Misheel Kids Foundation | About the foundation

A bright smile for children

The Foundation

The Misheel Kids Foundation (MKF) is dedicated to improving the dental health of underprivileged children in Mongolia. Founded in 2015, MKF is a registered NGO in Mongolia. It also maintains a support association in Germany and Switzerland with a German and Swiss donation account.

MKF is dependent on donations. Every donation, regardless of the amount, is urgently needed and used exclusively to finance dental treatment. The local dentists and dental clinic’s that treat the children work at contractually agreed fees and charges.

Annual reports:
2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023

Dental Care for Children in need

What we do

With a selected team of local dentists, Misheel Kids Foundation treats children free of charge who cannot access dental care through other means. With our mobile dental clinics, we treat tooth decay and perform complete dental restorations. In addition to the initial examinations, we offer follow-up examinations at regular intervals in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar. In addition, the children are taught oral hygiene and encouraged to consume healthy nutrition.

MKF’s area of activity includes the capital city of Ulaanbaatar as well as selected rural regions of Mongolia. In Ulaanbaatar, the organization cooperates with nine orphanages and daycare centers, permanently treating 975 children in these facilities. In order to reach as many more underprivileged children in the capital as possible, MKF also visits various locations in the city’s poor districts (ger districts) four times a year with its mobile clinics.

Twice a year, the MKF undertakes longer missions, known as mobile Dental Treks, to remote regions of Mongolia. Here the Mobile dental team treats children, who would otherwise have no other possibility to receive any form of dental treatment. Local dental clinics, sponsors from business and government, and private individuals value and support this work.

Situation in Mongolia

Why is it important

Malnutrition, neglect by overburdened parents and homelessness are just some of the reasons for the desolate nutritional and dental condition of thousands of children in Mongolia. About 2.2 of the 3.3 million inhabitants currently live in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar. Like everywhere else in the world, people are moving from the countryside to the city in the hope of a better and easier life. But not everyone is lucky. A whole generation of young Mongolians is growing up between the blocks of newly built settlements in the ever-expanding so-called ger districts (yurt settlements). There, those who have found neither a connection nor prospects in the modern city have pitched their tents and live from hand to mouth. It is not uncommon for the children of these ‘fortune seekers’ to fall by the wayside.

Numerous orphanages and day care centers have sprung up in Ulaanbaatar in an attempt to provide for the worst affected, often very young children, with a roof over their heads and healthy food. Dental care is at least as foreign to these children as it is to those living in the countryside, far removed from any infrastructure. Unlike in rural areas, children in the city often lack the additional care of their parents, as many adults in Ulaanbaatar struggle with alcohol problems – the ones who suffer most are the children.

The founders

Who are We?

The foundation is the brain-child of Gabriella Schmidt-Corsitto, a qualified dental hygienist from Switzerland.

Gabriella Schmidt-Corsitto brings her many years of experience from her work in Africa to the MKF, where she set up a mobile dental clinic for the Albert Schweizer Hospital and has already treated hundreds of children in remote regions of West Africa.

In 2014, shortly after moving to Mongolia, we received a request from the Faculty of Dentistry at the Mongolian National University of Medical Sciences for support in training local dental hygienists and dentists in oral health. It turned out that the oral health of Mongolian children from disadvantaged backgrounds was catastrophically poor.

In 2015, the Misheel Kids Foundation was therefore founded and, with a team of Mongolian dentists, the first oral health lessons were held in orphanages and day-care centers in Ulaanbaatar. With the first donations in 2016, we were then able to provide orphans with free dental treatment. Since then, we have grown steadily and now look after over nine orphanages and children’s daycare centers around Ulaanbaatar. In addition to free treatment, we carry out annual dental check-ups and train children, teachers, caregivers and parents in oral hygiene and healthy eating.

In 2018, we traveled to the countryside for the first time and provided children with free dental care using mobile treatment units. Since then, we have visited remote villages in Mongolia twice a year with an entire team and several vehicles with dental equipment. On these missions, we treat thousands of children who would otherwise have no access to dental care.

In 2022, due to high demand, we also carried out mobile missions in the ger districts of Ulaanbaatar for the first time.

An Oral Health Center is being set up in the middle of the Ger District. There we will not only provide free dental treatment for disadvantaged children, but also focus on oral health teaching and education.

A large Mongolian team with diverse expertise in the field of dentistry together with our board members from Mongolia, Switzerland and Germany as well as numerous volunteers make our commitment possible.