GSL Competition

Teamwork skills are a vital element in today’s workforce. The benefit of group work is learning an openness to critique, which is essential for healthy working relationships. The Global Social Leaders Sustainable Development Goals competition, organized by Future Foundations and the Wellington Leadership and Coaching Institute, movement is a platform for young people to work in teams and make real change through social actions. This year over 600 teams from 105 countries took on the challenge to run a project that supports one of the many global goals which spanned across the academic year 2019 -2020. OOS Students from across grades embarked on this mission leading ground-breaking social action projects. Along with the initiation of innovative projects, it also allowed them to reflect on their values, skills and learning, preparing them for future skills.

Students Design teams used design thinking to tackle unknown problems because they could reframe these in human-centric ways and focus on what’s most important. Teams had the freedom to generate ground-breaking solutions. Using it, the teams were able to get behind hard-to-access insights with constant mentorship from the innovation team long with  the assigned teacher mentors and apply a collection of hands-on methods to help find innovative answers.

Out of a total of 7 projects 3 projects reached the final stage and received commendation certificates under different categories on 18th June 2020 via live streaming.

The judges were impressed by the staggering quality of projects and appreciated the students for having designed and led social action that made such a positive impact! They demonstrated the power of engagement with the SDGs in a creative, fun, and experiential nature – both for participating and as a community. The contestants were required to present a 2-page report and a high-resolution pitching video which was uploaded in their official website.

A huge takeaway for the students has been the skill identification and the soft skills acquired. In the words of a participant, “Even after we had received word of being eliminated from the competition, we were not disappointed since we had learnt a lot and gained a great deal of confidence."