On July 8, 2022, the #PRIF@Schule_Prize was awarded for the first time to Hessian students in grades 9 to 13. The award winners had dealt innovatively with the topic of democracy and conflict in various formats. The seven-member jury, including the president of the Museum Angewandte Kunst Foundation in Frankfurt and the federal coordinator of the German UNESCO project schools, awarded a total of 5 prizes. The award ceremony took place on the Westend Campus of the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Two group projects and three papers were awarded prize money.
The award-winning podcast series “Eine Welt” (“One World”) of the Max Planck Gymnasium Groß-Umstadt documents the partnership between the high school and the Mekelle Adventist School in northern Ethiopia. “The podcast ‘One World’ has succeeded in building bridges. It is a sustainable example of what the exchange of two schools in different cultures can spark in terms of creative potential,” said Katharina Iskandar, responsible editor of the Rhine-Main section of the ”Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung” and jury member, in her laudation for the project.
For their project “Experiencing Regional Jewish History – Civil Society Commitment to Promoting Social Peace and Intercultural Understanding”, the students of Class 11c of the Gymnasium Philippinum Weilburg visited the nearby Jewish cemetery together with their teachers and actively cleaned gravestones there. The students then contacted descendants of the Jewish families buried there, who now live in Germany, Israel and the USA, with a letter and photos of the cemetery, and linked social commitment and local history.
The three winning papers by Leon Gutknecht, Nico Dieter and Yunus Emre Cakmak dealt with current, highly political and controversial conflicts and issues in international relations and analyzed them on the basis of different sources. Jury member Klaus Schillig, federal coordinator of the German UNESCO project schools, emphasized: “[With their works], the authors make global connections in politics and economics visible and they discuss the concrete possibilities of working for peace, human rights and sustainable development. This makes it directly visible how important political education and global learning are for a sustainable school.”
PRIF congratulates all award winners and thanks all participants for their interesting submissions. Further information about the #PRIF@School_Award and a list of all awarded works and award winners can be found on the school award page.