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East Surrey College welcomes librarians and teachers from Mongolia

We were delighted to recently welcome a group of the librarians and teachers from Mongolia to East Surrey College, as part of a visit to the UK to see how educational institutions use their resources. This was one of a series of exciting language and literacy initiatives led by ESC tutor Meg Conacher.

Back in 2021, Meg launched a charitable programme, “MC Books”, whereby she asked for donations of children’s books that she could send to Mongolia. The College supported the project with staff donations and a fund-raising event that raised in excess of £1000 to help cover shipping costs.

Mongolian children with donated books

Since then, Meg has gone from strength to strength with her venture, delivering an amazing 50,000 books to children, libraries and schools across Mongolia, and working with librarians and teachers to help them make the best of these resources.

During their visit to East Surrey College, the group met with some of our Directors, had a talk and tour of the library facilities, attended a reading session with ESOL students, and observed an English lesson.

 
Meeting Rebecca Taylor, Vice Principal - Curriculum & Standards
(College Group) in the ESC boardroom                             

Tsatsral Baatar, an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher from Umnugovi, Mongolia, commented:
“I was absolutely thrilled to visit your brilliant college and its library. We gained really useful experience on how to teach English as a Foreign language for differentiated learners and I really like that you care for refugees and unemployed people. Observing classes was really useful for our teaching proficiency and visiting the library was really interesting – I got some awesome ideas to adopt at my school.”

 
Elaine Gates, Group Director of Learning (Maths, English, ESOL and SEN), Meg Conacher and Rebecca Taylor receiving gifts from the group

East Surrey College was just one of a wide range of schools, colleges, universities, libraries and museums the group visited for inspiration.  These included St Mary’s Preparatory & Choir School in Reigate, Tate Art Gallery, Science Museum, Imperial College and The British Library in London, and Trinity Library, Cambridge.

The group also enjoyed a bus tour of London and a visit to the Mongolian Embassy where they were welcomed by Ambassador Enkhsukh Battumur.

Meg Conacher commented: “It was a real privilege to host this visit and be able to share some of our knowledge and practices with our Mongolian peers. Taken together, these activities will hopefully inspire our visitors to take ideas and energy back into their work in Mongolia.”

Recently, Meg received an award for her services to education from the Mongolian Embassy.