Washington, DC -- The 2010 winners of the Democracy Video Challenge traveled to Washington, DC, last week as part of their two-week trip to the United States.  IRI, along with the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) hosted a panel luncheon for winners at IRI’s office.

 

As part of the panel luncheon, the six winners discussed their winning videos, the inspiration for their videos and what democracy means to them.  One winner explained that democracy is not political, but should be a part of everyone’s daily life.  Other winners were inspired to make their videos by family members and their childhood experiences.  Tom Garrett of IRI, Jean Rogers of CIPE and Jim Swigert of NDI moderated the discussion.

 

This year’s winners are Adhyatmika from Indonesia, Farbod Khoshtinat from Iran, Joel Marsden from Spain, Juan Pablo Patiño Arévalo from Colombia, Anup Poudel from Nepal and Yared Shumete from Ethiopia.  After the luncheon at IRI, the winners went to the Department of State for an awards ceremony with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.  The winners are also scheduled to visit New York City and Los Angeles to learn more about global democracy and the film-making process.

  

For the second annual Democracy Video Challenge, online voters selected winners from each region of the world (Western Hemisphere, Europe, Middle East/North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South and Central Asia and East Asia Pacific) from more than 1,600 entries from 111 countries.

 

Democracy is… partners include CIPE, IRI, NDI, the International Youth Foundation, the Motion Picture Association of America, NBC Universal, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, the Recording Industry Association of America, TakingITGlobal, University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communications & Journalism, the U.S. Department of State, William Morris Endeavor Entertainment and YouTube.