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

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 Swiss graduate in dental hygiene, and Dr. Anuudari Erkhembaatar, a Mongolian dentist who teaches as a lecturer at the University of Dentistry in Ulaanbaatar. She has been a dentist with her own Clinic since 2015.

Dr. Anuudari is a General Director of the Pro Dent Dental Clinic in Ulaanbaatar and is an associate professor at the Mongolian National University of Medical Sciences School of Dentistry. She holds a PhD in oral pathology from Aichi Gakuin University, Nagoya, Japan and a DDS (Doctor of Dental Surgery) from the High Institute of Medical Sciences Faculty of Dentistry, Havana, Cuba. She speaks Mongolian, English, Russian and Japanese.

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