TEEN PARLIAMENT

Meet Bat-Orgil Batbayar, a seventeen-year-old from Dalanzadgad soum, Umnugobi province. He is one of three children from his province selected to participate in Teen Parliament 2023. Supported by UNICEF and the Parliament of Mongolia, Teen Parliament equips young people to engage in decision-making on climate and sustainable development and to lead initiatives in their communities. Over the past four years, the programme has reached more than 500 young people.

For Bat-Orgil, Teen Parliament was an opportunity to expand his science and environmental knowledge and fulfil his wish to contribute to society through volunteering. He was proud to be selected as one of 150 participants from over 700 applicants representing 21 provinces, as the 2023 Teen Parliament was organized under the theme “Healthy Children, Healthy Future.”

Learning and Leading Alongside Peers

During the program, the Teen Parliament participants received weekly online lessons on parliamentary education and environmental health by the Mongolia’s top selected experts. These lessons were more practical and easier to understand and had richer contents than the official curriculum offered in general education schools. Through these online classes, the participants gained knowledge about major environmental issues, human-induced pollutants, and their impacts on people and children, inspiring them to address these negative factors. Inspired by their new knowledge, the Teen Parliament members shared their knowledge immediately with their surroundings.

Bat-Orgil and his peers organized a “Parliamentary Education and Healthy Environment” training over 300 students aged 13-16 years old in cooperation with the Citizens’ Assembly of Umnugovi province. To make the training more interesting and motivational, they included environmental films and discussions, making it engaging and accessible for students. Additionally, they shared short videos and photos online to raise awareness among children and adults about environmental issues. 

Youth Advocacy for Sustainable Waste Solutions

One significant activity of the Teen Parliament was a discussion about recycling waste. They identified the need for recycling equipment in rural areas, noting that private sector organizations have plastic recycling equipment, but it is not widely accessible, leading to improper disposal of plastic and paper waste. Umnugovi provincial center has a centralized waste disposal site 15km away from the downtown, where waste, despite being initially sorted by schools and children themselves, is eventually mixed and burned. The waste disposal process significantly impacts air quality and groundwater, contaminating the drinking water and causing skin, hair, and other health issues, especially among adolescents. Bat-Orgil’s team asked the Parliament of Mongolia to consider taking actions for developing or amending Waste management regulations.

Growing Solutions from the Gobi

As a child growing up in the Gobi region, Bat-Orgil’s concern about water scarcity, desertification, and low moisture levels is deeply personal. Every summer, he works on his grandparents’ farm, where he has learned how difficult it is to grow vegetables and fruit and how critical water and soil are for agriculture. Building on this experience and the knowledge gained through Teen Parliament, he aims to develop a project that repurposes food waste from provincial school meals for agriculture while creating content about planting and growing produce. He has already begun piloting the idea by collecting coffee grounds from local coffee shops to use as fertilizer on his grandparents’ farm and is exploring ways to expand the practice further.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about how I could create change in my hometown and beyond,” says Bat-Orgil. To amplify environmental awareness and youth voices, he created a Facebook page called “Mobile Radio,” producing content on environmental issues and providing a platform for children’s views to be shared and heard publicly. Looking ahead, he sees many more initiatives to pursue. Together with his friends who study in Ulaanbaatar, he is organizing a summer programme and training sessions on international education systems, university admissions, SAT preparation, and IT skills.

He is a changemaker who can truly influence his community and lead change on the ground. With continued support, platforms like Teen Parliament are empowering adolescents like Bat-Orgil to move beyond raising their voices — enabling them to shape solutions, influence decision-making, and contribute to a more sustainable future for Mongolia.