Learning these skills at this age puts you in such a good position for the rest of your life. To have confidence in how to construct an argument, how to tell stories, how to interact with an audience, and how to feel grounded in your delivery, is always going to be an asset going forward.
More than that though, this competition allows participants to realise that there are people from halfway around the world who they may have more in common with than someone who’s in the same class as them at home. You start to see all the richness of difference and diversity, and how valuable that is.
