In Mongolia astronomy is not part of the standard high school curriculum and only a few schools even address it as part of the physics class. In the whole country only a few schools have telescopes, but almost all of them are too old and unusable. Therefore, in order to promote the teaching of astronomy and science in general, through this project we are starting the process of supplying proper educational telescopes to each high school in the country. With the funding from IAU Office of Astronomy for Development, we have acquired 44 telescopes through the local distributor of Celestron – “Tungalag”, and handed them out to various public high schools in Mongolia. More than half of the telescopes were given to schools in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, while the others were delivered to rural countryside schools. A detailed manual on how to operate the telescope was written in Mongolian language and training events for teachers were organized. The project was advertised through a news conference and several local tv-station interviews, which resulted in appreciable support from local people. Though this first iteration only covered 7% of all schools in the country, we believe that we have inspired other young people and government officials to get involved in our project.
