Winner gets $1,000 and New York trip to work with award-winning director
to turn concept into professional PSA for national broadcast
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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – NEW YORK, Oct. 8, 2014 — The National Road Safety Foundation and Scholastic (NASDAQ: SCHL), the global children’s publishing, education and media company, are looking for ideas from young people to help educate their peers about the risks of walking while using a mobile device.. Entries are now open for the 6th annual Drive2Life PSA Contest, under the theme “Distracted Walking = Dangerous Walking.”
The winner will receive a $1,000 prize and an all expenses-paid trip to New York to work with an Emmy Award-winning TV director to turn his or her idea into a public service message that will be broadcast nationwide next May during Global Youth Traffic Safety Month.
“The dangers of distracted driving have been well documented, but many of those same risks apply to pedestrians as well,” said Michelle Anderson of The National Road Safety Foundation (NRSF), a non-profit group that creates driver safety programs distributed free to schools, police and traffic safety advocates. “Thousands of young people make unexpected visits to the hospital because of injuries sustained by walking distracted, and when the interaction is with a motor vehicle, the injuries are often serious or even deadly. More than 60 children are hit by cars every day.”
“With the continuing popularity of mobile devices, especially among young people, distracted walking is becoming a more serious issue, and that is why we are encouraging young people to help us get the word out to their peers,” Anderson said.
Students in grades 6-12 are invited to submit a PSA concept that addresses in 30 seconds the dangers of distracted walking. Ideas may be in the form of scripts or storyboards. No videos will be accepted, and group entries are not accepted. For more information about the competition and for the entry form and complete rules, visit www.nrsf.org/teenlane or www.scholastic.com/Drive2Life. Deadline for entries is February 10, 2015. No purchase necessary and void where prohibited.
The creator of the winning PSA concept, judged by a panel of education and traffic safety experts and an award-winning film director, will receive a $1,000 prize and an all expenses-paid trip to New York City to work with the director to film and edit the idea into a professional PSA. Two runners-up in each grade category (grades 6-8, 9-12) will each receive $500.
The winning PSA will be broadcast next May on more than 220 TV stations nationwide on the nationally-syndicated weekly program “Teen Kids News.” It will also receive widespread airings on newscasts and online, and the winner will be profiled in Scholastic Classroom Magazines, which reach nearly 5 million students and 50,000 teachers.
Last year, nearly 1,000 entries were received from students throughout the U.S. The winner was Emily Mochel, an 18-year-old high school senior from Weston, Florida.
For more than 50 years, The National Road Safety Foundation has created driver education programs for use in schools and by police, traffic safety agencies, youth advocacy groups and others. NRSF has programs on distracted driving, speed and aggression, drinking and driving, and drowsy driving. For more information or to download free programs, visit www.nrsf.org or www.teenlane.org.
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