Author Archive
Mongolian Gers
Currently on Kiva.org there are almost 100 loans looking for funding for personal housing expenses. The purchase of a home, and the subsequent improvements, is one of the largest household expenditure items in almost any country.
Mongolia’s Lunar New Year
Often on the Kiva website, lenders will see entrepreneurs looking to borrow money to stock their business shelves for an upcoming holiday. In the United States we see retailers plan for the Christmas shopping season, in Central and South America businesses prepare for Carnaval sales and in Mongolia one of the biggest holidays that small businesses look forward to is Tsagaan Sar, the Lunar New Year.
Kiva’s newest partner in Mongolia – Credit Mongol
Please give a warm Kiva welcome to our newest partner in Mongolia: Credit Mongol LLC! Credit Mongol (CM) is based in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, and is Kiva’s second partner in Mongolia. Credit Mongol is excited about this new partnership with Kiva and is looking forward to building connections between the Kiva lending community and borrowers in Mongolia!
Earth Hour comes to Mongolia!
“On March 27, 2010, an estimated one billion people around the world came together to call for action on climate change by doing something quite simple—turning off their lights for just one hour—Earth Hour.” Starting at 8:30pm in New Zealand and following the setting sun around the world, Earth Hour asked people to turn off their lights for one hour, adding up to a global 24 hours without lights. Internationally recognizable monuments like the Eiffel Tower, Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, even the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil slipped into darkness for an hour on the 27th for the cause. The excitement and enthusiasm for Earth Hour even made its way to Mongolia!
Frigid Finance Part 2: The Realities of Mongolia’s Harsh Winter
Mongolians are used to dealing with a cold winter – temperatures are typically in the -20s (F) with the winds can be brutal. This winter however, has taken on a deadly intensity. Summer droughts have combined with early and heavy snowfall to create what in Mongolia is known as a dzud. One of the harshest features of a dzud is the livestock’s inability to find or reach pasture under the snow, leading to mass starvation of the herds. This winter’s dzud has seen temperatures close to -60F and the UN is reporting that 2.7 million livestock have perished so far. The Mongolian government is estimating that another 3 million could be lost by the end of the cold season in June.*
Mongolia goes green!!!
Yes, it might be the dead of winter in Mongolia, with temperatures hovering around -30 degrees Fahrenheit, but the loan products here have been turning green. Thanks to the hard work of the Eco Products Team at XacBank in Mongolia, Kiva lenders saw an introduction of 3 new types of personal consumption ‘green loans’ in December 2009:
Energy Efficient Stoves
Ger (yurt) covers
Energy efficient fuel
