Strong American Schools ED in '08 Campaign to Award $5,000 College Scholarship to...

Strong American Schools ED in '08 Campaign to Award $5,000 College Scholarship
to Winner of the Film Your Issue 2008 Awards

WASHINGTON, June 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Strong American Schools' ED in
'08 campaign and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will award $5,000
college scholarship to the winner of the education category at the FYI--Film
Your Issue 2008 Awards Ceremony today in Los Angeles, CA. The scholarship
will be presented to 19 year-old college student from Miami, Fla., Ian Rojas,
for his film, High School Drop-Out, by former Los Angeles city Mayor and
California Secretary of Education Richard Riordan.

Guatemalan-American Rojas' film by was selected for the Bill and Melinda
Gates/Strong American Schools Award. His two-minute short film contrasts
American youths taking education for granted with a young boy in his native
Guatemala who cleans car windshields to support his family and dreams of going
to school. High School Drop-Out also won the MySpace Impact Audience Award
and the Associated Press Award.

"Ian Rojas' film highlights a huge problem that plagues the American education
system, which is a lack of focus on schoolwork by American students," said
Strong American Schools' ED in '08 Chairman Roy Romer. "One of our goals at
the ED in '08 campaign is to encourage schools to increase time in class and
support for learning. As the United States' education system continues to
fall behind those of other industrialized nations, we must ensure that
American schools equip every student with the skills needed to succeed in
college, work and life."

Winning films will be presented during the Democratic and Republican 2008
National Conventions, at the NAACP National Convention and at AFI SILVERDOCS.
The winners were flown to Los Angeles to receive their awards at the FYI --
Film Your Issue 2008 awards ceremony this evening at Sony Pictures Studios.

The nine winning films were selected from a record-breaking pool of 500 film
submissions from young adults, ages 14 to 24, from 46 states and 27 countries.
The FYI-Film Your Issue competition, (http://www.filmyourissue.com) is an
unprecedented global initiative and competition, in partnership with Strong
American Schools, USA TODAY, MySpace, The United Nations, The Associated
Press, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The NAACP, Sony Pictures
Entertainment, MTV, The American Film Institute and others. Those interested
in submitting films were invited to add their voices to the public dialogue
with 2-minute short films on issues that impact their generation.

Winners were selected by an illustrious VIP Jury, by the public online on both
MySpace Impact and Think MTV, and by participating cause organizations, which
joined forces to encourage young adults to express their minds and to
underscore the power of every voice to impact dialogue, using the power of the
internet and User-Generated Content.

Audience Awards were selected by MySpace members and visitors to Think MTV.
Jury Awards were selected by members of the 2008 FYI VIP Jury of illustrious
leaders, headed by Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw, and included MySpace
Founder Tom Anderson, CNN Anchor Wolf Blitzer, NBC Anchor Brian Williams,
United Nations DPI Under-Secretary-General Kiyotaka Akasaka, Best Buy
Vice-Chairman Brad Anderson, HBO Host Bill Maher, USA TODAY Publisher Craig
Moon and others.

ED in '08 is a national, nonpartisan campaign that calls on all the
presidential candidates to propose plans to ensure that American students will
graduate from high school with the skills needed to compete in a global
economy. For more information, log onto www.edin08.com.

SOURCE ED in '08

Jocelyn Webster of ED in '08, +1-202-870-9820 (cell),
Jocelyn.Webster@StrongAmericanSchools.org