2024 - 2025 Creative Youth Competition

ECCB Connects Programme Featuring 1st Place Winners

Winning Essays

Official Rules 

1. General Information

The competition is open to youths, aged 13-19, residing in the eight ECCB Member Countries. The participant MUST be 13 to 19 years old at the time of entering the competition.

The closing date for submitting entries for the competition is midnight, 31 March. 

All entries should be entered on the ECCU/RSS-ARU electronic portal which is available on the ECCB website.

Entries MUST include:

1. Portrait photo/headshot of participant 
2. Submission piece.  
3. ECCB/RSS-ARU Creative Youth Competition Entry Form, which is part of the entry process via the electronic portal. It MUST be completed in its entirety.

      Failure to submit all three could result in the disqualification of your submission.

Each participant can submit only one entry on any of the three topics. All entries will be assessed anonymously by the judges.

Entries will NOT be returned, so please keep a copy.

Under no circumstance can alterations be made to the submission once entered.

Entries will receive automatic receipt confirmation at the time of submission.

Telephone confirmation of receipt will not be available, so please ensure you upload the correct version of your essay to the portal.

If you experience difficulty with uploading your submission to the portal, please send an email to info@eccb-centralbank.org with the subject: ECCB/RSS-ARU Creative Youth Competition (Your name).

The ECCB reserves the right to change the judging panel without notice and to not award prizes if, in the judges’ opinion, such an action is justified.

The judges will view all the entries; their decisions will be final.

Children or wards of ECCB employees are not eligible to enter the competition.

2. Submissions

All entries are judged anonymously, therefore the participant’s name must NOT appear on the submission. The names should only be entered on the entry form.

Entries MUST be on one of the three topics given. The selected topic MUST be entered on the entry form. The topics which were given for the 2024 -2025 competition are outlined below:

• Following the success of Eastern Caribbean athletes at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, sports should be leveraged as a means to help deter criminal activity, drive economic growth, and enhance national pride among the youth. Discuss.
• Financial Education should be a mandatory subject in all Primary and Secondary Schools. Discuss.
• How can the OECS augment its Education System to encourage creativity?

Submissions MUST be the participant’s original work. Plagiarised work will be disqualified.

3. Prizes

Prizes will be awarded as follows: