been put on a temporal halt as to prepare for the future. Though it seems we are inactive, new things are developing behind the scenes!

As manager of ‘Sergelt’ I took the time for orientation and study by visiting similar projects in other countries, to learn about leadership and teamwork, and about a methodology fitting for our work among the homeless. Now back in Mongolia I prepare to implement these things in our project. After a new team has been formed (likely this will happen in January) we plan to pick up the actual work again from February onwards with the use of our drop-in bus. We will keep you updated!

A Christmas Celebration for our homeless contacts is planned for Wednesday 27th. Many friends have volunteered to help (thank you!) and we are looking forward to a special time of fellowship and celebrating the Gift of Christmas.

To all those who have been involved in ‘Sergelt’ and those who still are: Thank you so much for standing with us and making it possible for us to be there for the homeless community!

Corrie van der Esch

‘SERGELT’ | Good Neighbor Society