On a bright Saturday morning in Maryland, the air fills with the sound of the Mongolian national anthem. Children in deels and silk ribbons take the stage to sing and dance, as their parents beam proudly from the audience.

It’s the first day of school at Mongol Erdem, a community-run Saturday school where Mongolian families gather to keep their language and culture alive. For the parents watching from their seats, it’s more than just a school event. It’s a weekly homecoming.

Now in its ninth year, Mongol Erdem was co-founded by Maggie Sugar, a mother of four. Her two youngest children performed a traditional dance at the opening ceremony. “Aren’t they adorable?” she said with a smile. “Watching them learn and perform Mongolian dances fills me with pride and emotion. Living abroad for so many years makes you feel your love for your homeland even more deeply.”

Maggie and her friends started Mongol Erdem in 2017 after realizing how difficult it was to keep their children connected to their heritage. Driving long hours to a Mongolian school in Virginia wasn’t sustainable, and everyone they knew shared the same concern - their kids were slowly losing the language.

So they rented a small room, hired one teacher, and began teaching Mongolian to a handful of children.

“Just teaching Mongolian wasn’t enough to keep them interested,” Maggie recalls. “We needed to make it fun. Parents also tend to focus on academic progress and put Mongolian aside. So we decided to create a place that both kids and parents would look forward to.”

Today, Mongol Erdem offers a rich program that includes Mongolian language and history, songs and poetry, folk games, life skills, personal development, and extracurricular activities such as traditional and ballroom dance, as well as Jiu-Jitsu. While their children learn, parents can attend free English lessons or enjoy homemade Mongolian food in the school kitchen.

Building a Community

As the school grew, its founders realized one classroom could no longer hold the energy, or the number of students. In 2019, they found a community hall attached to a local church, once used for storage. Parents and volunteers cleaned, painted, and renovated the space together.

At this year’s opening ceremony, students performed folk songs and dances before inviting their parents to join a bii biyelgee, a traditional Mongolian dance.

“We’ve started performing at cultural festivals and Asian community events,” Maggie says. “When the audience applauds, the kids feel proud to be Mongolian. That’s the feeling we want them to carry on.”

The school has also become a gathering place for parents, a small but vital community of Mongolians in Maryland. For Uranzaya Tserenpil, who has lived in the U.S. since 2006 and is raising a six-year-old son with her American husband, the school is a lifeline. Her son learned Mongolian first, but after entering kindergarten, he began to forget it.

Living in an area with no other Mongolian families, Uranzaya says the weekly drive to the school has changed both their lives.

“Sometimes even I forget some Mongolian words,” she laughs. “It’s such a joy to meet other Mongolians, talk, laugh, and share stories. My son is learning to sing, and he’s talking more about Mongolia. That makes me so happy.”

Mongol Erdem’s Mongolian language teacher, Narantuya Badarch, has taught for decades. She believes the most important thing is to spark curiosity.

 “It doesn’t matter where a child is born,” she says. “We must teach them from a young age that they have a homeland, a language, a script, and a culture to be proud of.”

She adjusts her lessons to each child’s age and learning pace. “The best moment,” she says, “is when a child who couldn’t even recognize the alphabet starts reading in Mongolian.”

Investing in the Future

According to Mongolia’s Ministry of Education, there are 59 Mongolian language and culture schools in 16 countries, reaching more than 6,000 children. In 2024, the government began including support for these community schools in the national education budget.

“Funding is a pressing issue,” says Maggie. “When we renovated the school, the only thing we could afford from our budget was paint. Even a small amount of government support for Mongolian schools like ours is an investment in Mongolia’s future.”

Indeed, most parents here say their ultimate goal is to give their children strong roots, no matter where they grow up. Many of these children go on to study at top universities.

 “These kids are becoming capable, confident global citizens,” Maggie says. “Mongolia needs people like them. If we can help them keep Mongolia in their hearts now, they’ll one day give back, whether by working there or supporting their community from afar.”