As you may know, since August 2009, XacBank has offered Kiva borrowers an incentive to pay their loan principal and interest back on time – an interest rebate in a savings account! If a Kiva borrower pays back on time, then XacBank deposits 9 percent of the interest the borrower has paid on their loan into a savings account. As a Kiva Fellow, I have worked with XacBank to update their policies regarding how Kiva borrowers are considered eligible for interest rebates and simplify how the MFI offers the savings accounts to new Kiva borrowers.
Congratulations to Credit Mongol! This Kiva field partner in Mongolia recently achieved active status on the Kiva website. As you may well know, Kiva partners with microfinance institutions (MFIs), like Credit Mongol, in countries across the globe, reaching hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs. These partnerships are what make Kiva possible on a large scale.
A borrower verification is a thorough check of ten random Kiva borrowers of a field partner. It’s used to verify the accuracy of the information published on the borrower profiles on the Kiva website. A borrower verification happens several times throughout the course of a partnership in order to assess a microfinance institution’s performance levels. Read below about the ten borrowers I visited through a borrower verification with XacBank.
Happy Lunar New Year! Сар шинэдээ сайхан шинэлээрэй, as we say in Mongolian. Today, the countries and communities across the world who traditionally follow the lunar calendar are celebrating the first day of the New Year! Boy! – Microloan demands sure have been high lately.The need for loans center around traditional activities practiced for the Lunar New Year holiday.
A Kiva Coordinator is someone who organizes and manages the Kiva program at one of Kiva’s field partners. Watch the video to find out what a Kiva Coordinator does everyday, their favorite aspects of working with Kiva, and also the challenges of being a Kiva Coordinator. As a Roaming Fellow, I had the opportunity to interview three Mongolian field partners – XacBank, Credit Mongol, and Transcapital.
The winter technically began on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year – December 22. Although from October, families have been making fires to keep warm and temperatures have been well below freezing. Now we’re in the fourth set of nines in the Mongolian winter, the coldest set! I woke up this morning to -33 degree Fahrenheit temperatures in the capital city. The seasonal calendar greatly influences the types of micro businesses in Mongolia. In the wintertime, many of the businesses focus on keeping the general population warm.
Recently, I was able to travel to the countryside and combine many of my Kiva Fellow duties into one trip. With XacBank, I traveled to Uvurkhangai and Bayankhongor Provinces together with the Kiva Coordinator. We interviewed Kiva entrepreneurs, attended trade fairs, trained loan officers, and participated in a very special certificate ceremony – all in four days!
November 26 is a national Mongolian holiday. November 26, 1924 was the day that Mongolia declared itself as an independent country with the adoption of its first constitution. The Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR), a communist state, under the rule of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP), lasted until 1990.
Mongolia is known for its vast amount of open space and beautiful scenery. The population density of Mongolia is just over 1 person per square kilometer. In this post, I’ll share photos from the most rural of businesses to the most urban.
The term “countryside” can be translated into “khuudoo” in Mongolian language. However, the meaning of the word is slightly different in English and Mongolian. The term khuudoo in Mongolian is relative to where you are from in the country and where you are when you say the word.
Mongolia is a landlocked country spanning 1,564,116 sq km, slightly smaller than Alaska. It’s situated between Russia and China. The main forms of transportation available from international destinations are flights from Russia, China, Korea, and Japan and the train route from Russia and China. Domestic flights, the train route and transport by road are options within Mongolia.
Small business owners normally don’t have the money to fly to and from Ulaanbaatar, this luxury is usually only attainable for government officials, foreigners, and wealthier urban Mongolians.
If you browse Mongolian borrower profiles on Kiva.org, you’ll notice that most of them say that the borrower lives in traditional Mongolian housing named a ger, more commonly known as a yurt. Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to visit borrowers who live in traditional gers and who work in ger-producing workshops.
The past five years XacBank, a Kiva field partner, has been providing higher-education loans for university students. The bank has also created a savings account named Future Millionaire, for children under the age of eighteen. More recently, the bank has targeted a younger group of students, as young as eight years old, to provide personal finance and social education. XacBank is currently implementing two youth financial education programs – Aflatoun and Aspire.
Mongolians have been practicing the art of transforming milk into dozens of dairy products for hundreds of years. Nowadays, about 40 percent of the workforce is engaged in activities surrounding animal husbandry and products made from livestock. As Kiva’s August food month is coming to an end, here’s some insight into dairy product producers and distributors in Mongolia.
The goals of the United States Peace Corps and the Kiva Fellows Program fit quite well with each other. Because of this, I’m able to serve as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) and Kiva Fellow at the same time. Both programs promote cross-cultural awareness and capacity building within the given host community. Let’s look at how the volunteer programs relate to each other.
