Who We Are
The Breathe Mongolia - Clean Air Coalition is an international team of professionals and everyday citizens, working to end Mongolia’s air pollution crisis.
Our Accomplishments
We organized a quiz competition to test knowledge on climate change and air pollution.
Breathe Mongolia – Clean Air Coalition and Green Dot Climate, in collaboration with Tomyo app, organized a quiz competition to test knowledge on climate change and air pollution
Climate and Clean Air Youth Fellowship program
Breathe Mongolia – Clean Air Coalition launched our “Climate and Clean Air” youth fellowship program this summer, perfectly timed for the high school holidays! Participants are engaging in 6-8 hours of online classes each week on climate change related topics and conducting policy research. They are also going on field trips to learn about environmental organizations and solutions they offer. The program runs from July 5 to August 16 and includes high school students from rural areas, Ulaanbaatar, and the United States.
Earth School Program
Breathe Mongolia – Clean Air Coalition supported the “Earth School” program initiated by the United Nations Association of Mongolia , which ran from March to June. Over 500 students from 11 local and 14 capital high school clubs participated. The program included 20 academic hours of e-learning to raise awareness of environmental issues, e-course reinforcement seminars, bird watching, museum and zoo visits, and active participation in tree and flower planting at schools.
"Dear Tomorrow" campaign
We participated as a supporting organization in the international campaign “Dear Tomorrow “launch event. This initiative, being held for the first time in Mongolia, is aimed at reducing the impact of climate change. As part of this campaign, we reflected on questions such as “What do you envision our Earth will look like in 2050? What actions can you take today to help create a clean, sustainable, green, and equitable world?” and wrote letters committing to the actions we will start today.
Environmental Journalism Fellowship Program
The Environmental Journalism Fellowship Program was launched to help journalists across Mongolia reliably and effectively report on environmental issues, especially air pollution and climate change, and to strengthen their research, reporting, and information-sharing capabilities.
What happened in the winter?
As part of the open day event, data from air quality monitors in Ulaanbaatar were used to display the levels of fine particulate matter and sulfur dioxide, the primary pollutants from last winter.
The children's book "The Adventure in Pursuit of Clean Air" has been published.
Breathe Mongolia – Clean Air Coalition, together with Educated Space, has published the children’s book for elementary school students – “Adventure for Clean Air”.
Let's take action
Breathe Mongolia – Clean Coalition nonprofit is implementing the “Let’s take action!” project, whose main goal is to reduce the number of smoke-emitting chimneys in Ulaanbaatar and increase citizen engagement in accessing, collecting, and communicating air quality data, thus providing tools to take action against air pollution issues.
We represented the AstraZeneca Youth Health Program at the One Young World Summit.
About a month ago, Breathe Mongolia had the opportunity to attend the 2022 One Young World summit in Manchester, UK as part of AstraZeneca’s Young Health Programme delegation. We got the chance to present Breathe Mongolia’s work to young delegates from all over the world, speaking in a panel alongside Juliette White CBE, AstraZeneca’s Vice President in Global SHE and Operations Sustainability, and Mark Tewksbury
Breathe Mongolia team organized and held a workshop titled “What can we do to protect ourselves against air pollution?” for 2nd and 4th-grade students at School N104 of Songinokhairkhan district in Ulaanbaatar.
Breathe Mongolia volunteers contributed to The Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) environmental justice handbook “Environmental Justice! How can we create environments that are healthy for everyone?”. The guide is a freely available community research guide as part of the Smithsonian Science for Global Goals project.
Breathe Mongolia wins Lead2030 Challenge
Breathe Mongolia was selected as the Lead2030 Challenge winner for SDG 3, an international challenge to tackle air pollution hosted by One Young World and supported by AstraZeneca.
Global Perspectives on Catalyzing Action Against Air Pollution panel
As OpenAQ Community Ambassador, Breathe Mongolia co-founder was a panelist at the “Global Perspectives on Catalyzing Action Against Air Pollution” discussion at the Science, Technology, and Human Rights Conference.
The World Health Organization (WHO) launched the new Global Air Quality Guidelines (AQG). The joint medical community statement has been translated into the Mongolian language by Breathe Mongolia — Clean Air Coalition in partnership with the World Health Organization ACQ team.
Breathe Mongolia joined the ranks of air pollution and climate change activists in the short documentary titled: “Changing Skies” which was screened during the COP26, 2021.
Breathe Mongolia organized the first UNLEASH Hacks
Mongolia has been selected as one of the 20 countries to implement the UNLEASH Hacks international innovation program. UNLEASH Hacks Mongolia and Breathe Mongolia – Clean Air Coalition co-organized the hackathon under the theme of “Developing digital air pollution solutions”.
Breathe Mongolia – Clean Air Coalition built the Agaar Neg platform, a collaborative initiative between the Mongolian government, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and UNICEF, Mongolia for the air pollution community in Mongolia and is completely free to join.
With the sudden outbreak of COVID-19, we are calling on IMMEDIATE support to protect the health of children. Vulnerable children urgently need masks. We are working on procuring children’s masks and will provide health education to their families.
Watchdog of the monetary support received from local and international actors to mitigate COVID-19 risks in Mongolia aims to hold the relevant stakeholders accountable to providing the public a comprehensive and transparent reporting of the use of funds.
We added Mongolia’s Covid-19 data banner on our website. It is important to keep up with the latest Covid-19 transmission events. Mongolians can be more vulnerable to the health impacts of the pandemic due to compromised immune systems and lowered lung function because of air pollution.
We raised $8000 with the help of generous donors from 15 countries for Mongolian children, as part of a fundraiser that ultimately raised $80,500 for COVID relief efforts.
We launched our bilingual website under the “Right to Breathe” project, funded ($8000) by the US Embassy and the EU in Mongolia in alliance with People in Need (PIN) nonprofit. The site hosts reliable air pollution information, a real-time interactive pollution map, news, policy documents, reports, and research papers.
We concluded the year of 2019 by partnering with UNICEF, Mongolia during the Combatting urban air pollution impacts on maternal and child health in Asia: A Science and Policy Dialogue international conference, and curated the “Sky Burial” exhibition, painted by Heesco. At the conference, we were proud to see the National Statistic Committee report, which we translated, in the hands of international scientists.
We collaborated with the National Statistics Committee of Mongolia and translated their comprehensive Air Pollution and Health Concerns in Ulaanbaatar report from Mongolian into English.
We won the MNG Summit “Nadad Heleh Ug baina” speech competition, judged by the Permanent Representative to the United Nations for Mongolia, and earned our first grant.
Breathe Mongolia registered as an official nonprofit organization in Delaware, USA, and obtained a Bronze Seal of Transparency on GuideStar. We have been vetted by many international platforms and companies, such as Techsoup, IBM, KPMG, Google, and Facebook to receive grants and donations.
Our team worked with the Mongolian Center for Investigative Reporters to conduct the first independent pollution monitoring project in Ulaanbaatar to identify the reason for a reportedly dramatic decrease in air pollution. Our work was published on DataJournalismAward.org, as well as Mongolian media outlets.
The movement evolved into a digital engagement campaign on social media. We collaborated with world-class artists, such as Heesco—a renowned Mongolian-Australian mural artist. We painted a mural in Melbourne, Australia, and raised awareness about Mongolia’s air pollution crisis on ABC news Australia.
Breathe Mongolia – Clean Air Coalition started as a global public awareness demonstration at Times Square, New York City, and was featured on National Geographic’s Your Shot series. Our Facebook live video got 529K views, 19K impressions, and was shared over five thousand times.