Announcing: #Write4Good Challenge Winners
If you could change the world, where would you start?
This summer we launched #Write4Good, a nationwide challenge which called upon writers to share their insights on global issues. Pupils, parents, and friends of students wrote to create awareness about a vast spectrum of cultural and socio-political contention: abortion, mental illness, immigration, global warming. Each entry was equally educational and entertaining, each its own unique journey into the powerful world of words.
A talented panel of professional judges, including New York Times bestselling author William D. Garner, accepted the challenge to read and rank more than 70 essays to determine the top three. Selections were made based on relevant research, grammar and style, and overall creative edge.
The results?
In first place is Sean Ku Wang (@seankw), with this piece entitled “An End to Huntington’s Disease.” Sean will be awarded $3,000 in scholarship funding for the college or university of his choice.
“Combine the cognitive decline of Alzheimer’s, muscle spasms of ALS, and emotional irregularities of schizophrenia and you have a rough picture of Huntington’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder in which nerve cells in the brain accumulate toxins and die. The result is a progressive loss of control of both the body and mind, manifesting as involuntary writhing movements called chorea and deteriorating mental abilities.”
The first runner up is Samantha Fain (@paintingskies) with her riveting words on mental illnesses entitled “Sticking It to the Stigma: There’s No Shame in Being Sick.” Samantha is the winner of $2,000 in scholarships.
“According to the World Health Organization, “one in four people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives,” which is around 450 million people total. However, only around 297 million will ever seek help for their disorder (“Mental Disorders Affect One in Four People”). How can one receive help if they’re too scared to ask for it? Due to the stigma surrounding mental illness, the mentally ill are afraid to ask for help because of the judgments that may occur when they seek treatment.”
In addition, Joseph Dov’s (@JosephDov) emotive work “UCARE: What is it? And why should you?” takes 3rd place winner. Joseph will take home $1,000 in scholarship funding.
“UCARE stands for Unaccompanied Central American Refugee Empowerment…
“In 2014, there was a surge of unaccompanied children fleeing to the United States from Central America due to the gang violence and threats of harm. These children go through an agonizing journey over a thousand miles to get here, only to face more difficulties once they present themselves at the border. Many children, some of them with their mothers have been placed in detention centers in Texas, Arizona, and California, sometimes for months on end. Federal courts have already ruled these detention centers illegal, but enforcement is slow, if it comes at all. Most of these children have lost family, friends, their homes, and all sense of belonging on the journey here to the States, but simply crossing the border and applying for asylum is only one of many steps to gaining refuge here.”
Prose. stands for empowering writers on a global scale. We stand for the value of language, particularly the written word, in all contexts of everyday life: from education and business to the furthest reaches of the human imagination. We stand for every person’s equal opportunity to write more and read more.
What do you stand for?