Voice of Commonwealth

Indian student wins prize for true story in Queen’s Commonwealth essay competition.

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Maulika Pandey, a 13-year-old Indian school girl from Uttarakhand, travelled to London to receive her prize on the Queen’s Commonwealth essay competition (QCEC), from Queen consort Camilla. The true story was based on the Forest Man of India, Padma Shri Jadav Molai Payeng.  

          Maulika Pandey was awarded a title named Junior Runner up for her essay entitled “The Molai Forest” and received her citation at the reception in Buckingham Palace. It was the first ceremony of the competition after the death of Queen Elizabeth 2 in September. And of our Commonwealth.

      This rich diverse association of equal nations, friends, and independent is truly ours and connections run deep, Queen consort informed, paying tribute to her late mother-in-law who is deeply in our thoughts.

            At the Palace awards ceremony the winners aged between 13 and 17 years old travelled from Australia, India, New Zealand and around the UK to be awarded their certificates.

              The junior winner for 2023 was Madeleine Wood, aged 14 from Melbourne for an inspirational bedtime story and the senior winner was sawooly Li aged 17 from Auckland for an essay related to pandemic.

               Pandey the Junior Runner up for her story of Jadav Molai Payeng’s World famous tree planting mission in Jorhat Assam and the senior Runner up was Amaal Fawzi a 17-year-old from London wrote an essay related to frontline workers in pandemic.

                       Indian – origin actor Ayesha Dharker and the Royal Commonwealth society (RCS) ambassadors read the extracts from the winning pieces.

           In 1883 the worlds oldest international school writing competition was created to promote expression, literacy and creativity among the young generation throughout the Commonwealth and help nations to achieve UN sustainable development Goal (SDG) of quality education.

              As a patron of our society, we were extremely grateful   to the late Queen for her endless support of our efforts to improve literacy across the Commonwealth, said by Dr. Linda Yueh, RCS  Executive chair.

          Encouraging the young generation to embraced new perspectives to the changes, the world faces every year, entrants write on values that explores the Commonwealth, giving rise to the next generation of leaders and decision makers.  

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