Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places. Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places.
Mercy Corps in Mongolia
15 YEARS OF PROGRESS
Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places. Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places.
Outline
• Who is Mercy Corps • Our history in Mongolia • Selected results • Our future plans
Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places. Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places.
Mercy Corps Global
• 40+ Countries
• 4,000 staff
• Commitment to participatory development
• Increasingly complex humanitarian response and development
challenges
Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places. Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places.
Approach
In our work, Mercy Corps Leverages the critical linkages between the public sector, private sector and civil society – to support the creation of secure, productive and just communities
Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places. Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places.
Mongolia 1999-2015
• 22 Projects • 7 donors: USDA, USAID, SDC,
British Embassy, World Bank, ADB, and the Adventurists
• Rural economic development and access to finance
• Environmental management • Good governance and
decentralization • Rural focus – 20 aimags and
223 soums
Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places.
Loan Guarantee Mechanism
Results: Access to Finance Xac Bank • Mercy Corps founded Goviin Ekhel MFI in 1999 to provide access to credit in 6 Gobi
aimags • Merged with the UNDP MFI X.A.C. and converted to an independent commercial bank
in 2000 • Provided a full array of banking services to micro and small businesses, consumers,
cooperatives and nomadic herders traditionally excluded from such services • Mercy Corps served on the board until 2007 and continues as a shareholder
• 2004-2015 • 130,000 business owners participated in
fee-based training; • 3,400 loans backed; • 10-15% increase in income in first year.
Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places.
Participatory Local Planning:
Results: Good Governance
Social Inclusion and Accessibility for People with Disabilities • Capacity building for local DPOs groups • Public awareness campaigns on exclusion and accessibility • Monitoring of local government and service providers to ensure accessibility • Advocacy to secure physical accessibility of public spaces through new building
codes and to ensure implementation of educational and social welfare accessibility standards
• Training to local government on their legal responsibilities to the disability community
• Advocacy and activism to ensure accessible elections and polling placed
• 223 Soums have developed participatory local development plans “Soum Master Plans” (SMPs)
• Participatory methodology developed locally and focused on building facilitation and decision-making skills
• SMPs are being aligned with LDFs, SME funds and other block grants to promote transparent and effective spending at the local level
Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places.
Planning a business in Arhangai
Raising public awareness in Ulaanbaatar
Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places.
Livestock Early Warning System
Results: Environmental Management
• Combines forage data and weather analysis through PHYGROW • Tracks precipitation, day and night temperature • Shows a variety of key forage information including: current forage
availability, 60-day forecast of forage availability and deviation from long-term norms
• Presents risk analysis for drought and dzud • Available on-line in Mongolian and English http://www.mongolialews.net/ • Mercy Corps is partnering with LEWS, MNDI and Keio University to create
sms based information system to make LEWS data accessible to soum level administrators and herders
Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places.
Livestock Early Warning System
Results: Environmental Management
Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places.
What new impact will we achieve?
1. Resilient Pastoralism in the face of climate change, rapid urbanization and the need to modernize the food system
2. Strengthened systems that support rural entrepreneurship and business development
3. Continued improvement in local government capacity to plan, adapt and change under current socio-economic challenges
4. Improved understanding of environmental health and food safety for rural and urban Mongolians
5. New focus on migration, urbanization and youth employment
Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places.
What will change or stay the same?
1. Continued focus on rural economic development and the institutional changes needed for strong growth in the non-mining economy
2. A new focus on systems analysis and setting systemic level objectives to address constraints faced by individual actors
3. Increased effort to form Shared Value partnerships with the private sector
4. Continued drive to strengthen the capacity of Mongolian partners to create local, innovative and impact oriented solutions; and a new initiative to evaluate the potential for forming a local develop entity
Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places. Saving and improving lives in the world’s toughest places.
Mercy Corps Mongolia 15 YEARS OF PROGRESS
Jennifer Bielman
Country Director