Mongolian credit unions get help from Manitoban

Ken Doleman is hoping to initiate about 50 years worth of time travel in Mongolia.

The CEO of the Swan Valley Credit Union is heading up a team of credit union employees from across Canada to provide consulting and mentoring services to the fledgling financial co-operative sector in Mongolia, where he estimates the banking system is more than a half-century behind the North American model.

Doleman will spend two weeks working with the management and boards of individual credit unions, with the goal of helping alleviate poverty through the gathering of savings and micro-lending. The more money deposited in savings accounts, the more that can be lent to budding entrepreneurs looking to start cellphone businesses, small restaurants, grocery stores and taxi cab companies.

Mongolia is a landlocked country in Asia between China and Russia and has a largely nomadic population. Doleman said Manitobans wouldn't recognize what passes for a banking system there -- no ATMs or electronic banking services -- and they don't have traditional phone lines, either.

"(Credit unions) there are small. They'd have four or five employees, little use, if any, of technology, very basic ways of operating and very limited services and products. (Canadians) would see it as a small micro-finance kind of outlet, (a place) without any sophistication at all," he said.

"If they're 50 years behind us, they can leapfrog over many of the barriers we had along our co-operative journey in Canada. They've leapt over land lines and bypassed that infrastructure completely and gone to cellphone service," Doleman said.

Because the credit union system is in its relative infancy in Mongolia, Doleman said, the upside is almost unlimited. There are fewer than 200 savings and credit co-operatives in the country of 2.7 million people, with about 25,000 members.

The Mongolia project is the first of four coaching missions organized by Ottawa-based Canadian Co-operative Association over the next few months. Jo-Anne Ferguson, its senior director of international development, said delegations will also head off to Malawi, Uganda and Ghana in January. Its staff members will return every six months to monitor project developments in the four countries, she said.

CCA volunteers typically have a minimum of middle management experience, she said.

"These are people who are committed to learning. Every time we go to another country, we learn so much about the operations and how people behave. That benefits us in Canada in terms of how credit unions serve the needs of people," she said.

This isn't the first time Doleman has ventured outside of Canada's borders to help spread the credit union gospel. Nearly three years ago, he raised money for the Co-operative Development Foundation of Canada by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Then he spent three weeks advising his counterparts in Uganda and Malawi.

Swan Valley Credit Union serves a region of about 12,000 people two hours north of Dauphin. It has $200 million in assets and 9,300 members.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 18, 2010 A6

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