Shortlisted submissions to the Connect4Climate iChange 30-second video competition.
A young woman comes home to find her boyfriend saving water...by bathing with another woman. "Shower together and save 7,300 gallons per year" is the final message of What's More Precious?, the 30-second video created by Nadia Asfour, Selina Chaouki, and Elias El Hage of the Lebanese American University, which won the iChange Grand Prize of 5,000 euros, an internship in New York, and the opportunity to be featured at film festivals in Cannes, New York, and Beijing.
The video was selected as the Grand Prize winner by popular votes cast by nearly 2000 international advertising, marketing, and communications professionals and high-profile personalities from the worlds of media, fashion, and film who attended the 26th GrandPrix Advertising Strategies awards event at the Teatro Nazionale in Milan on Wednesday evening.
The World Bank's Connect4Climate (C4C) initiative and TVN Media Group, in partnership with leading media networks and academic institutions, launched the iChange competition in April 2013 to challenge university students worldwide to create powerful video messages about climate change issues and action. The competition attracted 248 entries from students enrolled in 165 universities from 66 countries around the globe.
World Bank Group External Affairs Vice President Cyril Muller said, "We are thrilled by the truly global response to the iChange challenge. From Angola to Bhutan, Indonesia to New Zealand, young people from 165 universities put their creative talents on show to communicate the acute need for climate action -- with passion, originality, and humor. We congratulate this network of engaged students and thank them for helping us to inspire others to 'connect4climate' and act for our common future."
The top five entries were selected by a jury chaired by Donald Ranvaud, producer of award-winning films including The Constant Gardener and City of God. The five finalists were invited to Milan to present their climate change messages at the GrandPrix Advertising Strategies event, and the audience in attendance voted for the Lebanese American University students' video as the 5,000 euro Grand Prize winner.
"It's so great to hear all the students' voices, and to hear that they are eager to tackle climate change. I hope that we can all work together in the future in order to build a sustainable environment," emphasized Asfour.
The four other student team winners, who each took home a 2,000 euro grant for their video entries were: Nadia Morghen and Marco Piccinini from Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Italy for Global Warning; Rolando Berry from UWC Mahindra College, India for The Tap; Mathilde Sahlen and Ulrikke Nordseth from the National Academy of the Arts, Norway for Simple Things You Can Do to Help the Earth; and Marco Arena and Connor Botkin from the University of East Anglia, Great Britain for Climate for Change. Berry, Arena, and Botkin also won internships from international marketing and advertising companies.
The iChange online Popular Vote award went to Oliver Olivella from Universidad de Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lozano, Columbia for his video Care About Your Home, Care About the World.
"With our shared understanding of communication's critical role in bringing climate change issues to the fore of public consciousness, TVN Media Group has been pleased to partner with the World Bank's Connect4Climate team on the iChange competition. Youth have enormous creative talents that when tapped, can yield fantastic results, as the iChange winners here today have shown," said Rino Moffa, publisher of TVN Media Group and organizer of the annual GrandPrix Advertising Strategies event.
The GrandPrix is an internationally recognized advertising award event for strategic brand communication, with a focus on the creative excellence of the communication platform and the team play between companies, agencies, and media.
The World Bank's Connect4Climate program joined the list of the evening's winners, as the GrandPrix Jurors awarded Connect4Climate Program Manager Lucia Grenna a special 'Communication and Global Strategy' prize for the best non-profit communication campaign for its strategic use of social media and user-generated content to engage global youth in the climate change conversation.
