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What We Do: Current Projects

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Photos courtesy Beall & Goldstein

News

Latest report, August 2009 (pdf 11KB)

Reports 2000-2008 (pdf 107 KB)

TV interview with Colin & Susan about the Revolving Sheep Bank

2009 article on Tibetan shepherds and climate change (pdf 24KB)

Revolving Sheep Bank, Tibet

Economic self-sufficiency for Western Tibet’s poorest nomads

The Revolving Sheep Bank is a five-year micro-credit project that lends reproductive-age sheep and goats to poor nomads in Western Tibet.

Traditional aid organisations had refused Professor Melvyn C Goldstein funding for the Revolving Sheep Bank when he approached BODHI in 1999. What did we think? No interest would be charged. The nomads would keep all by-products (cheese, wool, etc) and repay the loan in years 4 & 5.

BODHI's funding began the following year.

We had no idea how it would turn out, whether recipients would repay their loans or bureaucratic obstructions would prevail, as they so often do.

Now, in September 2009, the Revolving Sheep Bank has succeeded beyond everyone's wildest dreams. It has become the prototype of yak banks started by other Western NGOs in Tibet. While in Tibet just last month, nomads from the far west of Tibet, near the Indian border, approached Prof Goldstein for advice about starting sheep banks in their areas.

Goals

* Provide poor Tibetan nomad families with credit access, enabling a 5-year loan of reproductive age ewes, thus fostering economic self-sufficiency and reducing inequality

* Inject funds into the local economy by purchasing ewes from local, wealthier nomads

* Create a self-perpetuating sheep bank that will continue to loan sheep to poor households after the 5-year trial

More (pdf 298KB)