2024 - 2025 Creative Youth Competition

Official Rules 

1. General

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 2025.

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. Essay, which must be between 750 and 1,000 words, typed and double spaced. 
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 circumstances can alterations be made to the essay 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. Essays

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

Entries MUST be on one of the three topics listed below. The selected topic MUST be entered on the entry form as given 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?

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

3. Prizes

Prizes will be awarded as follows:

4. Winners

Prize winners will be notified by 30 June 2025. The winners will be announced on social and traditional media platforms and the winning essays will be published on the ECCB website.