Nine-year-old Nicole Ribeiro will visit the World Food Programme's headquarters in Rome as a reward for winning a Hunger Essay competition run for schools in the district of Guarulhos in Brazil's State of São Paulo.

The third grader at Municipal School Padre Manuel de Paiva, in Guarulhos, Brazil, saw off stiff competition from 20 other schools in her home district to claim the prize.

"I did my best to win. I thought I might, that I had some chance, but not so much, but I did!" said a delighted Nicole.

The winning essay - see below for the full version - compares "hunger" to "violence" and draws stark comparisions between attitudes towards food in the developing and developed worlds.

Nicole has praised her teacher Rosana Mio da Silva's classes and declared that she "teaches in a different way, very cool, she lets us go to the blackboard for the activities… it’s nice."

Nicole, who will be accompanied to Rome by her teacher Rosana Mio da Silva, is already looking to her first-ever trip on an airplane and "seeing everything tiny from way up."