Year 11 students attend NAE UNICEF Summit in New York

We had a truly remarkable time during the conference, having had the privilege of being able to meet many truly extraordinary and like-minded individuals from Nord Anglia schools all over the globe, while tackling some of our world’s most pressing issues and forming valuable friendships and connections.

The conference itself, hosted in UNICEF’s own headquarters, was an eye-opening experience, with high school students having the opportunity to learn a great deal about the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, through various workshops and discussions with experts in those fields, as well as inspiring debates with our peers.

The highlight of the conference by far had to be our group projects – a more in-depth look into one of the SDGs, and how changes could be implemented in schools to further our progress towards achieving it – which we even had the chance to present to the CEO of Nord Anglia, Mr Andrew Fitzmaurice. The two of us worked on SDGs 3, Good Health and Well-Being, and 13, Climate Action, and had an amazing time working with our groups to come up with innovative solutions to support them as well as discussing how we could improve past ideas.

Aside from learning more about the SDGs, the various talks and collaboration exercises we had also helped us drastically improve our communication, leadership and presentation skills.

Our adventures didn’t end there – each evening we would go and explore a new place in New York. Walking through Central Park, going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, visiting Wall Street, and seeing the Statue of Liberty were truly unforgettable experiences.

Now that we are back at school we could not be more fired up and hope to inspire and get as many of our peers involved as possible,

Oleksandr K. & Anna T.