Telling the story of the child soldiers

The winners were selected following a live final presentation of their projects to a panel of judges.

“We were just so excited about the opportunity to come to London for the final. To then win is simply amazing,” said Emma Gillen from Coleraine High School.

The Coleraine High team will now travel to Switzerland to visit the Red Cross museum and head office in Geneva. Another team from Coleraine High school were runners-up and will visit the Foreign Office in London.

The competition asked young people to show off their knowledge and experience of humanitarian issues by submitting presentations based on the theme of justice and fairness.

Entries complemented the students’ work for Citizenship or Citizenship Studies at school and the successful entries were put through a rigorous judging process.

Both Coleraine High School teams looked at the issue of child soldiers, focusing on the conflict in northern Uganda.

As part of their work, the winning team interviewed a Ugandan youth worker and shared the information they gathered in a variety of different ways.

They distributed leaflets and flyers as well as produced a video about child soldiers to raise awareness about the issue.

Susan Hazledine, Head of Social Investment at Allen & Overy commented: “All the entries were of a very high quality and showed just how interested young people are in exploring areas of international law, justice, fair treatment and humanity. “We have been really impressed by the imaginative approaches taken by the teams, how they have engaged with their local communities and what they in turn have got out of their projects. We look forward to running this competition again next year”.