‘I have a dream,’ he says, but he needs $1 million.

A few miles to the northwest lives another group of abandoned children. Set in a shallow valley at the edge of Ulaanbaatar’s sprawling ger district is the Our Blue Skies Ger Village run by the Christina Noble Children’s Foundation. The foundation is one of several non-governmental organizations helping destitute children in Mongolia. Its namesake is a former Irish street child made famous by helping homeless children in Vietnam. The Mongolia branch has been open since 1997.

The village is home to 43 children split among seven gers. The traditional living arrangements make it easier for children to assimilate to their new home. Each tent houses a group of children who are looked after by a “ger mother,” usually a homeless woman who is given a place to live in exchange for looking after the children in her ger.

The collection of homes is truly a village unto itself. In addition to housing, the compound has a staffed kitchen, a medical ger for visiting doctors, a school, a playground, a basketball court that doubles as an ice-skating rink and a bakery where children and staff members can make their own bread. It is surrounded by a hasha, or wooden fence, guarded at all times to deter thieves and others who might victimize the children who live there.

The tents are warm and comfortable, entered through a low, brightly painted wooden door that faces south to maximize sun exposure in the winter. Beds are arranged along the perimeter. A stove occupies the center area. A table and several small, brightly painted chairs sit off to the side.

Two girls, Munkhzul, 4, and Hongorzul, 5, are playing with a Barbie in the first ger. Munkhzul was brought to the village by her grandmother, who feared that the child’s mentally unstable mother would try to harm her. She was right. The mother reclaimed the child and shortly thereafter tried to kill her. Munkhzul was rescued a second time and placed in the village.

“Most children are here temporarily until their situation improves,” Eamonn says, stroking the girl’s hair as she plays with the doll. “But this little one will live with us until she is an adult.”

There are others who have nowhere else to go. Nayantai, 10, was found on the street barefoot after someone stole his shoes. Maralsetseg, 7, Telmen, 10, Uyanga, 11, and Ouynmurun, 13, are four sisters whose mother died in a ger fire (a common occurrence). Bathishig, the 19-year-old night clinic guard, has spent much of his childhood here. He is a graduate of the “Smelly Shoes Ger,” so named for the pile of shoes deposited at its door by the teenage boys who live there.

Though not all of these children are former street kids, many of them would be if not for the intervention of the foundation. The village is a rescue operation. “We try to find children who are recently abandoned and have not been on the street too long,” Eamonn says. If they are too streetwise, they will likely prey upon the other children. “It’s like easy meat.”

But what about kids who have been on the streets for years? Is there hope for Aizam and Battulga, who have lived half their lives or longer in manholes?

“I have a dream,” he says. He wants to build a facility in which kids can be taken off the street and given their own room or space, somewhere in which they feel secure and are away from the environment that forces them into destructive behavior. There they can learn a trade to sustain themselves. People like Battulga and Aizam, who are essentially illiterate, can still have a semblance of a normal life if they have a marketable skill. Of course, years of therapy might be needed to overcome the trauma they have lived through. Many children would simply run back to the only thing they know – the manholes. But it gives them a shot, the only one they will ever get.

What does he need to build such a place?

“I need a million dollars,” Eamonn says with a chuckle.

Final Chapter: REMEMBER US. YOU CAN NEVER FORGET US.