winning ideas for a clean fuTure

Our Own High School, Al Warqa’a, Dubai won the recycling crafts category of the 1st edition of the Dubai Vision Competition in 2017. The students presented a fully solar powered city with vertical forests as part of residential towers — and they even involved their parents in collecting recycled materials for the models.

Buds Public School, Dubai penned a novel, Green Pen - Green Eye, and won the sustainability writing category. Each chapter was written by a different student and ultimately told a story that drove the narrative from a dream to affecting change as it slowly built a green city. “This submission really touched my heart. Every chapter claimed Dubai as ‘my city’ regardless of where the child originally came from — Dubai is now their home,” says Senigaglia.

The winning submission for the category that imagines tomorrow with a conceptual model came from New Indian Model School, Dubai. The students developed an automatic waste segregator that separates paper, plastic, wood, metal, and glass. The idea took shape from their daily routine — they do not let water bottles at school go to waste and use them to plant saplings.

“This has been an amazing journey with the schools. Even at a young age, the students have an imagination that reflects the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum — be it a technological, social or humanitarian project,” adds Senigaglia. The 2nd edition of the competition was announced in March 2018 with the hope to bring about partnerships between the public and private schools.