YOUTH IDEATHON on Budget Monitoring 2024

Introduction

Ulaanbaatar, 27 March 2024 — More than 180 young people from 56 teams took part in YOUTH IDEATHON 2024, a programme designed to build young people's capacity in results-based budgeting and oversight, and to encourage them to promote transparency and accountability. Participants came from Ulaanbaatar and the provinces: the public and private sector, universities, non-governmental organisations and youth associations.

The one-month programme was initiated by the European Union-funded “SDG-Aligned Budgeting to Transform Employment in Mongolia” project, implemented by UNDP, and organised in partnership with YOUTHinc.mn — the Young Mongolian Professionals Association.

The ideathon ran in three interactive rounds. The teams chosen in the first round went through capacity-building training, then a mentoring stage with advisers from every field of budgeting and oversight. It ended with a pitch day, where the final eight teams presented their research and project ideas on how young people can take a bigger part in results-oriented budgeting, execution and monitoring.

Results-based budgeting and oversight are crucial to the transparent, efficient and responsible use of public funds. Engaging young people, a third of Mongolia's population, in designing creative solutions here is critical to the country's progress on sustainable development, with youth as the champions of social change, economic growth and innovation.

The competition

The goal: to inform young people about results-based planning, budgeting and budget execution; to motivate them to identify the problems the public faces in overseeing budget planning and execution, and to find the best ways to solve them; and to promote young people's initiatives and research on budget oversight, and their results.

• ✓Who we looked for: young researchers working on budget oversight
• ✓Students and others studying the budget and finance sector, with a keen interest in it
• ✓Team participation, two to five people
• ✓Prize fund: first place ₮6,000,000 · second ₮4,000,000 · third ₮2,000,000
• ✓Registration 15 February – 3 March 2024; pitch day 27 March 2024

• The announcement on Facebook↗

Jury and winning teams

The jury — representatives of the National Audit Office, the Ministry of Finance, the Fiscal Stability Council, the European Union and UNDP — judged the final eight teams' presentations on creativity, feasibility and potential impact, and chose three winners:

• ✓First place: “Yasan be” (Youth Volunteer Association) — increasing public participation in budget oversight through an additional menu on the E-Mongolia platform
• ✓Second place: “Dream high” (National University of Mongolia) — raising young people's awareness and participation through budget questions and information sent by mobile message
• ✓Third place: “Khusel” (Mongolian University of Science and Technology) — raising public awareness and participation in budget oversight through a game application

In the European Union's words

Mr Adrien Mourgues, Head of Cooperation at the Delegation of the European Union to Mongolia, congratulated the participants: “Youth play an important role in shaping the future of the country, and given the demographic profile of Mongolia, this target group is the core of the European Union engagement in Mongolia. This includes, among others, sensitising and engaging youth in promoting good governance such as transparency and accountability.”