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The Sierra Leone student was selected from more than 11,000 nominations and applications from 176 countries for the award, which is now in its fourth year and celebrates the extraordinary achievements of young changemakers around the world.
Haja Isatu Bah (pictured), a Fulani girl who grew up in Sierra Leone, has been named one of the top 50 finalists for the Chegg.org 2024 Global Student Prize, a $100,000 award given annually to an outstanding student who has made a real impact on their studies, the lives of their peers, and society at large.
Haja Issatu Bah was selected from more than 11,000 nominations and applicants from 176 countries.
Chegg.org has partnered with the Varkey Foundation to launch the annual Global Student Award in 2021, a sister award to its $1 million Global Teacher Prize. The aim is to create a powerful new platform to shine a light on the efforts of exceptional students around the world who are collectively reshaping our world for the better. The award is open to all students aged 16 and over who are enrolled in an academic institution or training and skills program. Part-time students and those taking online courses are also eligible for the award.
26-year-old Sierra Leonean feminist, environmentalist, and entrepreneur Haja Issatu Bah has overcome social and economic barriers to excel academically and lead multiple initiatives. Raised in a Fulani community, she has received multiple scholarships, including a United World College Scholarship and a Shelby Davis Scholarship at Skidmore College, and her research received the Presidential Racial Justice Award. In 2019, she founded Uman4Uman to address period poverty and promote menstrual health in Sierra Leone. Uman4Uman produces and sells reusable sanitary napkins and hosts educational workshops on menstrual hygiene management. To date, the business has empowered over 6,000 girls and women.
Now a Chevening Scholar at the London School of Economics, Hajja aims to influence environmental policy. Her leadership, resilience, and commitment to social justice and environmental sustainability are evident in her extensive mentoring and advocacy work. For example, she worked with more than 75 farmers to help expand the El-Koony Centre’s Climate Resilient Agriculture project to the Kiptogot, Suam, and Kimothon districts of Mount Elgon in Kenya. The program aims to help smallholder farmers, especially women, maximize crop yields while minimizing environmental impact.
Hajjah has cemented her position as a global leader in the fight for gender equality and sustainable development by serving as spokesperson for the Entrepreneurship Panel on Fragile Environments at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (Côte d’Ivoire) and as moderator of a workshop on gender and land tenure.
Sierra Leonean student wins at Chegg.org Global Student Awards. Sierra Leonean student Jeremiah Thoronka, who invented a device that uses the kinetic energy of traffic and pedestrians to generate clean energy, has been named the winner of the inaugural 2021 Chegg.org Global Student Awards.
Heather Hatlo Porter, Chief Communications Officer at Chegg, said:
“A huge congratulations to Haja Isatu Bah. Chegg celebrates not only your achievements, but also the endless possibilities that young people’s passion for change can bring. The top 50 finalists of the Global Student Prize deserve the opportunity to tell their stories and make their voices heard. After all, it is their dreams, insights, and ingenuity that will illuminate a more hopeful future for everyone.”
“This year’s finalists are making a huge impact in areas such as the environment, equality and justice, health and wellbeing, education and skills, youth empowerment and poverty eradication. I can’t wait to see how this year’s group of inspiring changemakers use this platform to improve even more lives.”
Sunny Varkey, founder of the Varkey Foundation, said:
“Hadja Issatou Bah’s story is a testament to the critical role that education plays in building a better world for us all. As time runs out to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, it is more important than ever to prioritize education so that we can face the future with confidence.”
Applications and nominations for this year’s Global Student Awards opened on Thursday, February 1, and close on Sunday, May 5. Students will be judged on their academic achievements, the impact they have on their peers, how they make a difference in their communities and beyond, how they have achieved against all odds, how they have demonstrated creativity and innovation, and how they have acted as global citizens.
Last year’s winner was 24-year-old South Sudanese refugee Nhial Deng, who has supported more than 20,000 refugees in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp through peacebuilding, education and entrepreneurship initiatives, and created a safe space for young people to recover from trauma. He was selected from nearly 4,000 nominations and applications from 122 countries around the world to be the winner of the 2023 Chegg.org Global Student Award. Nhial accepted his award in New York during the United Nations General Assembly week.
The 2022 winner is Ukrainian teenager Igor Klymenko, a 17-year-old student from Kyiv, Ukraine, who moved to the countryside to finish his final year of high school when the Russian invasion began. Hiding in the basement of his new home, Igor managed to complete his studies while improving the mine-detecting drone he had been working on for eight years. He was selected from more than 7,000 applications from more than 150 countries to be the winner of the 2022 Chegg.org Global Student Award.
The first winner of the 2021 award is Jeremiah Thoronka, a 21-year-old student from Sierra Leone, who founded a startup called Optim Energy that converts vibrations from vehicles and pedestrian footsteps on the road into electricity. With just two devices, the startup provides free electricity to 150 homes (about 1,500 residents) and 15 schools (more than 9,000 students).
The top 10 finalists for the Global Student Award are expected to be announced in September this year. The winner is expected to be announced later this year and will be selected from the top 10 finalists by the Global Student Award Academy, a group of exceptional individuals.
If a student is nominated, the nominator will be asked to write a short note online explaining the reasons for the nomination. The nominated student will then receive an email inviting them to apply for the award. Applicants can apply in English, Mandarin, Arabic, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian. To join the online conversation, follow @cheggdotorg
About Chegg.org:
Chegg.org is the impact, advocacy and research division of Chegg, Inc., dedicated to solving the problems facing modern students. For more information, visit www.chegg.org
Millions of people around the world use Chegg to learn. Regardless of goal, level, or style, Chegg helps learners learn with confidence. We offer 24/7 on-demand support, and our personalized learning assistant leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI), over 100 million pieces of proprietary content, and a decade of learning insights. Our platform also helps learners develop essential life and work skills to accelerate their path from learning to earning, and we partner with companies to offer learning programs to their employees. Chegg is a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol CHGG. For more information, visit www.chegg.com
The Varkey Foundation believes that every child deserves a vibrant, stimulating learning environment that inspires and supports their full potential. The foundation believes that nothing is more important than the passion and quality of teachers to achieve this goal. They support the Global Teaching Capacity to sow the seeds of excellence and innovation for the next generation of educators. They also created the Global Teacher Prize to shine a spotlight on the incredible work done by teachers around the world. Details are as follows: www.varkeyfoundation.org
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