Everyone knows about the nowadays "Ice Bucket Challenge", made famous on social medias like Facebook or Youtube. Young Mongolian people took the chance during the Naadam Festival to launch a great campaign to clean Mongolia, named Hog Bucket Challenge, giving the opportunity for all Mongolian people to play a part in the preservation of the country from garbages and other dirty things laying on the ground. Unless you didn't have an internet connection of access to a TV those recent months, you must have seen the Ice Bucket Challenge that was so popular in the social medias. This event and challenges throughout Internet helped in raising funds at about 100 Million Dollars and generally spread out the knowledge about a disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS. This challenge consists of filling a big bucket of icy water and reversing onto the head of the participant, and then to nominate/challenge 3 other people to do the exact same thing, filming the all scene as the water is poured. Both a funny challenge and a great cause of awareness and donation.   Some people over Facebook in Mongolia had the idea of creating their own challenge to clean Mongolia's rivers banks and natural sites that are polluted by plastics and other types of garbages thrown by lazy people.

Before and after the challenge took place

  At the time of Naadam Festival , when the Mongolian athletes were busy to show their best skills at wrestling, bow and arrows or riding horses, those young activists started their own challenge. The idea is similar to the IceBucketChallenge : 3 people are nominated to fulfill the challenge and to collect up to 3 full bags of garbage or pollutants within the next 3 days and post online on social medias the good action and nominate then 3 more people. This one is called the Hog bucket Challenge (or Waste Bucket Challenge), Hog meaning "trashes" in Mongolian language. And for those who can't fulfill the challenge, they are invited to give $10 to the Mongolian dustmen as a compensation. A great number of young Mongolians decided to participate and increased the number of views on Facebook under the hashtag #HogBucketChallenge. This has even been covered by the official Mongolian news site http://www.mminfo.mn, article been shared and liked on Facebook by more than 50 000 people.

Some brave Mongolian participants

  Just like Barack Obama did participate the Ice Bucket Challenge the past year, some important people have been also nominated in Mongolia. In this case, a very young boy named Tengis nominated a close adviser of the Mongolian President, a Government spokesman and a famous event organizer to participate. And those people reacted by participating into the great cause, sharing their pictures online, and creating a great emotion in Mongolia!   Horseback Mongolia is proud to spread the knowledge of such inspirational actions, and hope these will bring more self conscience for people of the need to preserve our lands and natural ressources, while economic development of a country usually means destroying or polluting beautiful places.