The Lens
Celebrating Young Leaders at the QS ImpACT Awards
A recap on the QS ImpACT Awards, which took place at the 2024 QS Reimagine Education Awards & Conference.
By Julie Hoeflinger
“Sustainability is all about supporting people to become agents of change, and we have to build that across the entire curriculum and work in partnership to engage organisations into our ecosystems."
QS ImpACT held its third annual awards ceremony at the 2024 QS Reimagine Education Awards & Conference in December. QS ImpACT is an international charity that equips young people with the tools to successfully carry out sustainability projects and make positive changes in their local communities, transforming challenges into opportunities. The charity also helps young leaders receive scholarships and awards for initiatives following any of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Global youth environmental advocates showcased their community-driven sustainability solutions at the conference, where eight outstanding initiatives received awards. The theme for the awards was: Effective, Inclusive, and Sustainable Multilateral Action to Tackle Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss, and Pollution.
“For us, it was an opportunity to celebrate the best young leaders within our community,” says Guillemette Villemin, Managing Director at QS ImpACT. “We have a global community of 6,000 young people who are helping deliver impact in their communities to tackle the SDGs. As part of this role as a young leader in our community, they have to submit impact reports to us on a monthly basis. It can be to tackle plastic pollution, educational issues, the gender gap, any of the SDGs,” she explains.
Leading up to the awards ceremony, the youth leaders engaged in a morning full of collaborative activities. “We had a young leaders panel and session in the morning with students who had come from all over the world,” Guillemette shares. The day featured interactive activities designed to practice impact pitching, challenging participants to present climate solutions in 90 seconds. A panel discussion also took place where the speakers talked about the future of careers and the crucial role of technology and digital skills in sustainability. To add a competitive element, the participants also engaged in an SDG quiz, recognising some winners.
One of the award winners, Bornwell Movella, received the Plastic Clean-Up Hero Award. “Growing up in Blantyre Malawi, I witnessed plastic pollution devastating our environment and public health,” says Movella. “This sparked my journey to create change through awareness campaigns, plastic clean-up initiatives and partnerships with other local organisations.” Since the start of his initiative, members of the community have collected over 290kg of plastic waste.
It was impressive to observe the imaginative and resourceful solutions proposed by the advocates, some coming from those as young as twelve- and thirteen-years-old. “I was very moved by the quality and the impact of their [projects]”, shares Guillemette. “It's very moving to see young people who, against all odds, are collaborating and gathering, and sometimes in very difficult conditions in cities with very high levels of pollution or with very low levels of awareness on plastic pollution, for example. And against all odds, they're inspiring their community, educating themselves and others, and creating this momentum.”
Another central theme discussed throughout the day was the gamification of conservation efforts and how technology can be used to get young people more involved. Guillemette highlights a team from Pakistan who won an award for developing a digital game. “[The game is] called SDG Metropolis, and it's really cool, it's basically a city building game that they designed and coded to raise awareness about the SDGs. The players of the game have to make urban planning decisions and balance climate action with social equality, clean energy, responsible consumption," she adds.
Looking ahead, Guillemette describes upcoming projects and goals for the charity as well as current obstacles. “As a charity, we're really growing very fast,” she says. “Our team is doing really hard work to really address the needs of thousands of young people. In 2025, we're launching our SDG incubator, where we'll be partnering with universities and companies to offer a sustainable leadership course.
“This will enable students and young people around the world to sign up online and really develop some essential skills, like developing leadership skills and their awareness of sustainability issues. What sets this sets this apart from kind of a regular course you would find online is that it's really grounded in experiential learning.”
For the incubator programme, students submit proposals to sustainability problems, allowing them the opportunity to ground their ideas in reality. Then, the students are put into teams where they can participate in a skills challenge, where they receive expert training on how code games, for instance.
These young leaders will eventually make their way to university, where the onus is on higher education institutes to foster such initiatives and support the students leading them. “Sustainability is all about supporting people to become agents of change, and we have to build that across the entire curriculum and work in partnership to engage organisations into our ecosystems,” says Martin Baxter, Deputy CEO at the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA).
QS ImpACT plays an important role in that ecosystem, as Baxter describes, as a liaison between students and universities in guiding and resourcing these sustainability projects. The relationship can also symbiotically benefit universities, who are facing ever-growing competition in attracting prospective students.
“In today's world where universities are increasingly looking to stand out in a very competitive environment, they’re increasingly looking to address the employability of their students, who are entering into a very fluctuating and uncertain professional world,” Guillemette explains.
“And universities are also increasingly looking at offering sustainability education to their students. I would say that partnering with us is a big step for them to boost their CSR initiatives to upskill their students and to really stand out as a university that’s offering their students concrete, tangible training in sustainable leadership.”