Haja Isatu Bah, who grew up as a Fulani girl in Sierra Leone, has been included in the top 50 shortlist for the Chegg.org Global Student Prize 2024, an annual $100,000 award to be given to one exceptional student that has made a real impact on learning, the lives of their peers and on society beyond.

Haja Isatu Bah was selected from over 11,000 nominations and applications from 176 countries.

Chegg.org partnered with the Varkey Foundation to launch the annual Global Student Prize in 2021, a sister award to its $1 million Global Teacher Prize. The intention was to create a powerful new platform that shines a light on the efforts of extraordinary students everywhere who, together, are reshaping our world for the better. The prize is open to all students who are at least 16 years old and enrolled in an academic institution or training and skills program. Part-time students as well as students enrolled in online courses are also eligible for the prize.

Haja Isatu Bah, a 26-year-old Sierra Leonean feminist, environmentalist, and entrepreneur, overcame societal and financial barriers to excel academically and lead initiatives. Growing up in a Fulani community, she secured scholarships, including a United World College Scholarship and the Shelby Davis Scholarship for Skidmore College, where her research won the President’s Award for Racial Justice. In 2019, she founded Uman4Uman to address period poverty and promote menstrual health in Sierra Leone. Uman4Uman produces and sells reusable menstrual pads and runs educational workshops on menstrual hygiene management. To date, the venture has empowered more than 6,000 girls and women.

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Now a Chevening Scholar at LSE, Haja 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 instance, she worked with over 75 farmers to help expand the El-Koony Center’s Climate Resilient Agriculture project to the Kiptogot, Suam, and Kimothon areas of Mount Elgon, Kenya. This initiative seeks to help smallholder farmers, especially women, to maximize crop yields while minimizing environmental impact.

Haja’s role as a speaker at the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP15, Ivory Coast) on the entrepreneurship panel for fragile contexts, and moderator for a workshop on gender and land tenure, solidified her position as a global leader in the fight for gender equity and sustainable development.

Sierra Leone students have a history of excelling in the Chegg.org Global Student Prize. Jeremiah Thoronka, a student from Sierra Leone, who invented a device that uses kinetic energy from traffic and pedestrians to generate clean power, was named the winner of the inaugural Chegg.org Global Student Prize in 2021.

Heather Hatlo Porter, Chegg’s Chief Communications Officer, said:

“Huge congratulations to Haja Isatu Bah. Chegg not only celebrates your achievements but also the endless possibilities that exist when young minds are driven by a passion for change. The top 50 Global Student Prize finalists deserve the opportunity to have their stories told and have their voices heard. After all, it is their dreams, insights and ingenuity that will illuminate a more hopeful future for everyone.”

“Our finalists this year have made a huge impact in areas from the environment to equality and justice, from health and wellbeing to education and skills, from youth empowerment to ending poverty. I can’t wait to see how this year’s inspiring cohort of changemakers use this platform to lift up even more lives.”

Sunny Varkey, Founder of the Varkey Foundation, said:

“Haja Isatu Bah’s story is a testament to the crucial 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 we can face the future with confidence.”

Applications and nominations for this year’s Global Student Prize opened on Thursday 1 February and closed on Sunday 5 May. Students are being assessed on their academic achievement, impact on their peers, how they make a difference in their community and beyond, how they overcome the odds to achieve, how they demonstrate creativity and innovation, and how they operate as global citizens.

Last year’s winner was 24-year-old South Sudanese refugee Nhial Deng, who empowered over 20,000 refugees in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya through peacebuilding, education, and entrepreneurship programmes, as well as creating a safe space for young people to heal from their trauma. He was selected as the winner of the 2023 Chegg.org Global Student Prize from almost 4,000 nominations and applications from 122 countries around the world. Nhial accepted his award in New York during UN General Assembly week.

The winner in 2022 was Ukrainian teenager Igor Klymenko, a 17-year-old student from Kyiv, Ukraine, who moved to the countryside at the start of the Russian invasion to finish his final year of high school. Sheltered in the basement of his new home, Igor successfully completed his studies while refining the mine-detecting drone he had been working on for eight years. He was selected as the winner of the 2022 Chegg.org Global Student Prize from over 7,000 applications from more than 150 countries.

The first winner in 2021 was Jeremiah Thoronka, a 21-year-old student from Sierra Leone, who launched a start-up called Optim Energy that transforms vibrations from vehicles and pedestrian footfall on roads into an electric current. With just two devices, the start-up provided free electricity to 150 households comprising around 1,500 citizens, as well as 15 schools where more than 9,000 students attend.

The top 10 finalists of the Global Student Prize are expected to be announced in September this year. The winner, who is expected to be announced later in the year, will be chosen from the top 10 finalists by the Global Student Prize Academy, made up of prominent individuals.

If students were nominated, the person nominating them was asked to write a brief description online explaining why. The student being nominated was then sent an email inviting them to apply for the prize. Applicants were able to apply in English, Mandarin, Arabic, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian.