Second at Eurochallenge, First in our Hearts: the GHS Econ Club Team

The Second Place winners of the 2025 Eurochallenge was Greenwich High School’s Economics Club. This year, underclassmen Youhan Liang, Alex Jackson, Kaitlyn Qin, Diana Davidson, Raghav Ramji and Jin Cha were a part of the GHS Econ Club team with Sylvester Pecora, Shaurya Singh, and Axel Persson as upperclassmen mentors, and Ian Tiedemann as the club advisor. For the Eurochallenge, each team picks a country to focus on, and from there, learns about their current economic state and creates possible solutions to improve their situation.

Tiedemann shared that the team had to choose a country that utilizes the Euro currency and from there, select a challenge from a list of subjects. At first they’d chosen Italy as their country due to the appeal of the growing age disparity in their population and the “astounding socioeconomic difference from the North and the South” as Jackson put it. However, they switched their choice of country to Germany because of its larger economy and the Econ Club members were fascinated by the fact that Germany’s economy affects a lot of the Euro area. As such, if Germany’s economy suffers, so does the Euro area. Furthermore, Liang explained  since Covid hit Germany, the country hasn’t been doing as well and is considered “economically stagnant.” Additionally, in November, Germany’s government collapsed, which influenced their interest in the nation.

In addition to learning about the main subject of Germany, the students studied macroeconomics and had to be able to analyze economic trends in the Euro Area as well as Germany. Liang was the financial analyst in the group and found it extremely interesting to learn about the interest rates and macroeconomics for this role. Due to the fact that many of these topics are new to high school students, they found there to be many revelations throughout the process. Jackson shared that the most interesting things he learned about this topic were that at the moment almost every country is struggling in some way - “whether it be a lack of infrastructure, [or] energy” - and that at any time, these countries could fall if a scandal occurred in an “area of their weakness.” He found this experience to be truly “eye opening.”

After choosing their country, the team had to create a powerpoint presentation on Germany’s political and economical struggles and provide a variety of solutions for these issues. Jackson felt that creating solutions was the most difficult part because they had to use the knowledge they’d gained through research to “pull off major scale hypothetical policies that would benefit the whole country.” 

In April, the team traveled to New York City to attend the annual Eurochallenge, a nationwide competition funded by the European Union and considered one of the EU Delegation’s most important modes of outreach to the American youth. Tiedemann expressed that they’d practiced the presentation and Q&A so much that by the time they reached the formal presentation, it wasn’t very difficult. However, “that said, presenting in front of economic experts with real stakes is still nerve-wracking.” The team also can’t see any other teams present, so they have no gauge of how well they did versus the competitors.

In between the preliminary round and the semi-final/final round, they had a month to update their information and prepare even more to better know their topics. On the day of the competition, each team gets asked two “basic” questions which they should be able to answer regardless of what country they researched and what their solutions were and then were asked questions specific to their proposed solutions.

Liang attributes the group accomplishing all of their tasks to the “really good mentors” they had. These mentors were upperclassmen, many of whom did the Eurochallenge last year. Some ways in which they assisted the underclassmen were in the preparation of the presentation through Google Meet calls. Additionally, they helped with the Q&A section by drilling the team with every possible question they could think of. While this team worked hours late into the night, Jackson believes that “everything went smoothly.”

While the Eurochallenge competition is done, these students’ journey in the Econ club is far from over; they travelled to Washington D.C. to present to the German Embassy. In addition to this, they also went to the International Monetary Fund and the US Treasury.

In closing this amazing year of the Econ Club team, Tiedemann shares valuable insight into how they were able to accomplish so much and the secret of any great team. “The personalities meshed well, they all pulled equally and the older students in the club helped coach the 9th/10th graders. This team, grade 9 to 12, is like a family. That alone is a win! A team like that performing well is actually not that surprising because they like the subject, they like being around each other and the learning is fun.”