Each year the Trust for Sustainable Living runs an essay competition which the Geography department at MGGS has students enter. In this year’s essay competition students had to write an essay of 600 words under the title ‘My vision: Partnerships for a sustainable future’. This year, students from 146 different schools in 43 countries took part with MGGS being one of 5 UK schools that entered. Students worked very hard on their essays and we are proud to announce that the following 6 students gained ‘Honorable Mentions’ from the judges:- Bethan KP, Ellen P, Erin E, Evie M, Iris O and Lauren M, all in year 10. We then had 2 year 10 students:- Holly A and Rebecca P who were finalists, with Holly A gaining tenth place overall!
Holly A was also chosen by TSL to take part in their debate this year. She was the only student to take part from the UK and she had to work with students from a range of different countries to put together a presentation on a topic provided by TSL. This year the debate had to take place virtually on 6th July and Holly had the following to say about the experience:-
On Monday I had the privilege of taking part in a TSL debate. Around two weeks before the debate, I ‘met’ my teammates, who were from all over the world. We frequently contacted each other over Zoom in the weeks leading up to the debate to discuss our argument, which was “global partnerships are more important than local ones in order to achieve the United Nations sustainable development goals”. It was quite difficult to find a good time to call on Zoom as the time difference between two of our team members was 13 hours! At the start we were all nervous but then we soon got to know each other and spent our Zoom calls preparing our video and arguments. On the day, we had one last preparation meeting before the debate. We were all very nervous, but overall it was an incredible experience. I feel honoured to have participated in such an amazing event and have met such extraordinary people from all over the world.
We are pleased to announce that Holly’s Team won their debate and the video they created to accompany the debate can be viewed here:- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcRrF1NyGvs&t=1s
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