To be launched spring 2009.
Videos and Essay contests by youth about high school seniors who are inspiring!
There will be separate contests for videos and for essays.
Teens will be invited to create short films or a short essay highlighting a high school senior who has over come significant obstacles and adversity in their life. These students have lived though child abue, abandonment, or neglect, have been challenged with physical or mental disabilities; or have parents who abused drugs or alcohol. These students have or will graduate from high school and have created productiive and hopeful lives. They have taken simple, courageous steps to improve their own situation, helped others, and grown in the process. These students are often go unnoticed and without acknowledgement for the impact they have on their own lives and the lives of others around them.
The teens participating in making each video or essay will experience healing, inspiration, and a sense of community and purpose. The process of making the videos and essays themselves will have lasting benefits for the teens involved.
Public recognition of the teens' videos and their stories will further benefit the teens, the audience, and the communities in which the videos are made and shown.
Wiinners chosen will receive cash prizes. Selected videos and essays may be edited for inclusion in the TIE video distribution project and TIE newsletter. Videos or excerpts may also be combined to create larger films for inspirational, educational, or promotional use. Essays may also be combined for publication for inspirational, educational, or promotional use.
Our goal is to inspire teens nationwide to take self-responsibility, compassion, and a hopeful attitude to build the world for themselves in which they want to live, regardless of what life has handed them. These contests have three positive key objectives: First to inspire teens by seeing the videos and reading the essays. Second to acknowledge young people who have overcome adversity and obstacles in their lives. Third to get kids involved in noticing and telling the story of a teen who inspires them.
