Film Created by HPHS Students Gets Honorable Mention at White House Student Film Festival

Submitted by Highland Park High School

A film created by Highland Park High School students spotlighting the impact of GIVE (Go Innovate Volunteer Educate) earned an Honorable Mention out of thousands of entries in this year’s White House Student Film Festival.

See their video here.

GIVE was co-founded in 2008 by HPHS student Daniella Cohen and Partha Rajendra, a current senior at the University of Virginia and the grandson of the founders of the Sahasra Deepika Institute of Education, which improves the lives of impoverished children in Bangalore, India.

According to the GIVE website, www.gogiveproject.com, the mission of GIVE, which evolved from a pen pal program Daniella founded in fifth grade called Peace Buddies, is to “promote cultural understanding among students and to strengthen the education at our partner schools.” Project GIVE has sent “thousands of letters and flip flops, signed with messages from hope, from schools across the US to schools in India, Uganda and Rwanda.”

Project GIVE also has installed Internet and provided laptops for some of the schools with which they have connected over the years. Members have now begun creating short videos on various topics in the humanities and sciences, such as poetry and astronomy, which they are sharing with the students overseas.

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GIVE members include Daniella Cohen, Bennett Preskill, Hannah Chonkan-Urow, Gabe Small, Zoey Melinger, Allen Wehner, Corey Novick and Justin Mills; the organization’s sponsors are HPHS physics teacher Kunal Pujara and English teacher Judi Elman.

Cohen and Preskill were invited to the White House March 21 to accept the Honorable Mention awards on behalf of GIVE; they also attended a full-day workshop by the American Film Institute on video as a tool for social change. In addition to President Obama, other speakers at the awards ceremony included actors Hilary Swank, Kal Penn, Amber Riley, Michael Ealy, Jake Johnson and Steve McQueen.

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“I am humbled and grateful that Bennett and I were able to meet the President of the United States. President Obama’s passionate smile and eloquent words clearly exemplified his commitment to my generation. The experience would not have been possible without the support of the GIVE Team. We may only be teenagers, but we are changing the world!” Cohen said.

“I think one of the coolest things about my experience at the White House was not just getting to meet celebrities and President Obama, but also getting the chance to meet and talk with kids from all over the country whose goal it is to create a lasting impact on others,” Preskill said. “Each person offers something uniquely useful. It makes me extremely happy to see that while we are doing our best to work on our project, there are still others who feel responsible to take care of some of the rest of the world’s problems.”