IWitness Video Challenge Deadline Friday, May 13

Today is the last day for educators to submit their students’ work to the 2016 IWitness Video Challenge.

The challenge invites students from all over North America to be inspired by the voices in IWitness, to use their innovation to create positive value in their communities, and to submit short videos explaining the inspiration behind their extraordinary actions and impact.

The student winner will receive a $5,000 scholarship. Second and third place will receive $1,000 and $500, respectively. The first place winner’s teacher will receive a $1,000 grant and his or her school will receive a $2,500 grant.

This year’s Challenge, the third annual contest, has already received a record number of applicants from across North America. Winners will be chosen by region and then a national winner will be selected from those winners. A jury including USC Shoah Foundation education staff will review the submissions and choose the winning entries.

The scoring rubric has six categories that are each assigned a score of 0-4. Videos are evaluated according to “Completion of the IWitness Video Challenge Activity” (worth 5 percent), “Connection to Testimony” (25 percent), “Impact of Action Plan” (25 percent), “Social Impact” (20 percent), “Student Involvement” (20 percent), and “Video Project Design and Creativity” (5 percent).

To achieve the highest score in each category, students must demonstrate how testimony inspired their project and show how their project creates value and makes a difference in their community. The students’ involvement in the project also needs to be clearly articulated.

High-scoring projects should also be engaging, original and creative, incorporating a variety of elements such as video clips, voiceover, text, still photography and audio.

Regional winners will be announced on the IWitness website around June 3. The national winners will be announced on or around June 10.