Validation Workshop of the Herder Programme Held in Khentii province

As part of the ILO-led UN Joint Programme (UNJP) “Extending Social Protection to Herders with Enhanced Shock Responsiveness,” ILO has three main areas of intervention towards extending social protection to herders. One of them is to support the herders to increase their income. The main objectives of the intervention are to 1) improve herder’s life skills and update their knowledge on the livestock production, 2) set up a knowledge infrastructure tailored to enable herders to access information equally.

The ILO has been developing an official “Herder programme” in collaboration with the National Centre for Lifelong Education (NCLE) to achieve these objectives. The program aims to prepare lifelong education trainers, trade union delegates, and pastureland group members in 330 soums (lower administrative unit of a province) as advocates and local trainers for social protection.

The “Herder programme” consists of six modules, and each module has a handbook for herder and a methodological manual for local lifelong education trainers. Each module was developed by NCLE consultants who are experts with extensive experience in their field. The following six modules are in the package of the programme:
  1. Introduction to livestock dairy production and technologies
  2. Introduction to wool & cashmere production and technologies
  3. Introduction to tan production and technologies
  4. Introduction to meat production and technologies
  5. Introduction to benefits of Herder’s social insurance coverage
  6. Introduction to governance and performance of Herder cooperatives
L.Bolortungalag, Director of the NCLE, opened the validation workshop
Before rolling out the programme officially nationwide and implementing it in 21 provinces, the ILO and NCLE organized a validation workshop in Khentii province in 27-28 September. The workshop aimed to experiment with the programme with local lifelong education trainers and collect their feedback. A total of 21 local trainers attended the workshop. In addition, as beneficiaries of the “Herder programme,” five herders were invited to participate in and share their experiences and provide their feedback on the manual. The training complied with the province’s safety and health standards and regulations promulgated, and participants were divided into two separate rooms.

Dr. L.Oyun is facilitating the module “Introduction to governance and performance of herder cooperatives.”
Consultants who developed the modules facilitated 90-minute workshops in innovative and creative ways that engaged the participants and explained different technical and methodological guidance for the local trainers. For instance, Dr. Oyun Luvsandorj talked about the best practices of herder cooperatives and shared compelling cases of how herder cooperatives are operating successfully over the world, including Mongolia. Also, Ulziisuren Baatar did a role-play in a Mongolian famous movie and explained the benefits of social insurance to the participants through engaging them in dialogues and case studies. During the tan production and technologies workshop, consultant Sainbayar Nasan talked about IT solutions for teachers such as Plickers card and ZipGrade, educational tools for interaction between students and teachers.

B.Ulziisuren is facilitating the module “Introduction to benefits of Herder’s social insurance coverage.”

The NCLE consultants will reflect the feedback and recommendations from the “Herder programme” beneficiaries or the local trainers and herders collected during the validation workshop in their modules and tailor the needs and requests accordingly for the final version. Once finalized, the “Herder programme” will be ready to use in all 21 provinces of Mongolia.