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Strong American Schools ED in '08 Campaign to Award $5,000 College Scholarship to Winner of the Film Your Issue 2008 Awards

Posted on: Friday, 6 June 2008, 18:00 CDT

WASHINGTON, June 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Strong American Schools' ED in '08 campaign and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will award $5,000 college scholarship to the winner of the education category at the FYI--Film Your Issue 2008 Awards Ceremony today in Los Angeles, CA. The scholarship will be presented to 19 year-old college student from Miami, Fla., Ian Rojas, for his film, High School Drop-Out, by former Los Angeles city Mayor and California Secretary of Education Richard Riordan.

Guatemalan-American Rojas' film by was selected for the Bill and Melinda Gates/Strong American Schools Award. His two-minute short film contrasts American youths taking education for granted with a young boy in his native Guatemala who cleans car windshields to support his family and dreams of going to school. High School Drop-Out also won the MySpace Impact Audience Award and the Associated Press Award.

"Ian Rojas' film highlights a huge problem that plagues the American education system, which is a lack of focus on schoolwork by American students," said Strong American Schools' ED in '08 Chairman Roy Romer. "One of our goals at the ED in '08 campaign is to encourage schools to increase time in class and support for learning. As the United States' education system continues to fall behind those of other industrialized nations, we must ensure that American schools equip every student with the skills needed to succeed in college, work and life."

Winning films will be presented during the Democratic and Republican 2008 National Conventions, at the NAACP National Convention and at AFI SILVERDOCS. The winners were flown to Los Angeles to receive their awards at the FYI -- Film Your Issue 2008 awards ceremony this evening at Sony Pictures Studios.

The nine winning films were selected from a record-breaking pool of 500 film submissions from young adults, ages 14 to 24, from 46 states and 27 countries. The FYI-Film Your Issue competition, (http://www.filmyourissue.com/) is an unprecedented global initiative and competition, in partnership with Strong American Schools, USA TODAY, MySpace, The United Nations, The Associated Press, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The NAACP, Sony Pictures Entertainment, MTV, The American Film Institute and others. Those interested in submitting films were invited to add their voices to the public dialogue with 2-minute short films on issues that impact their generation.

Winners were selected by an illustrious VIP Jury, by the public online on both MySpace Impact and Think MTV, and by participating cause organizations, which joined forces to encourage young adults to express their minds and to underscore the power of every voice to impact dialogue, using the power of the internet and User-Generated Content.

Audience Awards were selected by MySpace members and visitors to Think MTV. Jury Awards were selected by members of the 2008 FYI VIP Jury of illustrious leaders, headed by Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw, and included MySpace Founder Tom Anderson, CNN Anchor Wolf Blitzer, NBC Anchor Brian Williams, United Nations DPI Under-Secretary-General Kiyotaka Akasaka, Best Buy Vice-Chairman Brad Anderson, HBO Host Bill Maher, USA TODAY Publisher Craig Moon and others.

ED in '08 is a national, nonpartisan campaign that calls on all the presidential candidates to propose plans to ensure that American students will graduate from high school with the skills needed to compete in a global economy. For more information, log onto http://www.edin08.com/.

ED in '08

CONTACT: Jocelyn Webster of ED in '08, +1-202-870-9820 (cell),Jocelyn.Webster@StrongAmericanSchools.org

Web Site: http://www.edin08.com/http://www.filmyourissue.com/

Source: PRNewswire-USNewswire

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