Film Your Project Citizen Issue - An Online Video Competition!

Project Citizen is proof that young people can offer fresh and innovative perspectives on problem-solving in their communities.  

The Center for Civic Education invites Project Citizen students in the U.S. and around the world to participate in Film Your Issue—an online video competition that highlights solutions proposed by young people to contemporary problems. The problem should be related to one of the following “front-burner” issues: the environment, the economic recession, education, health and healthcare, human rights, equal rights, national security and defense, poverty, public service, and technology.  

The deadline for submissions is April 19, 2010, with winners announced in May. Winning submissions to the Film Your Issue competition will be presented to senior officials of President Barack Obama’s administration, highlighted on the What’s Your Issue iTunes Channel, and presented at an awards ceremony co-hosted by Sony Pictures in Los Angeles. Winners will be featured at the Center for Civic Education’s National Project Citizen Showcase at the Legislative Summit of the National Conference of State Legislatures.  

A jury of distinguished panelists will select the winning videos and confer among other prizes, a Project Citizen Public Policy Award for the video that presents the best public policy solution to a public policy problem (including an explanation as to why the problem is best addressed by public policy). One representative of the team of project creators that wins the Project Citizen Public Policy Award, if a U.S. resident, will be flown to Los Angeles (if under 18, accompanied by an adult chaperon) for an awards ceremony as a guest of the Center for Civic Education. An “Audience Favorite” will be selected from entries submitted by U.S. residents through online voting on YouTube, which will host the videos. International participants are welcome, but funding for travel to Los Angeles is available only for U.S. residents. 

Full contest rules and submission instructions are available at whatsyourissue.tv. (The What’s Your Issue song-writing competition is another way to participate.) 

The Center for Civic Education is joined in this partnership with the What’s Your Issue Foundation by an impressive roster of supporters, including YouTube, Best Buy, Apple, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Association of American Colleges and Universities, American Red Cross, Sony Pictures, and others.