THE ESSAY COMPETITION

The Essay Writing Competition begins long before the opening ceremony, as individual students in Grades 9–12 choose a single prompt and sit down alone with a blank page. Each question pushes them into deep waters, geopolitics and conflict, economics and development, technology and the human future, or identity and perception, where easy, one-sided answers do not survive scrutiny.​ Judging criteria reward essays that think in layers: clear arguments, careful evidence, and a distinctive voice that risks saying something genuinely original. Line by line, writers test how far their reasoning can go, until the essay stops being an assignment and starts reading like a map toward a world where more people get to live fully, not just get through the day.​