Year 13 Gisborne Girls’ High School students Nina Botting, left, and Savanah Baty won the grand prize in the music category of the 2025 Young Artists and Authors Showcase held by Sister Cities International. Photo / James Pocock
Year 13 Gisborne Girls’ High School students Nina Botting, left, and Savanah Baty won the grand prize in the music category of the 2025 Young Artists and Authors Showcase held by Sister Cities International. Photo / James Pocock
Two Gisborne Girls’ High School students have won a top prize in an international competition for their song about friendship and connection.
Year 13 students and friends Savanah Baty and Nina Botting won the grand prize in the music category of the 2025 Young Artists and Authors Showcase (YAAS) heldby Sister Cities International.
The theme for the event this year was Friendship: The Heartbeat of Global Peace.
Competition categories comprised original artwork, literature, poetry, photography and music.
“This year’s theme highlights the power of friendship to foster understanding, collaboration and peace across borders,” Sister Cities International said in a statement.
The competition attracted 340 competitors from 10 countries, including Australia, Japan, the United States, China and Russia.
Savanah and Nina’s winning song was called Take My Hand and was written by both of them two years ago.
“With this competition, the brief was friendship and relationships, so we had a song already written that just perfectly fit the criteria,” Savanah said.
“All we had to do was write what the song meant to us, so we’ve got a little blurb of what the song means to us, and I guess that was good enough to win the competition.
“We wrote it together, pretty much based on relationships in general, not just our one specifically.
“Our song is all about finding that small group of friends who you deeply connect with, where you don’t feel the need to act like someone else around and are your true self,” part of their entry reads.
“This song is all about whakawhanaungatanga, which is strengthening relationships and connections by talking about personal experiences, all about creating a deep bond.”
Nina plays the drums, while Savanah plays guitar and violin.
Both prefer to keep their musical passion as a hobby rather than a career.
“Music is a passion, something we love,” Savanah said. “And honestly, if that becomes a job, I don’t know if it would mix well ... being stressed out, I don’t know what would happen.
“I’m worried I would get sick of it and would never do it as a thing I love to do anymore and more of a thing I have to do for work,” Nina said.
Savanah is interested in joining an adult orchestra, while Nina wants to write more songs in the future.
“I am part of the combined schools orchestra, and that is fun, but I would like to do a more advanced group,” Savanah said. “I think that would be cool, especially if I go to uni and join a music group there.”
“I am going to try and get into a band next year and try and do some gigs or something,” Nina said. “I find it quite relaxing to write songs, even though I am not the best at it. Time will tell.”
Their prize for winning was US$1000 (NZ$1690).
As for what they will do with the money, the girls have some ideas.
“If this paycheck comes in soon, next week I am going to Rarotonga, so I will spend it there,” Savanah said.
Nina said: “I’m going to put it all towards a new computer for school [university] next year, even with how badly I don’t want to do that - I want to buy clothes, make-up ... nope.”
Girls’ High music teacher Anna Marie Fenn said she was “really happy” that Gisborne District Sister Cities secretary Jan Calder had encouraged the school to get involved.
“It was just really nice to have [Nina and Savanah’s] work recognised as being something that was really good internationally,” Fenn said.
Calder said she began trying to get Gisborne schools involved in YAAS a few years ago.
Last year, GGHS students Nikita Schwass and Jasmine Reynolds placed.
“We’ve hit with a bombshell this year,” Calder said. “I remember thinking ‘Oh, if we could win this ...’, not thinking we had such a good chance as well, which was cool.”
