Dubai: Eight winners of the Young Reporters for the Environment Competition were announced on Wednesday, after they submitted informative articles on the environment.
The competition, organised in the UAE by the Emirates Wildlife Society, in association with WWF (EWS-WWF), was judged by a panel including the Editor-at-Large of Gulf News, Francis Matthew, Associate Editor of Gulf News Malavika Kamaraju, and the Education Manager at EWS-WWF, Ajita Nayar.
The eight pupils from Eco-Schools in the UAE attended two workshops hosted by Gulf News to teach them how to write for media and inspire change in their readers’ environmental habits.
The winning entries succeeded in combining good story-telling backed by well-sourced quotes with clear data collected from the pupils’ respective campaigns.
The winner of the competition was Pragya Gianni, a 12th grader from The Indian High School in Dubai, while the runner up was Pratyush Parasuraman, a 12th grader from Delhi Private School in Sharjah.
The winning entry by Gianni looked at how people use transport, and recorded a change in habits as people switched from individual cars to shared or public transport.
Meanwhile, Parasuraman campaigned to reduce the number of plastic bags used when shopping.
Eco-Schools is an international certification programme by the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) that guides schools on a journey of sustainability. The programme combines classroom study with environmental action, mainly led by pupils, both in their school and local communities, inspiring them to lead the change towards a greener world.
