Following the "Ice Bucket Challenge" that swept through Facebook for weeks in the summer of last year, young Mongolians seized the opportunity of the Naadam festival to launch the "Hog Bucket Challenge," a call to action designed to raise awareness about environmental preservation in Mongolia. You likely remember the Ice Bucket Challenge that dominated Facebook for several weeks throughout the summer of 2014, raising over 100 million dollars in support of ALS research. The challenge involved dumping a bucket of ice water over one's head and nominating three friends to do the same. A noble cause that inspired another equally worthy campaign... Several Facebook users in Mongolia came up with the idea of launching a campaign to clean up the country's rivers and natural spaces, which sometimes suffer from careless littering and waste management issues among certain Mongolians... It was during the Naadam festival, while athletes competed in wrestling, archery, and horse racing, that these young activists launched their challenge. The concept mirrors the #IceBucketChallenge: three people are nominated to collect the equivalent of three bags of trash within the following three days, post the video on social media, and then invite three others to carry on the movement. It's called the Hog Bucket Challenge (or Waste Bucket Challenge), literally translating to "challenge of the waste bucket," with "hog" meaning "trash" in Mongolian. Those who fail to complete the challenge are invited to make a donation of at least $10 to Mongolian sanitation workers as a forfeit. Large numbers of young internet users took action, sharing their results on Facebook under the hashtag #HogBucketChallenge. This initiative was covered by the Mongolian news site http://www.mminfo.mn, with the article receiving over 50,000 likes on Facebook. Just as U.S. President Barack Obama was nominated for the Ice Bucket Challenge the previous year, some nominations here proved equally striking. A six-year-old boy named Tengis successfully nominated an advisor to the Mongolian President, a government spokesperson, and a prominent event organizer to take on the challenge, according to the UBPost. And they rose to the occasion, sharing photos of their work on their respective Facebook accounts, creating much-needed momentum across Mongolia! The entire team at Horseback Mongolia was keen to celebrate this initiative and hopes it will contribute to a much-needed awakening at a time when environmental preservation often takes a backseat to economic development in many countries.