St Andrews students Kate, Nami, and Tannie talk SDGs at NAE-UNICEF Summit 2024

At their conclusion to the academic year, three of our students at St Andrews International School Bangkok had the fantastic opportunity to attend the NAE-UNICEF Summit 2024, discussing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The event saw an impressive group of 123 students from Nord Anglia Education schools around the world, all of whom acted as delegates in a week of exciting panel discussions. These students represent our global community of top-calibre young learners and thinkers.

A prestigious summit to end the school year

From 12 to 19 June, Kate (Year 12), Nami (Year 12) and Tannie (Year 11), together with Mr Paul A, spent the last week of the school year at the NAE-UNICEF Summit 2024 in Houston, Texas.

“After a long flight, we arrived at the Village School and met students and staff from other NAE schools from all over the world, sharing our culture, experiences and perspectives regarding the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

Through Nord Anglia’s partnership with organisations such as Generation Global, World’s Largest Lesson and UNICEF, we have been able to gain insight from experienced speakers discussing various issues of global importance affecting young people today, and developed practical skills such as the power of dialogue and advocacy. Later this week, we will attend the capstone event, which is the highlight of the summit, where we will apply the skills learnt at different workshops to support our problem statement: helping children with disabilities to ensure they have access to quality education. Along with our fellow delegates from the South East Asia region, we decided on this problem statement for various reasons: everyone agrees that access to quality education for people with disabilities in our respective countries is widely limited.

We have also learned about the city of Houston, which is UNICEF’s first designated child-friendly city and, through our visit to the Houston Museum of Natural Science, we learned more about the city’s energy usage and sources of energy. We are all grateful to have had this wonderful experience and look forward to sharing what we’ve learned with the STA school community.”

- Kate, Nami, and Tannie

Read more about the NAE-UNICEF Summit 2024 here.

A word from Dr Leslie at Nord Anglia Education

Following the event, Dr Leslie Williams, Senior Programme Lead for Social Impact and Giving at Nord Anglia Education, had the following to share with our global community.

“The NAE-UNICEF Summit has come to an end, and many students and chaperones are getting back into their normal routines again. To say that our week together was a joy to meet your students and educators would not capture the feeling adequately. Our Social Impact Team and all of the contributors - including UNICEF UK, UNICEF HQ, World’s Largest Lesson, Generation Global, and more - commented on how engaged and impressive this group of 123 Student Delegates were.

The event culminated in a capstone event called the Global Solutions Fair where students used a UNICEF Office of Innovation Problem Statement to create a solution that impacts their school community and beyond. It was impressive to see some students already reach out to principals and heads of secondary to talk through the ideas prior to their presentations! There were a great deal of practical solutions that were so well thought out that the students are excited to talk with you about.”

- Dr Leslie, Nord Anglia Education

Next steps are for the students to meet back with us at St Andrews, to discuss ideas and programme implementation. For them to earn their Summit certificate, Kate, Nami, and Tannie will have to share their learning and plans with the STA community, something we all very much look forward to at the start of the next academic year.