Phoenix Nest Competition Winners 202

On Friday, 6 February, eight teams of young talent took to the stage for the final round of our annual Phoenix Nest social entrepreneurship competition. The Phoenix Nest initiative is a clear example of how UNIS lives its mission: Guided by UN values, we inspire all learners to strive for academic and personal excellence and empower students to create positive, sustainable impact. That sustainable impact is exactly what the judges were looking for in the student pitches.

Phoenix Nest is an MYP Design project. In their Design classes, all grade 8 students were posed the following challenge: Use the Design Cycle and work as a team to develop a sustainable social enterprise that has a meaningful impact. Each team started with three or four team members, with each a well-defined role: Technical Lead, Business Lead, Marketing Lead and Innovation Lead. 24 teams took on the challenge. 8 made it to the final round.

In the final, four judges, ‘our phoenixes’, had the power to award a potential 2000 USD (courtesy of the UNIS Impact Fund) to the team with the most convincing pitch. The judges in this year’s Phoenix Nest were Ms Pauline Tamesis, United Nations Resident Coordinator in Viet Nam, Mr Jørgen Flaa, Private Investor, Business owner and currently treasurer of the UNIS SCO, Ms Maria Chung, Board Chair of UNIS Hanoi and a successful international lawyer and Dr Elizabeth Gale, our very own Head of School. We were very honoured and grateful to have such an amazing jury!

After a nail-biting show, in front of all of Middle School and a significant number of proud parents, the judges crowned The Second Life Project as this year’s competition winners. The Second Life Project, proposed a more professional and active used-battery collection scheme for the UNIS community and beyond. All other finalists definitely deserve an honourable mention as well, as the creativity, thoughtfulness and passion of the teams were very evident. There were nerves, there were tears, there were cheers.

Congratulations to all contestants and to the winners: Kangmin, Emily, Jua and Han Seul.