The Geneva Challenge is an annual international competition presented by the Graduate Institute of Geneva. The competition, established by Mr. Jenö Staehelin, former Swiss Ambassador the United Nations, challenges interdisciplinary groups of graduate students to offer innovative solutions to relevant global problems. The 2014 topic, Women’s Empowerment, placed an emphasis on the need for greater social, political and economic inclusion of women. Competitors independently selected a relevant issue within this broad topic, offering rigorous analysis and pragmatic solutions to a distinguished jury which includes high-level UN and country representatives.
This year, two teams from the Munk School’s Master of Global Affairs program entered the Geneva Challenge competition, submitting reports titled, “Women Health and Corruption: Redefining Partnerships for Social Change” and “Educating Against Vulnerability: An integrated approach to addressing the exploitation of female migrant workers.” Both teams were highly successful in the competition with the former placing in an elite group of semi-finalists, and the latter, selected as finalists in the competition. The finalists will be travelling to Geneva in September to orally defend their submission to a panel of judges.
The finalist team is comprised of second-year MGA student Anam Ansari along with MGA alumni Faye Simmonds, Amrita Kumar-Ratta, and Annie Tayyab. They will be joined by Kevin Voung, completing his Master’s in Geography at the University of Western Ontario. They are set to defend their research on September 15 at the Graduate Institute of Geneva.
