commonwealth essay competition 2022 bronze winners

MEET THE WINNERS OF THE QUEEN'S COMMONWEALTH ESSAY COMPETITION 2022

The Queen's Commonwealth Essay Competition (QCEC) is the world's oldest international schools' writing contest, established by the Society in 1883. With thousands of young people taking part each year, it is an important way to recognise achievement, elevate youth voices and develop key skills through creative writing. 

Each year, entrants write on a theme that explores the Commonwealth's values, fostering an empathetic world view in the next generation of leaders and encouraging young people to consider new perspectives to the challenges that the world faces. Themes have included the environment, community, inclusion, the role of youth leadership, and gender equality. 

In the past decade alone, this high-profile competition has engaged approximately 140,000 young people, over 5,000 schools and thousands of volunteer judges across the Commonwealth. 

This year, the competition theme was 'Our Commonwealth', reflecting on our Patron Queen Elizabeth II's seven decades of service to the Commonwealth as an inspiring example of the steadfast commitment and important contribution we can all make to our societies.

We were thrilled to receive a record-breaking 26,322 entries to the QCEC from every Commonwealth region, with the winners and runners-up from New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and India. Find out more about this year's winners below and watch their reactions on discovering this significant achievement!

Sawooly Li 

Senior Winner 

Age 17, New Zealand 

Sawooly Li is a 12th grade student from Rangitoto College in New Zealand. Reading and writing have always been second nature for her—a way of expressing visions, thoughts, and emotions. She loves drawing inspiration and learning from other great writers and their works. Both reading and writing are things which Sawooly aspires to continue far, far, into the future.

Sawooly also has a love for maths and physics, and is heavily involved in such areas in her school, running clubs and participating in competitions. Fostering a strong sense of community, she also leads several in-school organisations, such as UN Youth and UNICEF. In the winters, Sawooly enjoys snowboarding in New Zealand’s beautiful mountains with friends and family.

Read Sawooly's winning entry, 'Willow Trees and Waterholes' .

Madeleine Wood

Junior Winner 

Age 14, Australia 

Madeleine is 14 years old and lives in Melbourne, Australia. She is in grade 8 at Camberwell Girls Grammar School.

She loves travelling, particularly through Europe, and enjoys visiting the museums, historical landmarks and cities in each country. It is from these experiences that she gained a love for ancient, medieval, and renaissance history.

She is also an avid reader, plays the violin and spends much of her time playing basketball or swimming.

Read her winning poem, 'Catalina' .

Amaal Fawzi

Senior Runner-up

Age 17, United Kingdom

Amaal Fawzi is a 17-year-old girl who was born in Egypt, raised in Lebanon, and now lives in East London. She has an Iraqi father and a British mother, and because of the education system in Lebanon, she has started university a year early! She studies English Literature with Creative Writing and has been writing poetry for many years, though she wouldn’t say she’s been writing poetry well for all of them.

Most of the poetry and prose she likes to write is concerned with culture and identity. Her years in Lebanon formed the majority of her character and cultural experiences, so learning to interact with that in the UK has been a very interesting season. It makes for a lot of writing material, and she’d say that the way she writes is always personal and drawn somehow from her own life.

Read Amaal's poem, 'Nursing Homes' . 

Maulika Pandey

Junior  Runner-up

Age 13, India

Maulika Pandey, is an 8th grade student from Aurum the Global School.

She has always enjoyed writing since she was a child as she feels writing gives her the power to express her feelings in a creative way. Maulika also enjoys sketching and playing the guitar. Basketball is her favourite sport.

She aspires to be a successful entrepreneur but will definitely continue writing in the future.

She is a dedicated advocate for anti-bullying and body positivity.

Read her entry titled, 'The Molai Forest' .

News | London

Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition winners meet Camilla and visit Standard’s new office

Buckingham Palace has hosted a reception for the winners of a global writing competition - who also enjoyed a tour of the Evening Standard’s new office.

The reception, hosted by Camilla, The Queen Consort, welcomed the prize winners of this year’s Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition and their families on Thursday.

During the event and following her Majesty’s speech to the attendees, Royal Commonwealth Society ambassadors read out extracts from the four winning pieces.

One of those was by an east London student, Amaal Fawzi, 17, who was a runner-up in this year’s competition. Her winning poem ‘Nursing Homes’ came second in the senior category.

The Queen Consort spoke of the “deep” links that run between the nations of the Commontwealth.

She said: “All of us are bound together by a profound appreciation of the written word and of our Commonwealth. This wonderful, extraordinary, richly diverse association of independent and equal nations and friends is, truly, ‘ours’, belonging to each one of us, and the connections between us run deep.”

Amongst the attendees were the competition’s 2020 and 2021 winners, who could not attend the awards ceremony in previous years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The winners, who are aged between 13-17 years old and travelled from New Zealand, Australia, India, Singapore, Uganda and the UK, were awarded their certificates by The Queen Consort. Extracts from their winning pieces were read by RCS Ambassadors Geri Horner, Alexandra Burke and Ayesha Dharker, as well as Booker Prize winner Ben Okri.

RCS Ambassador Gyles Brandreth acted as compère for the ceremony, during which The Queen Consort and the RCS Executive Chair, Dr Linda Yueh, spoke about the importance of the competition to elevate the voices of young people around the Commonwealth.

Dr Yueh said: “In 2022, we asked children around the Commonwealth to reflect on the inspiring example of the steadfast commitment Queen Elizabeth II gave to our Commonwealth family for over 70 years.

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“As the Patron of our Society, we were immensely grateful to The late Queen for her unstinting support of our efforts to improve literacy across the Commonwealth.”

“We are deeply honoured that Her Majesty The Queen Consort, like late Queen Elizabeth II, is tireless in her own support for this important competition and its ability to improve the lives and prospects of children around the Commonwealth,” she said.

The ceremony is one of several events the group attended in the week, which included a visit to Shakespeare’s Birthplace, workshops with actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company, and a tour and journalism workshop at the Evening Standard.

Their visit to the newspaper’s new office in AlphaBeta Building in Finsbury Square, included a talk by the Evening Standard and Independent’s editor emeritus, Doug Wills, as well as a walk through the paper’s history and evolution, by David Marsland. They were told of the paper’s rich history and relationship with novelist and playwright, Charles Dickens, who wrote short plays and articles that were published by it. Other key figures who were mentioned for their significance to the paper were the Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, and Emeline Pankhurst.

The paper’s space in the digital sphere was also discussed, and a glimpse into its London Live television channel shown. The interactive workshop involved contributions from the winners and their families, who made suggestions on what more the paper could cover. One suggestion was the impact of carbon taxes in the UK, and another was for better representation of Arabs in the western media.

The Evening Standard spoke to two of the attendees. Ethan Mufuma, from Uganda, who was the junior winner in 2021, said he was inspired to enter the competition by a friend, who had previously earned a certificate at it.

Speaking about his winning entry, he said: “My piece was centred at a local community story. I think this was very inspiring. ‘Okware’, a local name that I chose to represent my pandemic hero, made my piece wear that originality.”

He said another reason he entered was so he could “add a voice in the fight against the pandemic”.

“In my country, people don’t get information easily. One can take a month without accessing radio news. Peple, especially in local areas, depend on hearsay. Rememeber the pandemic required a lot of information. There was much of ‘do this, do that’, so I entered the competition to help share informatio regarding the control of the pandemic,” he said.

On the journalism workshop, Ethan said he “loved the way we were all engaged all the time”.

He said: “Sometimes, back when I was writing for my school’s newspaper, I remember the teacher emphasising the need to tell the truth in news, and the same thing the workshop emphasised. It’s like journalism and truth are twins.”

Of the award ceremony, he added “no exact word can tell the real feelings”.

“So amazing, very historical, very perfect in the way events keep changing. Someone has to be part of this to understand it all,” he said.

Maulika Pandey, 13, who was a junior runner-up in this year’s competition told us about her entry, ‘The Molai Forest’.

“My entry is about an Indian, Jadav Molai Payeng, from Assam, the Forest Man of India, because he managed to create a forest over the span of 40 years with his own hands. He taught me that things take time to happen and the fact that he continued to planting trees for 40 years, taught that doing little things can create a big result,” she said.

She said her favourite moment of the award ceremony was “definitely when I got to meet The Queen Consort”.

“Our winners really enjoyed their visit to the Evening Standard newsroom and relished the opportunity to talk to ES journalists. This visit has certainly opened their eyes to the possibility of a career in journalism,” Sophie Spencer, Programme Officer at the Royal Commonwealth Society, told the Evening Standard.

She added: “The award ceremony at Buckingham Palace was a life-changing experience for our young winners. It is really special to have their writing celebrated in such a way and it is an incredible boost to their confidence as they embark on their writing careers.”

Following the workshop, the group took a tour of the Evening Standard and The Independent’s newsrooms, including a chat with the former’s digital team, before ending with a photograph.

The Commonwealth Essay Competition, which has engaged around 140, 000 young people, more than 5, 000 schools, and many thousands of volunteer judges across the Commonwealth, in the last decade.

At 26, 322, this year saw the largest number of entries since the competition began in 1883.

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Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition: Sedhana wins bronze award

Nov 10, 2022 | Commonwealth News

Sedhana Dineth Ukwatte Liyanage wins the bronze prize at the competition based on the topic of the Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting (CHOGM) in Rwanda. The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition was conducted by the Royal Commonwealth Society. The 17-year-old, Liyanage’s topic was: “Imagine you are a Head of Government delivering a speech to your counterparts at the CHOGM. Draft a speech that highlights what you believe should be a priority for collective action within the Commonwealth.”

Read the original article here: https://www.dailymirror.lk/news-features/Queens-Commonwealth-Essay-Competition-Sedhana-wins-bronze-award/131-248209

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Queen’s commonwealth essay competition award bronze 2022.

Tannistha Nandi of Grade XI has been awarded the Bronze award in the Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition 2022 – the world’s oldest international schools writing competition. There were 26,300 entries this year in which young Commonwealth citizens shared their thoughts, ideas and experiences on key global issues. We are extremely proud of Tannistha’s achievement.

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Jersey students reign supreme at Queen's Commonwealth Essay Competition

• Commonwealth
• Monday 28 February 2022 at 12:00pm

Students in Jersey have had a huge success at the Queen's Commonwealth Essay Competition.

91 awards were given to students from several Jersey schools.

This is the highest number of awards won in a single year by students with 13 gold, 20 silver and 58 bronze awards being awarded.

The Commonwealth Essay Competition is the oldest and largest youth writing contest in the world and the 2021 Competition had more than 25,000 entries.

At least 267 Jersey students submitted entries to the competition.

This year's theme was 'Community in the Commonwealth' and encouraged young people to write a poem, letter, folk tale, script or essay, exploring many ways people can stay connected during the pandemic.

The RCS Jersey Award Cup has been awarded to Daisy Newbald, the Cup is given to the student whose entry is judged to be the best from the island.

She will read her winning entry at the prize giving ceremony next month.

The full list of Jersey winners are:

Gold Award:

Benjamin Bedlow-Carnegie, William Garrett, Dylan Green, Zara Hughes, Saskia Le Gresley, Isabella Lofthouse, Abigail Marshall, Clara Morris, Elsie Painter, Jonny Renouf, Marwa Shareff, Freya Walker

Silver Award:

Emily Akers, Isabelle Baker, Chloe Barnes, Willow Carro, Mel Dixon, Hannah Goddard, Isabella Hutton, Thandeka Jemwa, Poppy Le Marinel, Alice Le Sueur, Jessica Lincoln, Amelia Maddison, Lucia May, James Murtagh, Hannah Pierce, Manon Riou, Milla Robertson, Phoebe Strachan, Tia Thornett, Ella-Mae Turnbull Bronze Award:

Clara Aguiar, Rex Alford, Grace Aspden, Noah Benander, Poppy Blackburn, Henry Blasco, Leigh-Anna Bowcott-McLaren, Ophelia Brock, Andrew Carnegie, Theodora Caser, Mila Clarke, Federico Cowsill, Freya Crocker, Matthias Crozeiro, Robyn Dangerfield, Ella Davison, Emily de Gruchy, Theo de Poerck, James Delap, Millie Eastwood, Freya Evans, Rhea Fletcher, Alexander Forbes, Darcey Gale, Cari Green, Joe Griffiths, Taggie Hardman, Erin Hill, Lucie Horswell, Cara Howe, Alfie Howell, Jayden Hughes, Florence Jones, Mason Le Cornu, Rosie MacAdie, Amelie McCann, Elsie McCormack, Shannon McDonagh, Fergus McLaughlin-Bell, Eimear McSorley, Albert Messervy, Libby Mills, Annie Mossop, Shannon Nairn, Luke Oxenden-Wray, Aimee Richardson, Thomas Rigby, Bea Ruark, Noah Russell-Biggie, Clodagh Simkiss, Jack Steigenberger, Toby Stott, Kyle Strudwick, Jessica Taylor, Eve Tierney, Lois Thomas, Rebecca Walker, Isaac Weston.

The award winners will attend a prize giving ceremony on 2 March at the Town Hall to receive their awards.

Jersey's Lieutenant- Governor will attend the ceremony and will present gift cards to the winners.