Los Borricos Team § Mongol Rally 2008 - Costa Polvoranca - Ulaanbaatar

Mercy Corps Mongolia supports rural communities to meet their economic and social needs, helping individuals, families and communities to become more self-sufficient, diversified in their production, and better linked to local, regional and national markets. Over the past five years Mercy Corps Mongolia has established a strong reputation across the vast Gobi region, and continues to work with business associations and local organizations to ensure a robust economy that preserves ancient traditions. Currently they run the following projects in Mongolia: Gobi Regional Economic Growth Initiatives (Gobi Initiative), Rural Agribusiness Support Program (RASP) and the Training, Advocacy and Networking Programme.

CNCF continues to change the lives of disadvantaged children in Mongolia. Here are a few of the projects they are currently running:

- The Sponsorship Program helps families who are in danger of splitting up or where children may drop out of school due to poverty. The family receives sponsorship for a child as long as he/she is living with them and in full-time education.
- The Sunshine Ger Village Project provides a shelter for street children and orphans in Ulaanbaatar. The shelter consists of 11 gers and a kindergarten.
- Prison Education Project provides full-time education at the Boys' Prison and teachers work three days a week at the Girls' Section of the Women's Prison.
-Healthcare Project operates a clinic at the Charity Hospital five days a week, to provide free health care and medication to the children in the sponsorship program and street children. There is also a mobile night clinic for street children that travels the city's streets, bringing emergency medical treatment, medical advice and small treats to children otherwise abandoned to the ice and snow.
- Give a Ger Campaign is an emergency fund established to provide families in danger of becoming homeless, or otherwise inadequately or dangerously accommodated, with a family home of a Mongolian Ger.

Hope and Homes for Children work in countries including Romania, Ukraine, Kosovo, Belarus and Moldova/Transdnistria, focusing on closing down the state institutions and removing children from the terrible conditions in these centres.
The children are reunited with siblings, and where possible placed with their biological families. Other children are relocated to small family homes, which provide them with a loving, stimulating environment enabling them to reach their full potential. Other projects include the first Mother and Baby Unit in Ukraine, Residential Family homes in Kosovo, and the Rehabilitation and Resource Centre in Transdnistria, which provides a short-term alternative to institutional care whilst the child's long-term individual needs are assessed. Hope and Homes for Children have also produced a Best Practice Manual which will be published by UNICEF in order to guide other regions on how to implement de-institutionalisation.

Through local and specialist knowledge, the charity SWORDE-Teppa helps people to help themselves and their community in the Central Asian Republic of Tajikistan - the poorest country in the region. Implementing projects with enthusiastic local staff, volunteers, the community, youths, street children and many others, SWORDE-Teppa runs projects which are actually wanted and needed by the community.

SWORDE-Teppa is a reconstruction and development organization and is committed to sustainable projects, with the emphasis on encouraging and supporting people to do things for themselves. SWORDE-Teppa projects can provide much needed economic opportunities for the local community and are vital for urban and rural regeneration and development. Many SWORDE-Teppa projects are to be handed over to local groups, with continued SWORDE-Teppa backing at the end of funding periods. We believe that this long-term commitment is the only way to ensure long-term success.

Herd animals provide Mongolian nomads with their sole means of a basic livelihood. Some millions of these herd animals can be lost through starvation or to exposure. Among those losses are hundreds of thousands of horses - a vital resource without which herders are unable to manage their sheep, goats and cattle. In parts of the country essential grazing lands are affected by drought.

CAMDA is working to improve the water supply in provinces close to the desert region, and helps herders to improve their grass-cutting productivity for winter food for their herds. They also provide mobile vet units to immunise many thousands of horses in two northern and one southern province, with twice-yearly treatments that will help protect herders horses against disease.

“El Refugio del Burrito” es una asociación sin ánimo de lucro registrada en España, principalmente preocupada por el bienestar de los burros y mulos. Durante muchos años hemos estado involucrados en casos de rescate en España y hemos establecido ahora nuestro propio refugio al norte de la provincial de Málaga; somos la primera sucursal de The Donkey Sanctuary en el sur de Inglaterra, que abre sus puertas en Europa.
Localizado en Fuente de Piedra, cerca de su famosa laguna donde cada año cientos de flamencos producen uno de los más hermosos espectáculos de la naturaleza, proveemos un lugar idí­lico, seguro y con unas instalaciones maravillosas para algunos de los muchos burros y mulos que han experimentado una vida muy dura.
Nosotros también investigamos casos de negligencia y crueldad, y luchamos por una mejora en las condiciones en materia de legislación para los burros y mulos en España y el resto de Europa.

Amigos del burro. Asociación sin ánimo de lucro, cuyo objetivo principal es evitar la extinción del burro y por consiguiente hacer todo lo que esté en nuestra mano para la supervivencia y bienestar de los mismos. Situados colindando el monte de Viñuelas, preservado por su alto valor ecológico. Hábitat espectacular y naturaleza salvaje. Allí se ubica el castillo de Viñuelas complejo de estilo fortificado del siglo XVII, en medio de un encinar de gran riqueza natural.