Mongolian School of Colorado: Strengthening Community Roots
Jadyn Nguyen • December 1, 2025

In a 2025 Colorado world, how does the Mongolian community keep their traditions alive? They organize and co-found a school! Though 6,500 miles away, our rocky mountain climate is very similar to the climate in Mongolia, which is why many Mongolians choose to call Colorado home.


Founded in August 2006, the Mongolian School of Colorado has two goals in mind: 1) teach Mongolian children their home language 2) teach Mongolian heritage. The only way to develop trust in your community is to spend meaningful time together. This is why students spend every Saturday at the Mongolian School of Colorado from September to May.


“When the lights turn on, we only speak Mongolian”, says Tuya Erdene, Executive Director of the Mongolian School of Colorado. Routines like this allow for kids to be in a safe environment to practice speaking their home language, and sit in the discomfort of learning a new skill. Tuya goes on, if kids struggle to understand then they “turn the lights off” and speak English to reset and problem solve!


“As citizens of different countries, the young people of Mongolian ancestry can choose what tradition they want to live and work inside. But ultimately they have to be given a choice in the matter” (Our History, Mongolian School of Colorado, 2025).


Nurturing healthy children is already hard enough, but to navigate a new country; that’s a tricky challenge. A challenge that Colorado’s Mongolian community solves by ensuring Mongolian children attend Saturday school and practice their heritage. This is best exemplified by Mooji Boldbaatar, a volunteer Program Coordinator for Youth Leadership.


Mooji is the daughter of immigrants. As a child, she became her family’s unofficial translator; handling parent-teacher conferences, paperwork, and anything her parents needed. She grew up learning to work hard, support her community, and every Saturday, she attended the Mongolian School of Colorado. There, she and other Mongolian students practiced their language and learned cultural traditions.


Mooji carried more responsibilities than most kids. In addition to translating, she often worked shifts as a young adult alongside her parents to help support the household.

As an adult, chemistry became her career path, but not her source of fulfillment. While searching for a deeper purpose, she returned to the place that shaped her childhood: the Mongolian School of Colorado, this time as a volunteer. Despite balancing a full-time job and personal obligations, she found meaning in giving back.


For Mooji, cultural preservation is more than routine; it’s a north star. Her goal with the students of the Mongolian School of Colorado, to help: “get the answers to who they are faster.”


For immigrant kids, it’s common to not feel ‘enough’ because you’re navigating living in two worlds: your country of origin and living in a new country. Identity often feels like a big vague question, “who am I?”


For 18 years, leaders of the Mongolian School of Colorado have answered this question with action: “It is essential that the traditional Mongolian culture—its music, dance, dress, language, arts, nomadic lifestyle, etc—be given to these Mongolian young people. It helps them form an identity, one that will be made stronger and more resilient and they become richer people by living in two different traditions.” (Our History, Mongolian School of Colorado, 2025).


Mongolian students like Mooji leave their school with the ability to speak Mongolian fluently and with a stronger sense of pride for their heritage. The students have recently partnered with leading Professors from CU Denver on ‘Transformative Student Voice’ as a way to practice civic engagement, “One group of students has noticed a lack of spaces for youth in the Greenwood Village area. The youth reported often not being aware of or feeling welcome in spaces designed for pro-social youth activities. Often, the young people reported, they find themselves hanging out in basements or driving around” (Dane Stickney, PhD, 2025).


Located just 4.5 miles from the Social Fabric Hub, an Asian American community center, the Mongolian School of Colorado is the go to place for Colorado Mongolians to feel at home and practice cultural traditions–creating a pocket for Asian cultural preservation in the South Denver area.

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