Ulaanbaatar 2013

Mongolia Compact Gender Summary Report: Best Practices And Lessons Learnedhousehold level there were further positive changes. For example, time savings allowed women tospend extra time with children, teaching them, assisting them with homework, etc.Other expected positive impacts included health benefits due to fewer accidents. However, thebaseline survey findings did not yet confirm this. In fact, the survey found a slight increase in eyeirritations and burning among those owning a project provided stove. These are related to the people‟slack of familiarity with the new stoves, and to address this issue, additional education on the matterwas provided to beneficiaries by the PIU.9.5 Good Practices and Lessons Learned‣ Subsidies made a tremendous difference in the MCA-Mongolia Compact in ensuring outreach towomen and the poorest households, as the figures on the beneficiaries available through EEPindicate. Given the fact that the female beneficiaries in our project were more likely to be poorand therefore would take advantage of the loan (compared to males who were more likely to makethe purchase without needing a loan), it is clear that the availability of the subsidy and loanprogram enabled a larger segment of the female population and the poorest households to benefitfrom the program than would otherwise have been the case.‣ Willingness of partners such as XacBank or SolidLinks LLP to focus on social and genderawareness made a positive difference and may have led to positive trickle-down impacts on theirbusiness practices. For example, prior to this project XacBank did not carry out gender analysesand did not disaggregate the data on its borrowers by gender. Upon MCA-Mongolia‟s request itstarted to do so. XacBank has reported that it has found value in these figures as they allowed it tobetter understand and target its female customer segment in its banking business.‣ Fuel efficient stoves do indeed lead to time savings and cost savings for households. This inparticular positively impacts women, who are the primary users of the stoves and are usuallyresponsible for refueling. Family well-being is expected to be positively affected, as the timesaved has been reported by project beneficiaries to be used for spending more time with children,etc.‣ Strong education is needed for those purchasing a stove to be able to properly understand and useit and to avoid accidents. The project stove has operating procedures that differ from the old stovethe beneficiaries used previously. Therefore safety instructions need to be strictly followedstarting from the beginning, in order to reduce or eliminate potential risks of accidents. The EEPproject strengthened education on how to use the stove safely and aired several safety notices ontelevision to better inform the stove users.46Page 46 of 80