COBIS Global Social Leaders Competition

Students from COBIS schools have spent the past academic year leading ground-breaking social action projects as part of the COBIS Global Social Leaders competition. We received final submissions from British School of Bucharest, Transylvania College, International British School of Bucharest, International Community School Amman, The British School in Tokyo, Arcadia Academy, Bangkok Patana School and The British School Caracas.

Now, following an intense week of judging by our esteemed panel of judges, we are proud to announce that the winner of the Competition for 2017-18 is a team of students from Transylvania College, Romania.

Their oral history and development project ‘Revive the Nature Related Traditions!’ was judged to be of exceptional high standard both in terms of scope and impact. One member of our panel went as far as to comment that this group of student’s “approach is one that the United Nations could learn from – they highlight the importance of local indigenous knowledge and culture – which should in my opinion be embedded across the SDG agenda”.

The winner was publically announced at the 37th Annual COBIS Conference 2018. It was a joy to be able to present the student certificates to members of the Senior Leadership from Transylvania College.

One of the winning students says “we enjoyed this service learning project so much, it was such a great experience for students and staff and we are proud to see that we made a positive contribution to our community”.

By designing projects that address the SDGs, all the entries have had a great impact. Judge Cara Flowers, Global Coordinator for the Scaling Up Nutrition Civil Society Network summed up the general feeling from our panel.

“Thank you so much for asking me to be a judge – what an honour given the wonderful projects I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing! It was a tough job as each project is brilliant and has the potential to be transformative at an even larger scale.”

It was a very close competition, as all the entries were of such high-quality and covered a wide range of development goals and approaches to solving society’s problems. The standard of projects entered is testament to the breadth of skills and global consciousness nurtured by these COBIS schools. It also demonstrates the power of engaging with the SDGs in a creative, experiential way – both for participating students and our community as a whole.  For what could be greater than teaching young people that they have the power to change the world in which they live to create a fairer and more just place for all. 

Every team that submitted a final project report should feel proud of their achievements and the impact their social action has had on the local community. All participants will receive certificates for their participation and an invitation to take their leadership skills to the next level by attending a Global Social Leaders residential training programme.  We hope that all the teams feel inspired and motivated by their involvement in this competition and use the expert feedback and recognition to build on the phenomenal work they have been doing over the past year.