Winners Awarded in ADB Journalistic Story and Students’ Public Speaking Competitions
New Delhi: The Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) Mongolia Resident Mission today held an awards ceremony for the winners of two competitions—on journalistic stories and students’ public speaking—organized to kick off the anniversary commemoration of its partnership with Mongolia.
The nationwide undergraduate student competition aimed to stimulate discussion on why partnership matters to development and what the new generation is expecting, taking the theme “Importance of Partnership Through My Eyes.” Due to coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions, students submitted their speeches in a prerecorded video. The 28 entries received were scored by a panel of judges on their significance and expressiveness, originality and creativity, presentation skill, quality, and utilization of time.
International law student of the National University of Mongolia B. Ulsbold, musical art major student of the University of Arts and Culture N. Zolbayar, and accounting major from the University of Finance and Economics B. Nomon took the first three places. ADB has invited 10 other shortlisted students to join project site visits to recognize their excellent performance.
“We, in ADB, highly value the voice of the young generation in addressing new and emerging development challenges confronting the Asia and Pacific region,” said ADB Country Director for Mongolia Pavit Ramachandran. “We were impressed by the Mongolian students’ insights on the importance of partnership in the country’s development. It was clear that all participants put a lot of creative thought in expressing their unique ideas guided by strong evidence-based research.”
The nationwide journalistic story competition on “New Beginning Post-COVID” was organized jointly with the Economics Journalists and Experts Club of Mongolia and open to all journalists and media freelancers. Entrants submitted 40 published and broadcast stories, which were evaluated based on their originality and creativity, significance and expressiveness, adherence to the concept, accuracy and quality of research, professionalism, and audience impact.
A series of two articles on “Mongolia’s education sector fever that failed COVID test” by TAND.MN website received an Impact Award, and an article series on “Development partners are preparing for the future” by the Asia Mining Magazine received an Innovation Award under the print and digital category. Entries by MONTSAME National News Agency and the Daily News newspaper also received special awards. The winners of the broadcast category were Bloomberg TV Mongolia and OnlineTV Mongolia.
“Through our journalism competition, we wanted to generate discussion on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and examine opportunities and priorities of the post-pandemic landscape,” said Mr. Ramachandran. “Today, I can proudly say that the submitted journalistic stories have exceeded our expectation in every way.”
To mark its 3-decade partnership with Mongolia, ADB is organizing year-round activities to engage all its key stakeholders, including the government, civil society, private sector, academia, youth, and media, in a forward-looking discussion on the country’s development opportunities. The series include provincial-level workshops, nationwide competitions, and a high-level innovative event. The winners of the two competitions will be invited to a high-level commemorative event in October 2021.
ADB is committed to achieving a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and the Pacific, while sustaining its efforts to eradicate extreme poverty. Established in 1966, it is owned by 68 members—49 from the region.