ACS Global Citizens Awards Winners Announced

Winning team from Eton End School celebrate at ACS International School Egham

ACS International Schools has presented a Global Citizens Award to a group of five local students at Eton End School in Berkshire.

The award, launched last year to celebrate ACS’s new bursary programme, recognises young people making a difference to their local or international community. The winning Eton End team (Mia Gozzard, Ranaya Varma, Rushil Setia, Tara Ferguson and Pippa Stodart) successfully demonstrated in just 500 words how they were supporting a local or international cause, challenge or charity.

Having established an in-school campaign group – Eton End Plastic Pollution Force (EEPPF) – the team’s written bid for the award detailed their core message on pollution and littering, clear and coherent research findings with statistics, an action plan for change and proposed supplementary art projects to complement their efforts. The winners were selected by a panel of judges including the head teachers at ACS International Schools’ three campuses in Cobham, Egham and Hillingdon. Eton End winners are planning to spend their £1,000 prize money on a supply of bins to separate rubbish in the school’s outdoor spaces. Ranaya Varma, one of the EEPPF group winners commented: “After watching the Blue Planet programmes last year I created two posters over the summer break and brought them into school, as I wanted to show everybody how important I think it is to change how we get rid of rubbish, especially plastic. A group of us asked if we could say something in assembly to the whole school; after that we started our actions in school and we entered two competitions.

We feel very strongly that we must all do something to help save our planet and that is what why we have started to act now at our school. We can carry on as we get older, trying to make bigger changes and persuade other children and adults to change how much rubbish they make and in particular, reduce their plastic waste.

Jeremy Lewis, Head of School at ACS Egham commented:

I would like to offer huge congratulations to the winning team from Eton End School, and all the local students who entered this year’s Global Citizens Awards. We were delighted to host the competition again this year, promoting the development of an international mindset in young people and demonstrating how students today can grow as global citizens, right from their school and local groups through to a global community that actions really meaningful, positive change.