We’re delighted to announce the three winners of the youth photo competition we launched just over a month ago around the themes of Target 4.7 in the new global education goal. Selected from a huge amount of talented submissions, the three winners are listed in order below.

The top submission is Domyson Dulay Abuan’s photo, entitled the ‘Lens of Sustainable Education’.

The photo is taken of a Grade 6 student from an Elementary School in Laguna, Philippines, who has made recycled materials to make a make-shift camera. The photographer, Domyson Dulay Abuan explains that the students are learning ICT skills, which are “relevant to present and future times. Their access to ICT tools and its uses will serve as their portal towards globalization. It is also the window that would show them the relevant issues faced by their community and the world. This will enable them to formulate solutions and bring in positive change, not just for themselves but for future generations as well.”

The second winning photographer was submitted by Ysabel Victoriano, with her photo, ‘My first bike ride’.

The photo shows a wooden scooter from Banaue, Ifugao in the Philippines. “Years ago the bike was used to deliver crops from the mountain, but today it is used as a form of enjoyment that children share with their parents – passing on a culture from one generation to the next”.

This photo reflects the education for sustainable development focus of Target 4.7, harking back to some of the key findings in the 2016 GEM Report about the importance of respecting local cultures in education. It emphasizes the importance of not destroying traditional knowledge systems, which hold vast amounts of information about our natural environment.

The third winner is Rahul Saha with his image of ‘Solar Power’.

Nicely framed, the photo shows a child enjoying speaking over a cell phone at a brick field in a remote village of Birbhum in West Bengal, India. The cell phone is charged through a newly distributed solar panel as there is no conventional electricity in the community.  This photo reflects the importance of education for sustainable lifestyles, and also shows two people of different ages together, representing the importance of non-formal education and lifelong learning in bringing about real change.

We want to say thank you to the over 200 candidates who submitted exceptionally interesting photos for this competition, which represented a wide array of the multiple concepts contained in Target 4.7 in SDG 4.

“Creativity unlocks sustainability” said Domyson Dulay Abuan, in his submission, and he is right. The 2016 GEM Report showed how important it is to shift to types of education that empower and enable us all to think of new solutions to global and local problems. Innovation and creativity are central to that shift, making the huge talent pool represented in this competition even more exciting.