November 18, 2024
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Coral Cuff – the winning product
The team created a customizable, reusable ankle band for beachgoers to provide access to sea life education while helping to protect the beautiful environment that tourists travel to see. It features a screen with location-specific information about the marine life in the area as scanned by the cuff. If a user approaches vulnerable plants or animals, it vibrates with increasing intensity.
The future matters to every one of us, but perhaps none more so than the generation of young people who will ultimately be the leaders and changemakers of tomorrow. To help develop future leaders, we want to encourage meaningful and hands-on collaboration between young people across the globe. That’s why we organize the Global Leadership Summit.
Since 2013, thousands of middle and high school students from around the world have come together every year to tackle the big issues facing our world, such as climate change, technological advances, and the future of food. Organized by EF Educational Tours, the Global Leadership Summit challenges participants to come up with solutions to these issues, encouraging collaboration between students from different backgrounds and cultures.
The 2024 summit brought nearly 1000 students together in Berlin, Germany, with this year’s challenge focused on water’s influence on society. Previous editions have tackled communication, sustainability, and technology, to name just a few.
Over the three-day Summit, the students are broken out into teams, with each one creating their own unique solution to the challenge posed to them. They must work together – with people they’ve only just met – to find a solution, create a prototype, and deliver a convincing 60-second sales pitch in front of a huge audience of their peers and a panel of judges.
Allie Crouse, Experiential Events Manager at EF Education Tours, admits it seems a daunting task, especially working with strangers, but the students more than rise to the challenge, adding:
“If you asked students, I’m sure they’d say it was hard but life-changing in the best way … Pushing themselves out of their comfort zones is the very thing that helps students become more resilient, adaptable, creative, confident, and more aware global citizens.”
Ten teams get to pitch their idea at the Summit’s finale, with the winners having their product featured alongside past winners in the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm, Sweden.
Above: Students are given a warm welcome as they start connecting with their peers and feel the buzz of the Summit.
Solving global problems is a daunting task for anyone, and it is easy to be overwhelmed by the scale of the issues we face. As well as supporting them with workshops on storytelling and design thinking, EF brings a series of speakers to the Summit to inspire the students to think big. This year’s keynote speaker, former Climate Advisor to the White House, Molly Kawahata, delivered a message of hope on one of the most pressing issues facing future generations: the climate emergency.
Molly reflected on her journey from an anxious teenager trying to figure out her place in the world, to meeting the future U.S. President Barack Obama and eventually working for him in the White House. Her relatable speech addressed that feeling of helplessness in the face of such enormous challenges but turned it into a message of optimism for the teenagers in Berlin.
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Above: Molly Kawahata delivering her message of hope at the 2024 Global Leadership Summit.
“Hope specifically starts at the problem – it looks straight at it. And because of that, hope is extremely tied to innovation. You want to become a better problem-solver? Increase your hope level.”
Molly isn’t the first thought-leader to speak at a Global Leadership Summit. Famous faces such as politician and environmentalist Al Gore, Paralympian Blake Leeper, and primatologist Jane Goodall have passed on their own inspiring ideas to the thousands of young people who have attended these Summits over the years.
Motivated by Molly’s uplifting speech, the students put their heads together, scrawling ideas on sheets of paper, presenting to one another, and building their prototypes. There was a buzz in the air as they developed their products ahead of the big finale and their pitch to the judges.
All of the pitches were full of the hope Molly had spoken about and focused on issues the students are passionate about. The top innovations included a buoy that would capture contaminating sunscreen from the sea, a device for cleaning rivers while simultaneously aiding farmers with fertilizer, and an artificial fish designed to filter microplastics from waterways. In the end, it was the seven-strong Coral Cuff team who were crowned the victors by the judges.
They developed a product that seeks to address the challenge of coral reef degradation, an issue which has massive ramifications for marine life. Despite covering just 0.2% of the world’s seafloor, coral reefs support at least 25% of marine species. But their future is uncertain due to warming temperatures and pollution. The Coral Cuff provides educational information to beachgoers and diverts them away from this precious ecosystem to avoid further damage.
Hailing from the U.S. and Spain, the team were clearly overjoyed at being crowned the winners, brimming with smiles and genuine surprise. “We didn’t know each other at all, so I’m surprised we were able to come together and work so effectively,” said Aiden from Michigan, U.S.
Above: Coral Cuff crowned the winning team with their prototype to be featured in the Nobel Prize Museum.
The Global Leadership Summit is designed to bring together teenagers from different corners of the world, encouraging learning through collaboration and the meeting of cultures and perspectives.
The young people who make this vibrant event so special are the leaders and innovators of tomorrow, something emphasized by the team as they reflected on their Summit experience:
“I think it is important to come together – especially as young people – we can all come together and create change. We are going to be the generation that changes things, and I think our product and this team proves that.”
While there can be only one winning team, the Summit is an amazing opportunity for all the participants to grow and learn more about themselves and others. For Allie Crouse, the Summit is not only about supporting young people to connect with one another, but also about developing their leadership and critical thinking skills, helping them in their future careers.
“Summit opens students’ minds to things they’ve never experienced before – to new places, new cultures, and ways of thinking,” said Allie. “They build skills that are critical for their development and obtain leadership skills important for making meaningful change in their communities and beyond.”
Above: Hear EFer Molly talk about her experience at the Global Leadership Summit and how it helped her career.
The experience of the Global Leadership Summit is transformative, as shown by the numerous volunteers and teachers who return to this event every year and the energy that pulses through the whole weekend. Where this year’s cohort will go next is anyone’s guess, but there is no doubt this Summit leaves a lasting impression on everyone who attends.
They walk away with a broader sense of themselves and the world. They've expanded their horizons and developed empathy and understanding of other cultures. They are the global citizens of tomorrow, and we can’t wait to see where they will go next.
13
Global Leadership Summits since 2013
9
countries represented in 2024
60
s
to pitch their product
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