<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
    <title>Mercy Corps Kyrgyzstan Features</title>
    <link>http://www.mercycorps.org/</link>
    <description>The Latest Mercy Corps Kyrgyzstan Content</description>
    <language>en-us</language>
    <copyright>(c) 2007 Mercy Corps</copyright>
    <docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>
    <lastBuildDate>Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:59:10 -0700</lastBuildDate>
    <category>Charity</category>
    <generator>Mercy Corps In-house CMS</generator>
    <ttl>60</ttl>
<image>
    <title>Mercy Corps Logo</title>
    <url>	http://www.mercycorps.org/ /images/donate/mercy_logo_red.gif</url>
    <link>http://www.mercycorps.org/</link>
    <width>136</width>
    <height>48</height>
</image>
<item>
	<title>The Apple Project Video</title>
	<link>http://www.mercycorps.org/topics/microenterprise/1758/</link>
	<description><![CDATA[This nine-minute documentary shows every step of the Apple Project, Mercy Corps' program to help farmers grow better varieties of apples and to increase their financial independence in one of Central Asia's poorest countries. 

     ]]></description>
	<pubDate>Fri, 06 Jul 2007 09:29:52 -0700</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
	<title>Aziz: Welding His Way to Work</title>
	<link>http://www.mercycorps.org/silentdisasters/youthunemployment/1581/</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Few jobs are easy to find in the Ferghana Valley. But apprenticeships can improve the odds.]]></description>
	<pubDate>Thu, 18 Jan 2007 10:49:23 -0800</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
	<title>A Recipe for Healthy Kids</title>
	<link>http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/kyrgyzstan/1829/</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Mercy Corps is ensuring 50,000 kindergarteners and boarding-school students throughout southern Kyrgyzstan receive healthy meals.]]></description>
	<pubDate>Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:41:36 -0800</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
	<title>Storing Up Value</title>
	<link>http://www.mercycorps.org/topics/economicdevelopment/1507/</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Tosor, Kyrgyzstan — Apples may be a fall fruit, but growers here think of them as a winter moneymaker.

Take apple farmer Abai Shenebaev, for instance. During the fall picking season, he plucks his fruit off the trees and stocks away the hardiest varieties in his basement. He keeps them there until winter, when quality apples fetch more than three times their autumn price. His neighbors who have space to store their apples do the same.

Unfortunately, the save-and-store strategy doesn't pay off for most farmers, says Robin Currey, the lead project consultant on Mercy Corps' Apple Project. In a survey of 26 households two winters ago, she discovered what she calls the &quot;fairy tale of the winter sale.&quot;

The fairy tale is this: The growers she surveyed in November 2004 put aside 55 percent of their fall harvest, mostly in tiny home cellars with poor ventilation. When she surveyed those same 26 households the following spring, only one had completed a wintertime sale. Most of the apples either rotted or were fed to livestock. 

Mercy Corps is trying to improve those results by repairing an old underground storage facility that will offer chilled space for 300 tons of apples. Renovations are being made as part of The Apple Project, a multifaceted effort to increase profits for household apple growers in two farming villages on the southern shore of Kyrgyzstan's Lake Issyk-Kul.

The Soviet-era facility — a long, one-story brick warehouse with a chilly, dirt-floor basement — had been built and used to store apples but had sat idle for nearly a decade, according to local growers. Its porous cement-and-clay walls were not properly maintained, and the building grew too cold and too moist to protect the apples from frost.

For the last week, Shenebaev and a team of neighbors have been helping build a roof that will protect the driveway that leads into the underground storage area. It's part of a renovation that includes filling in the basement walls with rocks, clay and straw; installing new metal ventilation shafts; and, on the opposite side of the building, constructing above-ground grading, weighing, sorting and storage areas for summer and autumn apples. Mercy Corps also rehabilitated the 650-meter dirt road that leads to the storage facility from the main highway.

&quot;I think this will be better than what I have, and it has a lot of capacity,&quot; says Shenebaev, whose job this afternoon is to slap hot tar on the eave timbers to make them rot resistant. &quot;Most people don't have cold storage, and they end up selling their winter varieties for a really cheap price.&quot;

Besides the wintertime protection, the facility offers growers the advantage of having one centralized point from which to sell their harvest. That should make them more attractive to wholesale buyers, says Shenebaev, who want to fill their trucks quickly.

Indeed, time is money. And market timing, these growers know, can mean the difference between profit and loss. They are hoping this renovated storehouse can keep the region's apples firm and ripe until the dead of winter, and that the fairy tale of the winter sale has a real-life happy ending.
]]></description>
	<pubDate>Thu, 19 Oct 2006 07:59:04 -0700</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
	<title>Selling the Harvest</title>
	<link>http://www.mercycorps.org/topics/economicdevelopment/1506/</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Tamga, Kyrgyzstan — Mariam Jeenalieve's backyard orchard produces a colorful mix of apples: there's the Chinese Kulon Kitika, recognized by its alternate streaks of pink and lime-green, the golden-yellow Tashaima, and an inordinate number of pale-red McIntosh.

The 60-year-old retired teacher has spent the last several days plucking, grading and sorting these apples, then placing them into wooden crates stacked neatly near her house. Now comes the real challenge: attracting a buyer.

But after some help from Mercy Corps, selling her fruits is less daunting than ever.

Last week, Mariam sold five crates — about 65 kilograms worth — of several varietals to a Kyrgyz apple distributor in a deal brokered by Mercy Corps. In all, villagers in Tamga and neighboring Tosor sold the distributor 15 tons of apples at nine soms per kilo, or about 11 cents per pound. That's 10 to 20 percent more than Mariam and her neighbors usually receive for their finest-quality apples.

Earlier in the season, Mercy Corps had put potential buyers in touch with village leaders as part of The Apple Project, a multifaceted attempt by Mercy Corps and its affiliated microlender, Kompanion, to increase incomes in two farming villages on the south shore of Lake Issyk-Kul.

[photo=1341]center[ephoto]

Mercy Corps acted as an &quot;honest broker,&quot; making contact with Kyrgyz distributors who ship apples into Russia and educating farmers on how to grade, sort and pack the apples according to buyer standards. Working in groups, villagers judged whether each apple was big enough to sell by comparing it to rolls of scotch tape distributed by Mercy Corps, checked for any disqualifying scratches or wormholes, then wrapped each apple in a Styrofoam netting before placing them in crates.

Previously, growers in Tamga and Tosor hadn't had the time or the information to earn top-dollar on their apples, according to Robin Currey, a Mercy Corps consultant to the Apple Project. A buyer's truck would pull into town, disseminate crates to local growers and wait for them to return with apples. Then they'd inevitably haggle over quality, size and price. 

In this system, growers had little leverage; they didn't know when trucks would arrive and felt pressured to sell to the first one they saw, Currey says.

But buyers don't like the process, either. Many prefer to buy from large Chinese farms rather than deal with the headaches of negotiating with multiple sellers — in Tosor, for example, 285 households grow apples on land that all together might equal the size of a single apple orchard in the U.S.

By comparison, both growers and distributors applauded the improvements in this fall's trading process.

&quot;We really liked the new way,&quot; says Mariam, standing under the canopy formed by two rows of 16-year-old apple trees. &quot;We sorted and graded the apples ourselves, we didn't have to bargain, and the traders trusted us. It was much more civilized than before.&quot;

Currey says the distributors told her it was their best buying experience ever, mainly because they were able to pare the time it takes to fill their truck from about one full week to 36 hours. They've already committed to returning to the village later this year to purchase winter apple varieties.

[photo=1342]right[ephoto]

Mariam will have more top-quality apples then thanks to what she learned from monthly farming seminars held by Kompanion agronomists. Mariam says she hasn't missed a single seminar since they began last summer. Even a slight increase in apple yield or price makes a difference for Mariam and her husband, a retired physician. Their annual income from apple sales is already larger than what they receive from their modest government pensions. 

She demonstrates what she's learned on some young trees near the back of their property. They are pruned correctly — inward-growing branches are lopped off at an angle, and not too close to the main branch — and the soil around the trunk has been exposed to let in water and nutrients. &quot;We learned everything, starting from the point at which we plant the tree to how to harvest it.&quot;

Like the other 200 participants in the loan program, she used a $75 loan to buy several dozen apple-tree seedlings, which she planted on the piece of a former Soviet collective farm she now owns. To track her success, Mariam keeps meticulous records with the help of a log sheet and 10-kilogram scale that Mercy Corps distributed to all participants. 

&quot;Each day I'm writing down what I am selling, drying, storing, eating, throwing away — everything about the apples,&quot; she says. &quot;It'll be very good for comparing year-to-year results and the prices we got.&quot;

And she expects those year-to-year numbers to increase. &quot;In the future, we'll ask buyers to come and we'll promise to sort the apples according to all their standards and rules. And they will promise,&quot; she adds with a sly smile, &quot;to raise their price.&quot;

Sounds like a farmer who finally has some bargaining power. 
]]></description>
	<pubDate>Thu, 19 Oct 2006 07:40:06 -0700</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
	<title>Learning to Grow</title>
	<link>http://www.mercycorps.org/topics/economicdevelopment/1504/</link>
	<description><![CDATA[It's a morning that feels perfect for plucking apples, and a tree in Murat Toguzbaev's backyard is sagging with dozens of apples just ripe for the picking.]]></description>
	<pubDate>Thu, 19 Oct 2006 06:49:07 -0700</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
	<title>Seedlings of Change</title>
	<link>http://www.mercycorps.org/topics/microenterprise/1508/</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Mercy Corps and its microfinance institution, Kompanion, are helping household apple farmers in two Kyrgyz villages.]]></description>
	<pubDate>Thu, 19 Oct 2006 10:56:00 -0700</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
	<title>A New Breed of Development</title>
	<link>http://www.mercycorps.org/topics/economicdevelopment/1499/</link>
	<description><![CDATA[A new spirit of cooperation is catching on in southern Kyrgyzstan, where one of seven new regional economic development councils is getting behind a local vet's plan to raise incomes for household ranchers.]]></description>
	<pubDate>Mon, 16 Oct 2006 07:41:51 -0700</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
	<title>Tools for Sustainable Change</title>
	<link>http://www.mercycorps.org/topics/women/569/</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Repairing a footbridge and initiating a community-sanitation program with Mercy Corps' help gives one Kyrgyz woman - and her community - the capacity and courage to lead.]]></description>
	<pubDate>Thu, 26 May 2005 11:02:21 -0700</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
	<title>Global Food for Education</title>
	<link>http://www.mercycorps.org/topics/hungernutrition/230/</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Mercy Corps receives funds from USDA to mobilize and strengthen community involvement in education, and improve access to education for children in Kyrgyzstan.]]></description>
	<pubDate>Mon, 07 Apr 2003 11:11:06 -0700</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
	<title>The Pearl of Kyrgyzstan</title>
	<link>http://www.mercycorps.org/topics/education/231/</link>
	<description><![CDATA[The village of Ornok sits on the touristy northern shores of Lake Issyk Kul, the so-called &quot;The Pearl of Kyrgyzstan.&quot;]]></description>
	<pubDate>Mon, 07 Apr 2003 06:09:22 -0700</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
	<title>The Determined Man of Kurbuu</title>
	<link>http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/kyrgyzstan/220/</link>
	<description><![CDATA[In his later years in life, Abdysh Asaev is working tirelessly to help the children in his beloved village to learn and prosper.]]></description>
	<pubDate>Thu, 27 Mar 2003 10:44:10 -0800</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
	<title>An Extraordinary Businesswoman Works to Improve the Lives of Orphans</title>
	<link>http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/kyrgyzstan/202/</link>
	<description><![CDATA[Klara isn't an ordinary businesswoman.]]></description>
	<pubDate>Mon, 24 Feb 2003 10:53:39 -0800</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
	<title>Hard Work, Big Dreams</title>
	<link>http://www.mercycorps.org/countries/kyrgyzstan/156/</link>
	<description><![CDATA[An 8-year-old girl in Kyrgyzstan has high hopes for her family's future.]]></description>
	<pubDate>Fri, 04 Oct 2002 09:30:48 -0700</pubDate>
</item>
<item>
	<title>Pride in Hard Work</title>
	<link>http://www.mercycorps.org/topics/education/18/</link>
	<description><![CDATA[The countrywide humanitarian assistance program provides a needy school with food, which has allowed the school to save money and start a garden to better feed its students.  ]]></description>
	<pubDate>Fri, 30 Nov 2001 09:00:52 -0800</pubDate>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>
