Aliia Zainullina, a student at Kazan Federal University, was recently selected as a winner of the Many Languages, One World Essay Contest from a talented group of nearly 1,500 contestants. As a contest winner, Ms. Zainullina was invited to New York to participate in a five-day Global Youth Forum. The event`s culmination was on 27 June 2014, when all contest winners convened at the United Nations Headquarters in New York and made presentations based on principles of the United Nations Academic Impact.

The Many Languages, One World essay contest invited student‛s from around the world to compose an essay on multilingualism and global citizenship. The essay was to be written in one of the six official languages of the United Nations - Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian or Spanish - that was neither the students native language nor the language of instruction in the student's pre-university study. Ms. Zainullina wrote her essay in English.

Many Languages, One World, organized by ELS Educational Services, Inc., and the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI), received an impressive response. More than 4,000 people from 128 countries participated in some phase of the contest. Contestants ranged from college freshmen to Doctoral candidates from universities all over the world, and their fields of academic study were very diverse.

Sixty winners - ten from each language of the United Nations - were selected and invited to participate in the Global Youth Forum, which was held in conjunction with Adelphi University.

For more information about Many Languages, One World, and to read all winning essays, please visit ManyLanguagesOneWorld.ELS.edu.

About ELS

ELS Educational Services offers over 50 years of expertise in assisting international students - more than 1,100,000 to date - achieve their personal and professional goals through English preparation and professional counseling. ELS assists international students identify and gain entry to higher education institutions around the world, including in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe and India. ELS has the largest network of campus-based English language instruction centers in the world (ELS Language Centers), offering 70 study locations in the USA, Canada, Australia, Europe, Malaysia, China and India with the majority of locations on university campuses. Fourteen additional English language instruction centers are located throughout Indonesia, Malaysia, Oman, Panamá, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. More than 650 universities worldwide accept completion of an advanced ELS level (Intensive English Program) as proof of English proficiency, thereby meeting the English language proficiency requirement for admission. ELS annually facilitates enrollment of thousands of international students into degree programs, thus expanding their future possibilities. 

For more on ELS:  www.InternationalStudentRecruitment.org www.ELS.edu www.UniversityGuideOnline.org

About The United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI)

UNAI, launched by the Secretary-General on November 18, 2010, is a global initiative that aligns institutions of higher learning and research with the United Nations in actively supporting ten universally accepted principles, including in the areas of peace and security, human rights and sustainable development.  It has currently more than 1,000 members in some 120 countries (http://outreach.un.org/unai).