Adobe Foundation celebrates nine years in India of its global initiative, Adobe Youth Voices
New Delhi, India, February 17, 2015: Adobe Youth Voices (AYV), the global initiative to ignite creative confidence in youth,celebrated the completion of nine successful years of the program in India by screening 28 of over 125 multimedia projects(short films, animations, music videos, photo essays, posters, comic strips) produced in 2014, in Delhi NCR. The films, varied in their formats and objectives,range from stop motion animations, documentaries, music videos, photo essays to public service announcements.In these movies, students have depicted issues close to their hearts, such as access to education, equality of the girl child, alcoholism, saving the environment and disability. The program has reached over 2,500 children and 153 educators in the year 2014.
Adobe Foundation recently announced invitations to enterthe Adobe Youth Voices Awards, a global, online competition that encourages youth to creatively express their vision for driving positive change in local communities. Now in its fourth year, the Adobe Youth Voices Awards invites youth to explore issues that are important to them through four visual storytelling methods: Documentary, Animation, Narrative and Visual composition. Winning projects will receive grants to support a non-profit of their choice, hardware, and Adobe software. New this year is a fifth category in the awards, Venture, an invitation for five-minute video submissions that pitch a solution to a social problem. Youth are asked to propose a plan for implementing the solution over a year’s time and illustrate the expected impact. Venture winners, in addition to the aforementioned prizes, will also receive mentorship from Ashoka’s Youth Venture to support the execution of their proposed plan. Both prize winners and finalists will become eligible to apply for an Adobe Youth Voices Scholarship.
Shanmugh Natarajan, Vice President, Digital Media, Adobe Systems India said, “We are overwhelmed with the brilliant, thought-provoking work put together by these young creative minds. It is evident that technology plays a significant role in fostering creativity, makes learning more relevant and engaging. It’s wonderful to see children think creatively, communicate effectively and work collaboratively with multimedia to express their unique perspectives on issues close to their hearts”.
Designed to address the needs of the youth, educators and their communities, the Adobe Youth Voices program has engaged over 12,000 youth and200 educators in schools and out-of-school programs, across 138 sites, in India.It has also received wide recognition from industry bodies like NASSCOM and Businessworld-FICCI CSR awards.In India, the Adobe Youth Voices program partners with American India Foundation, global fund for children and taking IT global.The program has empoweredparticipating youth with basic IT skills, media literacy and, through working collaboratively with industry professionals, has led to improved interpersonal relationship skills.
“I feel happy that I received an opportunity to build multimedia skills through the Adobe Youth Voices program and share my story through a short film‘Dil Ye Ziddi Hai’”, said Priyanka, Literacy India, BhatliKhurd.
Educators and mentors who work closely with the children have also benefitted from the AYV program. The program has improved their ability to foster creativity and engage with the youth in student-centred learning. They have been empowered to gain a deeper understanding of their students, their capabilities and the issues that are important to them.
“I really find it personally enthralling, seeing how creative learning aids in the overall development of students. AYV provides them a dais to explore and find new ways of expressing themselves and their ideas through short films. I am so glad to be a part of this program,” said Poonam Pathak, Educator, Social and Development Research Action Group.
“Providing youth and educators the opportunity to engage in knowledge and technology space through creativity with multimedia is an important area of our work. We take pride in our long association with Adobe as their primary partner in the AYV program” said Nishant Pandey, Country Director, American India Foundation.
