Winners of Commonwealth poem competition rewarded |14 March 2017

The lucky winners of the Commonwealth poem competition were presented with their prizes in a short ceremony held yesterday morning at the University of Seychelles’ Anse Royale campus.

The prizes have been sponsored by Cable and Wireless Seychelles.

The poem competition was organised by the Sir James Mancham International Centre for Peace Studies and Diplomacy in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development and the private schools in Seychelles.

The objective of the competition was to raise awareness on how to promote peace on our planet through creative writing under the theme ‘a peace-building Commonwealth’ because the world is facing a time of increasing instability and uncertainty.

In the primary category it was Maha Shaukat from Independent School who won the first prize, with Melissa André of Mont Fleuri school in second place and Danica Baxen of Bel Eau school third.

For the secondary category, first prize went to Elsia Françoise from Anse Royale school, while Elia Savy from Ecole Française des Seychelles (EFS) took second place and Maeve Bonté from English River school finished in third place.

Elsia Françoise with her poem entitled ‘The earth revolving around peace’ was pleased to have won the first prize.

“My poem is about the different divisions in the world, such as racism, politics, religions. I wanted to visualise how the world would have been if we had peace all over the globe through creative writing. If we want peace, it all starts at home and at school, we all need to be able to communicate the same language of no violence,” she said.

Justin Valentin of the Faculty of Business and Sustainable Development stated that such competition was to enhance the thinking of the youths about peace.

“This creative writing competition, with great enthusiasm has demonstrated immense talent and ideas in translating a peace building Commonwealth. It has not been easy to judge the various work, but all the participants are winners for wanting to enhance their knowledge about peace,” he said.

All the schools who took part in the poem competition also received certificates of participation.