ACTIVIST: Tsedevdamba is admired for her human rights work. Courtesy Oyungerel Tsedevdamba

a year ago, Mongolian human rights activist Oyungerel Tsedevdamba was delivered a hard lesson: dreams can be expensive. Accepted into Stanford’s master’s program in international policy studies, she was forced to defer because she couldn’t afford the $45,000 cost.

This fall, having put together a combination of scholarships—including a Fulbright—and donations from Bay Area supporters, Tsedevdamba arrives as Stanford’s first Mongolian student.

A widow with two children, Tsedevdamba earned about $250 per month as an adviser to former Prime Minister Elbegdorj Tsakhia and is the executive director of the Liberty Center, a nonprofit organization that encourages democratic reforms in Mongolia. She drafted the Mongolian Parliamentary Ethics Code and published a handbook on legal services. “She is highly regarded in Mongolia,” says Jeffrey Falt, a Bay Area human rights lawyer who met Tsedevdamba in 2000. “People stop on the streets to thank her and congratulate her.”

Falt worked with members of the Bay Area Mongolian community to organize several fund-raising events over the past year. The effort raised more than $32,000, including $7,000 from an anonymous donor who used money she had saved for a trip of her own to Mongolia.

“A Stanford education will not only recharge my brain, but also re-energize my future dreams and ambitions,” says Tsedevdamba, 36.

It may have taken an extra year to get her to the Farm, says Falt, but she was worth waiting for. “She has a big future.”