TWO students who created powerful videos on bullying and child poverty have become double winners in a prestigious contest with each earning a table at dinner with Michelle Obama, former First Lady of the US.
The Hunter Foundation has decided to crown two winners of the "If I Ruled Scotland" competition because of the high standards of the entrants, and both will receive the prize of the table at the Obama event later this month.
The philanthropic organisation set up by Sir Tom Hunter invited school pupils to submit a short essay, video, picture or poem based on the wider theme: "If I ruled Scotland the one thing I’d change to enable more young people to succeed would be - and why that’s so important."
READ MORE: Michelle Obama to speak at charity dinner in Scotland
Langholm Academy student Cerys Gough, 14, submitted a film on bullying and prejudice described by Sir Tom as "incredibly powerful as was her proposed solution".
Melissa Croft - S3 Mearns Castle High school - "made judges stop in their tracks" with her film on child poverty in Scotland.
Sir Tom said: “We congratulate all who entered for their brilliant submissions which we will publish online in the near future.
"Normally there only ever is one winner, but we decided to disrupt our own rules and have two."
READ MORE: Michelle Obama to speak at charity dinner in Scotland
He said: “What all these submissions showed us was that our young people have a strong, powerful voice on diverse but consistent themes from pollution to education, poverty to ambition and it’s about time we listened a lot more to them.
"As one entrant said in their submission 'we are the future of Scotland', this is absolutely right and we need to not just listen a lot more to their voice but act upon it too.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here