Case 3: G-saver in Mongolia

Impact measurement is important for better resource allocation and improving the quality of the projects or programs. Now, let’s consider the G-saver case, which is an interesting case of impact measurement and evaluation by Korean researchers. Share about the G-saver project which is operating in Mongolia. So, Ulaanbaatar is the Mongolia capital city. And this is the world’s coldest capital city where annual average temperature is zero Celsius. And they have a very long winter about 9 to 10 months winter. So usually, I’m pretty sure you have experienced to visit Mongolia during the summer. July or August. Beautiful. Blue sky. Very nice weather. And you maybe enjoy like a horse riding. Very nice.

But, if you go to Mongolia in winter, basically you cannot see over 5 meters. The air pollution is so bad. So, the problem is they usually keep on living in this Ger this poor people living in Ger which is a tent. And they have this compression heating system. And because they are poor, they use very bad quality of cold. And sometimes they just used a tire. One of the tires and then heating bad air quality. So there are several problems caused by traditional stoves Economic problem. 50% of total income for poor family is spent on buying fuel So, their disposable income is very limited during the winter season. 10 months out of 12 months for a year. And environmental problem.

Second air polluted city in the world. And sometimes they got first, they ranked first, so first or second. And health problems. 30% of death under age 5 associate with air pollutant. And last year when I went to Mongolia, the moms were demonstrating because, many of moms, they lost their child. Because of the bad air. So, this is a really big problem. So, as a solution, G-saver was proposed. A hit absorber which is cheap to make, easy to use. and does not interfere with culture and life style of Mongolia people, which is called appropriate technology.

And here is a working prototype of G-saver. So, basically between the pipe, you can install this G-saver. And it will help you to reduce the usage of cold by 50%. Of 50% in lab. So, value proposition. They have financial value proposition and social value proposition.

And, I’m gonna share this material through e-mail, so you don’t get to worry about. But, they have a very interesting history. And basically they made a G-saver. And they give market survey, inspection by Mongolia government. The records were pretty good. But, when they go to a Ger and meeting with basically people, the beneficiaries what they found was the product was pretty good. As suggested How helpful G-save was. Most people said four or five. And how much did you experience? Temperature enhancement four or five. Very nice result. But, when they visit the Ger, and meeting the local people, there was a problem. It was too heavy. So, it’s not easy to clean the device.

And the problem is, when it is chocked, then, basically people have not much initiative to clean up because it’s too heavy. So, they just throw it away. What’s the point? No more impact, right? So, they need to basically revise, refine the product, But, as a social venture, they didn’t have any technology. And at that time, KAIST, the very famous engineering school like MIT, professors and students join this project. And they volunteered to utilize their technology and their skills to help this company.

So, as a result, they make G-saver version 2, GS 2 So, in Daejeon Campus, they have this kind of R&D experiment. And they spent a lot of time and money to refine this product. And, also they go to Mongolia to do the filed test. And these are the people who worked together. So, in 2010, they build this social venture, good sharing in Mongolia. And they began to produce products. And in the beginning, they could make only like 2,000 or 3,000 units per year. But, later, in 2018 they basically scaled up their production, and they did a lot of empowerment to their employees.

And with the same people, in the same location, with the same machine, they could make 25,000 units per year. From 2000 to 25000 in five years. So efficiency was going up, and then the cost you need to cost, because very down. So they could charge very low price for their beneficiaries to buy with cheap price. So, in the end, they also got the subsidy from KOICA So, by 2018 about 70,000 units were distributed in Mongolia. So, the next question is

PIA.

A means accountability.

As far as you get the money from the government, you should be accountable to the citizens who pay the tax. Accountability. As an accountability, if you are a very kind of young stage, kind of a company, maybe you wanna do the improvement.

And for improvement, you can just do the monitoring and evaluations, try to find out how to fix problems and improve your results. So, that’s the improvement. But, after 5 years or 7 years or 10 years, now you wanna prove your impact. Like this, right? With your project, you’ll make difference. Change the society right? Solving the social problems. So, to prove you need to measure impact. So, KOICA asked Hanyang, Ewha Womans University to perform this impact assessment. So, economic impact was measured by myself, and Guri Kim who is a professor of Michigan State University Hyemi Lee at Ewha Womans University. And health effect.

Hyun Jun Shin is a professor at Harvard Medical School And Joo Yoon is the faculty at University of Pittsburgh Medical school. And environmental impact. Myung An is a professor in environmental engineering at Univ. Ewha. And welfare. Yoon Kyung is a professor in social welfare at Ewha Womans University. Process Evaluation, so we have In Wha Kang who is also a professor in public studies at Ewha Womans University. So, in this way, we have this kind of impact assessment team. And we did an impact measurement by visiting Mongolia every year. We have some devices. We also do some surveys to get the data. And also, we bought this kind of devices to measure CO2 or very small fine dusts.

And this is the kind of premonitory a function… a tester? And we also bought the device to measure the CO level in your lungs. So, we bought this kind of devices by getting advice from the experts in different fields.

So, we designed randomized control trials, Rct kind of standard to measure an impact, and method mixed method, quantitave result and qualitative result And duration, we did pilot study in 2015 and 2016 for 300 house balls. And second trial in 2016 and 2017, 600 house balls. And we find very interesting results. The economic result, 10 to 20% of cold reduction. And a very interesting part is when we did the test in the lab, without humans, 40 or 50% reduction was reported. But, in the real world, only 10 to 20% reduction. Because poor people choose to be more living warm. Warm place, right?

Except using the little amount of cold, because they could reduce money and they decide to put more cold to enjoy warm in the weather. which is good for the quality of their lives. But, the kind of impact was not as we expected. So, that’s why the field test is really important. The lab test is not sufficient. Because we are examining the human’s behavior. But anyway, so we found that $40 for household per year. Reduction was observed. And with 70,000 G-savers, last year, 3 millions USD was saved, which is pretty impressive. And environmental impact. Coal Reduction. 302,000 ton per year. So, CO2 would have been decreased. And health impact. Respiratory health significantly improved, we have a very strong evidence.

And quality of lives. We use the survey from the WHO. And health quality statistically improved. So, we did this kind of results. Now we could prove that they did something. Very useful. And also, we prove we found some places with some weaknesses. So, we provided this visual to the company, and they’re all happy. Because now they could improve. Oh, we have this kind of weaknesses. Then, we can do something to fix this problems. So, this is why evidence based ODA is very important.

And then empowerment. So, in 2 years, the new employment 699. It’s part time usually. So, full time employment was about like 10 But, they also make their part time improvement about 699. And they make total improvement once or three in two years in a very sustainable way. And job training 259 times and special training 150 times. And professional growth. Job satisfaction And new product development and first improvement was observed. Also manager position. So, some people got manager’s position. And if you just look at this kind of hard numbers, pretty good. But, in that if you hear the story, you will be very impressed. I think this one is that lady. So, this lady was just kind of nobody in 2010.

She didn’t have a job and then she lived in Ger, and then unemployed. And when G-saver, the Good Sharing was founded, she was employed. And in the first, she couldn’t do anything basically except for cleaning. And what she said to me during the interview was in the beginning, she was afraid to push the On button of the computer. Because she thinks it may explode if I put the button. So, she didn’t have any idea about the computer. But, in 2 years, she could do the kind of powerpoint planning, and then she presented it to other people. And then, 2 years later, she became the Vice, head of the factory. And…

last year when I visited her, basically, now she is the chief of the factory, and one of the top three of the company. And she is very proud of herself and then she tries to help other colleagues. And she thinks… because she got so much from the company, she wanna contribute to the country by helping others and then making this company great. And another person. Basically she was accounting person. And she wanna become CPA in Mongolia So, when she discussed with the managers of the company, managers said “Oh, we are social enterprise. So we’re happy to empower you and they decide to pay the half of the tuition for the private academy for accounting exams.

And then before the exam, the company decided to give her two months paidly, which is very nice. And then he basically got the CPA Certificate. And she could go to a very nice company with a lot of salary. But, she choose not to. Because she was very happy about the company. So now she’s a manager and then two years ago, she led the project to develop advertisement campaign so they made a very interesting campaign to promote this product and they hire a very famous local talent and then an old guy and then he was very successful. And now she is in charge of like Human resources and Strategies of this company. So, now they have these top three.

One is dispatched from South Korea. And two, one is the lady, the chief of the factory And the other. Human resources and Strategies, local person. So, in that way, they provide this kind of ownership, empowerment and good neighbors, which support this social venture. Good neighbors expect that maybe in next 5 years, the local people can get the highest job, highest positions in the company. So, in this way, you can make the company sustainable, locally rooted by.

So, lessons. Multiple goals and multiple impacts. So, this project target at poverty reduction, health Improvement, environmental like protection and also education training for people And they did this through partnership because they didn’t have enough resources. So, they work very closely with institutions like government, KOICA, or Universities Engineering schools, KAIST or Hanyang, Ewha Women’s university etc. And also Mongolian government and Good Neighbors NGO, they all work together to make this impact. And in that sense, we found, we concluded that social enterprise can be a good platform for this kind of collaboration business plus technology and effective cooperation to make impact and empower people. So, that’s what we concluded from this project. Did you watch the video well? What do you think?

What did you learn from the case? What do you think we should do to further improve the process of impact measurement and evaluation?