Enlighten America 2020 Essay Contest for 7th, 8th, & 9th graders

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and with the health, safety, and well-being of Georgia's citizens in mind, school districts in metropolitan Atlanta, as well as the rest of Georgia, have closed through April and have transitioned to online learning for students. 7th, 8th, and 9th graders in metro Atlanta who are participating in online learning at home may wish to submit an essay. Great prizes for each grade level. The contest deadline remains April 10, 2020.

Enlighten America 2020 is an ESSAY CONTEST which focuses on the concepts of tolerance, equality, and respect for all people. It stresses civic harmony over violence and equality over prejudice. To participate, middle and high school students (grades 7-9) should reflect on the significance of the contest theme – respect for our diversity in race, religion, national origin, gender, disability and sexual orientation- by writing about the issues of bigotry and prejudice, how such issues have (or have not) been addressed in recent years, and how such issues affect our quest for peaceful coexistence among our friends and neighbors, and throughout the world.

The 2020 Enlighten America Essay Contest is a volunteer community service project brought to you by the Achim/Gate City Lodge of B’nai B’rith International.

Visit http://bit.ly/2020EnlightenAmerica-GA to learn how to enter this contest. Download the Enlighten America 2020 flyer.

All entries must be received by Friday, April 10, 2020. Winners will be announced in mid-May, 2020. The Awards Ceremony has been rescheduled to Sunday, August 30, 2020.

Winners in each grade category will receive the prizes as listed below:

• First-place winners will be awarded $350.
• Second-place winners will be awarded $250.
• Third-place winners will be awarded $150.

It is FREE to enter this essay contest and you do not need to be a member of B’nai Brith.

The winners of the 2019 Enlighten America Essay contest were announced May 9. Check out the 2019 Photo Gallery.

If you have questions, please contact Victor Anapolle at vanapolle@aol.com or 404-432-0626. More details at www.facebook.com/bnaibrithATL.

The Enlighten America Essay Contest serves as a framework or “model of instruction” designed to support teachers in the implementation of the Reading and Writing Standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects Grades 7-8, Grades 9 and the English Language Arts (ELA) Georgia Standards of Excellence (GSE) (see pages 19 -25 for specific standards) for 7th grade, 8th grade, and 9th grade in the following writing skill areas:

• Text Types and Purposes
• Production and Distribution of Writing
• Research to Build and Present Knowledge
• Range of Writing

We hope that schools, teachers, and students will benefit through the Enlighten America Essay Contest as a teaching and learning activity to promote student success as it relates to the Georgia Performance Standards.

At B’nai B’rith International (BBI), we encourage responsibility and mutual respect for the differences in all people. If we accept the premise that all people are special, we’re better able to accept the individual differences in each individual.

We could all learn a lot from a box of crayons………Some are sharp, some are dull, some have weird names, and they’re all DIFFERENT colors.

But they learned to live together peacefully in the same box. Let’s all hope that we humans can somehow learn to live together peacefully on the same planet.