Congratulations to the Winners of the "My Culture + Your Culture" Online Video Contest!
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The Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) is pleased to announce the four winners of its online video contest, “My Culture + Your Culture =?”. The contest was co-sponsored by the Adobe Youth Voices initiative of the Adobe Foundation. ECA launched the initiative at the National Press Club on December 1, 2008, to encourage cross-cultural community building and mutual understanding via the Web and social media platforms and to attract new members to the groundbreaking ExchangesConnect social networking site, at http://connect.state.gov. ExchangesConnect, since its launch in October 2008, has drawn over 8,400 members from 170 countries.
Meet Our Winners
José Vinícius Reis Gouveia
is a high school student in Recife, Brazil. He plans to apply to study cinema at Pernambuco Federal University. He loves to watch movies, hang out with friends, read, and chat online. He applied for four other cultural contests and had an internship in Rio de Janeiro at a cable station that focuses on education. Watch his winning video, Human Colours.
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Tim Peters
Tim Peters graduated in 2008 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He studied in Shanghai, China, for a month in summer 2006 and has also studied in Granada, Spain, and Montreal, Canada. He has made short videos since high school, and he won a 24-hour video competition. One of his projects was selected for the 2008 Drip Video Festival. Peters recently was awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship for Argentina for the 2009 school year. Watch his winning video,
A Friend in Nanjing. |
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Grant Jirka
is a student at Columbus High School in Columbus, Nebraska. In November 2008, the governor of Nebraska appointed him as the youngest member to the Governor’s Youth Advisory Council, which works to assure that youth are represented in state initiatives that affect employment, job-training opportunities, rural and urban economic sustainability, juvenile justice and child welfare services. Watch his winning video, Winning Team.
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Bijoy Thangaraj
is a software engineer from South India who is working for Honeywell Technology Solutions. His hobbies include composing music and playing the guitar and keyboard. He has recorded instrumental albums and is currently working on a gospel album. He enjoys creating recordings and videos that have an impact on people. In the future, he wishes to start his own media production company. Watch his winning video, My Culture + Your Culture = World Of Wonder.
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