The USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education today sought entries from middle and high school students for the third annual IWitness Video Challenge.
Organizers want students to positively contribute to their communities and submit short videos explaining the inspiration behind their actions and impact.
The challenge is open to all secondary school students in the United States and Canada (except for Quebec) who attend public, private or home schools. The entry deadline is May 13.
Additional information and resources are available on the foundation’s website, iwitness.usc.edu.
The contest is based on one of 39 activities found at the foundation’s website.
The challenge then takes students through the steps necessary to identify a problem, determine how to contribute to solving that problem, and how to create a video that captures their efforts and impact on helping to solve a problem in their community.
Students will then be instructed on how to use the built-in video editor in IWitness to construct, edit and submit their one- to four-minute video project. No prior video editing knowledge is needed to participate.
The winner will receive a $5,000 scholarship, the runner-up a $1,000 scholarship and the third-place finisher a $500 scholarship.
The educator associated with the winner will receive a $1,000 grant. The school or organization that hosted the IWitness group/class associated with the winning entry will receive a $2,500 grant to be used to implement change in their community.
The winning student, along with an educator and parent/guardian, will be flown to Los Angeles to screen their film at USC Shoah Foundation.
USC Shoah Foundation founder Steven Spielberg began the inaugural IWitness Video Challenge in 2013.
“We can use IWitness to show the power of random acts of kindness, the significance of contributing to communities and the very idea that the best way to teach empathy is with examples of it so that maybe someday kindness will be a natural reflex,” Spielberg said at the time.
