Nord Anglia Education
WRITTEN BY
Nord Anglia
24 June, 2024

From Global Summit to Local Impact: Our Journey at the NAE-UNICEF Summit in Houston

Our Journey at the NAE-UNICEF Summit in Houston

Between the 12th and 19th of June, I attended this year's NAE-UNICEF Summit in Houston with my school friend Dahin, an event that brought together over 100 students from all over the world! Over the course of the week, we participated in action-packed days of workshops and activities, while also meeting all the other wonderful people in attendance and seeing the world from dozens of different perspectives. While most of the activities were related to the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and CRCs (Convention on the Rights of the Child), others focused on personal and leadership skills such as public speaking, prioritising values and systems thinking, and we even volunteered at the Houston Food Bank!

From Global Summit to Local Impact

During the last few days, we got to use all this knowledge to develop a solution to a problem statement that each region (in our case Latin America) had chosen and applied to the communities around our school: our region's problem statement was the lack of sexual health education in Latin America, and as a school (myself alongside Dahin) we proposed a solution in an exhibition style format.

We plan to take this back to Greengates and implement something similar in our area, but the Summit has complemented my education at Greengates so much more than just this project. It has given me a broader view of the problems facing our world and how making a small impact locally can be the perfect stepping stone to making a bigger impact.

Our Journey at the NAE-UNICEF Summit in Houston

In my future career, I would like to do something in the field of quantum computing: it combines my two passions of coding and quantum physics. One thing about quantum computers is that they require a lot of energy to run, which is a big environmental problem if quantum computers become commercially available at some point in the future. Now, after attending the mind-opening and amazing leadership and SDG workshops at the Summit, I can see how I can begin to propose and possibly implement sustainable ways to run quantum computers efficiently.

Samuel P.
Year 12 student