Prizewinners
The prizewinners were announced at the MAW conference on 29 June 2019. Click on the name to view their essay.
Equal first prizes:
Allana Bennison (18) Dubai
Lucas Valladares (15) High Barnet
Equal third prizes:
Anna Pitt-Francis (17) Oxford
Ashkin Kazimoglu (11) Edinburgh
Caitlin Kinch (15) Orpington
Two of the winners were able to attend the MAW Day Conference “Save the Earth, Abolish War” to receive their prizes from Molly Scott Cato, MEP
Background
School students were invited to take part in an essay competition, submitting from 500 to 1000 words on “Walking on the moon, still warring on earth.”
It is now 50 years since the Apollo 11 moon landing of 1969. When the astronauts looked back home, their comments highlighted the beauty and fragility of planet earth – our common home. How petty and stupid humankind’s divisions on earth, wreaking destruction and involving mass slaughter, appeared from a distance.
With our knowledge of climate change, the vulnerability of ‘spaceship earth’, and the essential unity of all its inhabitants, has only become more obvious. And yet the means of destruction are proliferating and precious resources are squandered in preparing and waging ever more destructive wars.
What is the significance of the moon landing for world peace? A dream as old as humanity, and which for a long time was held to be beyond its grasp, was realised when people started believing it could be done and made a determined effort to make it happen. Is the abolition of war, another old and cherished dream, beyond our reach?
