Growing up in a multilingual home has taught a young woman from Zimbabwe to value all cultures.

Gugulethu Jemaine Nyathi said having parents who speak different languages has served her well as she pursues an engineering degree at Jiangsu University in China.

“Gugu,” as she is known, was one of 60 winners of the UN-backed Many Languages, One World multilingual essay competition,

Participants submitted entries in one of the six official languages of the UN—Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian or Spanish—that was not their mother tongue or the principal language of instruction at school.

Dianne Penn spoke to Gugu when the winners were at UN Headquarters on Friday to deliver speeches in the General Assembly.

Duration: 3’38”