king's essay prize

MEET THE WINNERS OF THE QUEEN'S COMMONWEALTH ESSAY COMPETITION  

The Queen's Commonwealth Essay Competition (QCEC) is the world's oldest international schools' writing contest, established by the Royal Commonwealth Society in 1883. With thousands of young people taking part each year, it is an important way to recognise achievement, elevate youth voices and develop key skills through creative writing.

Each year, entrants write on a theme that explores the Commonwealth's values, fostering an empathetic worldview in the next generation of leaders and encouraging young people to consider new perspectives on the challenges that the world faces. Themes have included the environment, community, inclusion, the role of youth leadership, and gender equality.

In the past decade alone, this high-profile competition has engaged over 200,000 young people, over 5,000 schools and thousands of volunteer judges across the Commonwealth. ​

Past winners have gone on to become leaders in their fields, including the Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr Lee Hsien Loong, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mei Fong, and the renowned author, the late Elspeth Huxley CBE.  ​

Meet the winners of The Queen's Commonwealth Essay Competition 2024!

QCEC Winners' Week 2023

Meet the winners of The Queen's Commonwealth Essay Competition 2023

Meet The Winners Of The Queen's Commonwealth Essay Competition 2022

Winners Of The Queen's Commonwealth Essay Competition 2021

The Queen's Commonwealth Essay Competition 2020

The Queen's Commonwealth Essay Competition 2019

Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project

Initiated by  The King Center  in Atlanta, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project is one of only a few large-scale research ventures focusing on an African American. In 1985, King Center's founder and president Coretta Scott King invited Stanford University historian Clayborne Carson to become the Project's director. 

Mission of the Papers Project

As a result of Dr. Carson's selection, the King Papers Project became a cooperative venture of Stanford University, the King Center, and the King Estate. Its principal mission is to publish the definitive fourteen-volume edition of  The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., a comprehensive collection of King's most significant correspondence, sermons, speeches, published writings, and unpublished manuscripts. The seven already published volumes have become essential reference works for researchers and have influenced scholarship about King and the movements he inspired. Building upon this research foundation, the Project also engages in other related educational activities. Using internet communications technology to reach a diverse global audience, it has greatly increased popular as well as scholarly awareness of King's achievements and visionary ideas.

Funding the Papers Project

In addition to core funding from Stanford University, the King Papers Project receives financial support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and individual donors. As a component of Stanford's Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, the Project also benefits from the Institute's endowment.

National Advisory Board 

• David J. Garrow
• Robert L. Green
• Robert A. Hill
• Darlene Clark Hine
• Bernard Lafayette, Jr.
• Otis Moss, Jr.
• Preston N. Williams
• Andrew J. Young

News | London

Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition winners meet Camilla and visit Standard’s new office

Buckingham Palace has hosted a reception for the winners of a global writing competition - who also enjoyed a tour of the Evening Standard’s new office.

The reception, hosted by Camilla, The Queen Consort, welcomed the prize winners of this year’s Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition and their families on Thursday.

During the event and following her Majesty’s speech to the attendees, Royal Commonwealth Society ambassadors read out extracts from the four winning pieces.

One of those was by an east London student, Amaal Fawzi, 17, who was a runner-up in this year’s competition. Her winning poem ‘Nursing Homes’ came second in the senior category.

The Queen Consort spoke of the “deep” links that run between the nations of the Commontwealth.

She said: “All of us are bound together by a profound appreciation of the written word and of our Commonwealth. This wonderful, extraordinary, richly diverse association of independent and equal nations and friends is, truly, ‘ours’, belonging to each one of us, and the connections between us run deep.”

Amongst the attendees were the competition’s 2020 and 2021 winners, who could not attend the awards ceremony in previous years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The winners, who are aged between 13-17 years old and travelled from New Zealand, Australia, India, Singapore, Uganda and the UK, were awarded their certificates by The Queen Consort. Extracts from their winning pieces were read by RCS Ambassadors Geri Horner, Alexandra Burke and Ayesha Dharker, as well as Booker Prize winner Ben Okri.

RCS Ambassador Gyles Brandreth acted as compère for the ceremony, during which The Queen Consort and the RCS Executive Chair, Dr Linda Yueh, spoke about the importance of the competition to elevate the voices of young people around the Commonwealth.

Dr Yueh said: “In 2022, we asked children around the Commonwealth to reflect on the inspiring example of the steadfast commitment Queen Elizabeth II gave to our Commonwealth family for over 70 years.

“As the Patron of our Society, we were immensely grateful to The late Queen for her unstinting support of our efforts to improve literacy across the Commonwealth.”

“We are deeply honoured that Her Majesty The Queen Consort, like late Queen Elizabeth II, is tireless in her own support for this important competition and its ability to improve the lives and prospects of children around the Commonwealth,” she said.

The ceremony is one of several events the group attended in the week, which included a visit to Shakespeare’s Birthplace, workshops with actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company, and a tour and journalism workshop at the Evening Standard.

Their visit to the newspaper’s new office in AlphaBeta Building in Finsbury Square, included a talk by the Evening Standard and Independent’s editor emeritus, Doug Wills, as well as a walk through the paper’s history and evolution, by David Marsland. They were told of the paper’s rich history and relationship with novelist and playwright, Charles Dickens, who wrote short plays and articles that were published by it. Other key figures who were mentioned for their significance to the paper were the Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, and Emeline Pankhurst.

The paper’s space in the digital sphere was also discussed, and a glimpse into its London Live television channel shown. The interactive workshop involved contributions from the winners and their families, who made suggestions on what more the paper could cover. One suggestion was the impact of carbon taxes in the UK, and another was for better representation of Arabs in the western media.

The Evening Standard spoke to two of the attendees. Ethan Mufuma, from Uganda, who was the junior winner in 2021, said he was inspired to enter the competition by a friend, who had previously earned a certificate at it.

Speaking about his winning entry, he said: “My piece was centred at a local community story. I think this was very inspiring. ‘Okware’, a local name that I chose to represent my pandemic hero, made my piece wear that originality.”

He said another reason he entered was so he could “add a voice in the fight against the pandemic”.

“In my country, people don’t get information easily. One can take a month without accessing radio news. Peple, especially in local areas, depend on hearsay. Rememeber the pandemic required a lot of information. There was much of ‘do this, do that’, so I entered the competition to help share informatio regarding the control of the pandemic,” he said.

On the journalism workshop, Ethan said he “loved the way we were all engaged all the time”.

He said: “Sometimes, back when I was writing for my school’s newspaper, I remember the teacher emphasising the need to tell the truth in news, and the same thing the workshop emphasised. It’s like journalism and truth are twins.”

Of the award ceremony, he added “no exact word can tell the real feelings”.

“So amazing, very historical, very perfect in the way events keep changing. Someone has to be part of this to understand it all,” he said.

Maulika Pandey, 13, who was a junior runner-up in this year’s competition told us about her entry, ‘The Molai Forest’.

“My entry is about an Indian, Jadav Molai Payeng, from Assam, the Forest Man of India, because he managed to create a forest over the span of 40 years with his own hands. He taught me that things take time to happen and the fact that he continued to planting trees for 40 years, taught that doing little things can create a big result,” she said.

She said her favourite moment of the award ceremony was “definitely when I got to meet The Queen Consort”.

“Our winners really enjoyed their visit to the Evening Standard newsroom and relished the opportunity to talk to ES journalists. This visit has certainly opened their eyes to the possibility of a career in journalism,” Sophie Spencer, Programme Officer at the Royal Commonwealth Society, told the Evening Standard.

She added: “The award ceremony at Buckingham Palace was a life-changing experience for our young winners. It is really special to have their writing celebrated in such a way and it is an incredible boost to their confidence as they embark on their writing careers.”

Following the workshop, the group took a tour of the Evening Standard and The Independent’s newsrooms, including a chat with the former’s digital team, before ending with a photograph.

The Commonwealth Essay Competition, which has engaged around 140, 000 young people, more than 5, 000 schools, and many thousands of volunteer judges across the Commonwealth, in the last decade.

At 26, 322, this year saw the largest number of entries since the competition began in 1883.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

Winners of the inaugural Entrepreneurial Lab Essay Competition announced

We are delighted to announce the winners of the inaugural King’s Entrepreneurship Lab Essay Competition, established to encourage UK Sixth Form students to pursue entrepreneurial aspirations and understand better how to launch an enterprise.

This year’s top prize has been awarded to Khaleel Miah from Sir John Lawes School , and the two runners up were Leona Liu from Hills Road Sixth Form College and Harry Ridge from Coleg Cambria . The three winners attended a prize-giving ceremony at King’s and received a cash prize to be split between the student and their school.

Students could choose between one of the three possible choice of essays questions, exploring the importance of entrepreneurism and the challenges that business people face. The winning entry in particular responded to the question ‘Why is learning from failure sometimes more effective than learning from success?’.

The winner and the two runners up were selected by our expert panel of judges:  Mervyn King  (KC 1968),  Deborah Meaden , and King’s Provost  Gillian Tett .

Following the prize-giving ceremony, Rhys Williams - King’s PhD student and E-Lab Senior Associate who organised the competition this year – commented:

We received hundreds of applications across the three question topics, all of which were fantastic making the job of choosing a winner very difficult! Fortunately, with the kind help of our judges Gillian Tett, Deborah Meaden and Lord Mervyn King, we were able to select these three fantastic essays as the winning entries.

The Entrepreneurship Lab Essay Competition will be back in 2024 for the second year, and more information will be available next summer. All students studying at sixth form (or equivalent) level from all backgrounds and regardless of subjects studied are welcome to enter the competition.

Similar Entries

King’s Entrepreneurship Lab Essay Competition

Winners will be selected by a judging panel consisting of Deborah Meaden, Mervyn King and Gillian Tett.

Winners of the 2020 Entrepreneurship Competition Announced

Vira Health, PoliValve and Modern Synthesis have all been awarded prizes from the judging panel

Winners of 2023 Entrepreneurship Prize announced

La Huerta de Elisa, Arxax, and Sirene Chocolate are the winners of this year's competition.

Winners of 2024 Entrepreneurship Prize announced

Winners of 2022 Entrepreneurship Prize announced

Correcto, a Spanish language software project, has been awarded first prize by the judging panel in this year's Prize.

Winners of the 2021 Entrepreneurship Prize announced

Perfexia and Caravaggio's Chair have both been awarded prizes from the judging panel.

Winners of the E-Lab Residential Prize announced

This year’s top prize has been awarded to the social network for activists CAUSE, while a second prize went to Crea, an engineering consultancy.

Inaugural participants selected for the King’s Entrepreneurship Lab

Nineteen students will form the first cohort of the year-long programme to support those wishing to explore a career path in innovation and entrepreneurship.

Follow us on Instagram