TSL International Student Essay Competition Winners!

The 2022 Essay Competition concluded with the Student Debates and Partner Power Summit. During the Debate and Summit – held online from 11th to 16th July – we had a fruitful week addressing the theme of Climate Justice. This year, we received 1,122 essay entries from 59 countries and the top 10 winners were announced at the Awards Ceremony.  See the winners below.

Primary Schools

Esther Oyinboade, from Pearl Shore, Nigeria, is the recipient of this year’s first prize. Esther’s essay highlights the environmental challenges faced by her country. These include resource loss due to mismanagement, desertification, pollution and gender inequality. Esther recommended several ideas to help address these problems, including afforestation and innovative technologies, policies and educational initiatives.

The top 9 winners are listed in the table below. See our full list of awards here.

Secondary Schools

The first prize and also the Grand Prize winner was awarded to Dhruv Bhatt from Bhartiyam International School in India. The judges were impressed by Dhruv’s focus on the social inequalities in the slums of India. He believes that the education of basic sciences will empower young people in vulnerable societies to take action to combat the climate crisis.

Here are the top 9 winners for this category.

Student Debates

The debate brought together 53 students from 33 countries. The students expressed different points of view on addressing different inequalities to help combat the climate crisis. The debate was divided into two categories across two days – Primary and Secondary. In the Primary Debate, the debaters addressed generational, economic, gender and racial inequality – building on the ideas put forward in their essays. Then, in the Secondary Debates, the debaters looked at inequalities from both “Pro” and “Con” sides, demonstrating both positive and negative arguments for addressing inequality to combat the climate crisis. The judges had a challenging time and finally picked multiple best teams and individuals for commendations, due to the many compelling arguments put forward.  The winners are listed below.

Primary Schools

Best overall individual

Ayperi Amanmammedova

Judges’ individual commendations

Annika Baberwal

Avantika Dutt

Petra Spremo

Best teams

Primary 2 – Gender Inequality (Beren Sonmez, Mohamed Maher, Bhuvana Gopal, and Avantika Dutt)

Primary 4 – Economic Inequality (Nathan Hombre, Kerim Ince, Esther Oyinboade, Mumudi Gjadeera, Sameeha Sultan, Petra Spremo, and Duc Bui Nguyen)

Watch all the 2022 Primary School Debates

Secondary Schools: Group A

Best overall individual

Ananya Verma

Judges’ individual commendations

Dhruv Bhatt

Trudy Patchappen

Jon Edmund Sy

Adjin Ajanovic

Alexandra Todorova

Best teams

Con 2 (Alisha Samosir, Daniel Trencheski, Trudy Patchappen, Quyen Le, Jon Edmund Sy, Koca Djeric)

Group B

Best overall individual

Karin Samedi

Judges’ individual commendations

Sam Walker

Naomi Wilson

Alice Guida

Dua Zafar

Siri Valdamudi

Best teams

Con 4 (Safara Campbell, Taja Lesjak, Kerem Ayhan, Siri Valdamudi, Camilla Luigetti and Zac Chu)

Watch the 2022 Secondary School Debates

Congratulations to all our winners and participating students!