Tibetan nomads bankrolled by Australian Sheep Bank

November 3, 2000
Web posted at: 12:05 PM HKT (0405 GMT)

SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) -- How does a poor Tibetan nomad build up a sheep herd to feed his family and gain some economic security? He borrows from the Sheep Bank in Australia.

Strange as it may sound, a group in Australia's island state of Tasmania has created a sheep bank which in the past year has lent some 200 sheep to about 50 nomads, or four families, in Tibet.

But this is no charity and the loan must be repaid with interest in five years. No money changes hands and nomad borrowers return young reproductive ewes to the bank so it can lend to new Tibetan clients.

"The idea is to give the nomads a economic base to feed their families and to reduce the inequality between nomads," Sheep Bank co-founder Dr Colin Butler told Reuters on Friday.

Butler and his wife Susan run the Sheep Bank as a project of their BODHI Inc (Benevolent Organisation for Development, Health and Insight).

Butler has been a Buddhist for 25 years and after meeting Tibet's exiled Dalai Lama decided to start BODHI Inc in 1989 with the aim of helping poor Tibetans.

"BODHI is not a religious organisation, its motives are entirely humanitarian," says the BODHI website (http:/www.angelfire.com/on/bodhi).

BODHI provided funds to buy some 200 sheep from wealthy Tibetan nomads, paying $18 per animal, and then through local authorities lent small herds of sheep to four poor Tibetan families.

BODHI's lending formula goes something like this: By year four the herds will have multiplied sufficiently to pay back half the number of sheep borrowed. The nomad returns half the new ewes that are mature enough to breed next season and the other half the following year.

The nomad gets to keep all the by-products such as wool, skin, butter, cheese and milk. The bank's interest -- new reproductive-aged ewes.

"Both the herdsmen and the (sheep) fund become completely self-sufficient," Butler said. "Its in the interest of the herdsman to build his flocks as quickly as possible."

BODHI calculates that 30 ewes can produce at least 25 lambs per year, allowing for losses. After three years that's an extra 75 sheep, 35 of them ewes.

"Its only in its first phase. But everyone seems happy. The nomads are happy and officials are happy," Butler said.

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