Note to Correspondents

Winners of international Essay Contest Invited to Attend Youth Forum

 

at United Nations Headquarters, 27 June

 

A total of 60 college and university students from 26 countries have been invited to attend a youth forum at United Nations Headquarters on 27 June to discuss the role of multilingualism in a globalized world.  They are winners of an international essay contest organized by the ELS Educational Services, Inc., and United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) of the world body’s Department of Public Information.

The contest, “Many Languages, One World”, invited university and college students to write an essay on global citizenship in one of the six official United Nations languages — Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish — which must not be their mother tongue, or the medium of instruction of their education.  More than 4,000 people from 128 countries took part in some phase of the contest. 

The people who participated in the contest included college freshmen as well as doctoral candidates, and their fields of study ran the academic gamut, from arts and sciences, medicine, pharmacy and dentistry, engineering, law, business, finance and management, agriculture, architecture, communications and linguistics and translation.  A large number of publications across the globe picked up this story, and the social media platforms, especially Facebook and Twitter, provided strong support.

At the invitation of the ELS Educational Services, Inc., 10 winners from each language group will travel to New York in June, and participate in a 5-day Global Youth Forum.  They will work in their language teams to create action plans around principles of the United Nations Academic Impact.  On 27 June, they will present these plans at a special meeting at United Nations Headquarters.  This will also mark the start of the seventieth anniversary of the United Nations Charter.  The Charter was signed in San Francisco on 26 June 1945, and led to the United Nations establishment on 24 October 1945.

The Youth Forum at United Nations Headquarters is open to all.  Those interested to attend are requested to preregister at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MLOW_Event.

Background

United Nations Academic Impact, launched by the Secretary-General on 18 November 2010, is a global initiative that aligns institutions of higher learning and research with the United Nations in actively supporting 10 universally accepted principles, including in the areas of peace and security, human rights and sustainable development.  It currently has more than 1,000 members in some 120 countries (http://outreach.un.org/unai).

ELS Educational Services, Inc. offers more than 50 years of expertise in assisting international students — more than 1.1 million to date — achieve their personal and professional goals through English training and academic success skills preparation.  For more on ELS, see www.internationalstudentrecruitment.org, www.els.edu, and www.universityguideonline.org.

For further information, please contact Hasan Ferdous, e-mail:  ferdous@un.org.

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For information media • not an official record