Trust For Sustainable Living Competitions   |22 July 2023

The award winners in a souvenir photograph with guests

Participants rewarded

Participants of the Trust For Sustainable Living essay, video and debate competitions were yesterday awarded their prizes in a ceremony at the SITE auditorium, Mont Fleuri.

Trust for Sustainable Living (TSL) is a global education charity working for a sustainable future. It is based at the Living Rainforest centre in West Berkshire, United Kingdom.

The coordination of the programme locally is done by the Education for Sustainable Development Section (ESD).

Every year the competition focuses on a different global sustainability challenge and this time around the theme was ‘How can young people be better supported to thrive in green jobs?’ where it invited schoolchildren around the world to consider ways to promote green jobs.

For the essay competition launched for primary and secondary students across the world, TSL received 1,215 essay entries, from 227 schools in 65 different countries. Seychelles performed well in both categories, leading to automatic qualification for the International Debate Competition.

Two students at primary level and two students at secondary level participated in the TSL International debate which was held online by zoom on June 7 for the primary category and June 8, 2023 for the secondary category.

Yesterday’s ceremony to reward the outstanding students was in the presence of Education Minister, Dr Justin Valentin, principal secretary (PS) Merna Eulentin and the former ambassador of Seychelles to the UK, Marie-Pierre Lloyd.

The latter, a member of the TSL board of Trustees, did the honours of presenting the certificates to the honourable mentions and finalists in the primary category.

The honourable mentions were Andrea Visvanathan from the International School Seychelles and Malik Joseph from the Independent School Seychelles. The finalist was Hamsini Senthil from the International School Seychelles.

The honourable mentions in the secondary category were Jaden Bacco from English River secondary school, Selvesh Senthil and Nelson Charles from the International School Seychelles and Ehlianne Anacoura from Perseverance secondary school. The finalist was Ziraili Pereira from Anse Royale secondary.

For the Sustainability Challenge video competition, Seychelles has managed to retain its glory. Andrea Visvanathan won the grand prize out of 85 entries with her video depicting damaged coral reefs in Seychelles.

“I am happy that my video got the prize and I am happy because I think someone should do something about all the problems in the environment. I did the video on corals because coral bleaching has become a great problem and I wanted to show people what I thought about it,” said Andrea.

When addressing the guests and participants, PS Eulentin said the TSL competition had showed just how talented and knowledgeable the students of Seychelles are.

“Our students even impressed the judges with their comments and valuable contribution which awarded them outstanding performance results. Today we recognise their accomplishments and effort. You have made us proud,” she said.

Prizes were also presented to the Best Overall Individual Debater in the secondary category, Judges Individual Commendation in the secondary category and the Judges Group Commendation in the primary and secondary categories.

Diane Larame

Photo by Yann Dinan