Note to Correspondents

Winners of United Nations Academic Impact/Brookings Institution Speechwriting

Contest to Meet Secretary-General at Headquarters on 21 September

 

The three winners of a speechwriting contest organized jointly by the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) of the Department of Public Information and the Brookings Institution will be at Headquarters on 21 September to meet with the Secretary-General.

The top three winners are Sevgi Ceyda Sairoglu from Sabanci University in Turkey, Chwala Wallace from the University of Nairobi in Kenya and Vatsal Vasudev from India’s National Law University.  A panel of three judges representing UNAI, the Brookings Institution and the Committee on Teaching about the United Nations chose them from among the more than 230 entries received from 59 countries.  The top entries have been posted on the UNAI website at http://outreach.un.org/unai.

By the terms of the contest, the students are required to imagine a speech that the Secretary-General would deliver at the opening of the next session of the United Nations General Assembly.

UNAI and the Brooking Institution have invited the winners to meet with the Secretary-General at Headquarters on the occasion of the International Day of Peace, to be observed on 21 September.

UNAI, launched by the Secretary-General in November 2010, is an initiative of the Department of Public Information which aligns schools of higher learning and research with the United Nations and with each other to promote the Organization’s goals and objectives.

For further information and to interview the contest winners, please contact Hasan Ferdous, United Nations Academic Impact, Department of Public Information, e-mail: ferdous@un.org; tel.: +1 212 963 6555.

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For information media • not an official record