Mondialogo School Contest: Fifty Schools Chosen as Finalists

* 50 schools at the final of the Mondialogo School Contest in Beijing - among
them U.S. students from Allison Park (Pennsylvania), Lewisburg (West Virginia)
and Land O'Lakes (Wisconsin)

STUTTGART, Germany and PARIS, Aug. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- The finalists for the
Mondialogo School Contest 2007/2008 have been decided. Daimler and UNESCO have
announced the 50 best schools at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.
Participants from a total of 36 countries will be represented at the final,
among them three schools from the USA. The A. W. Beattie Career Center, the
Greenbrier East and the Conserve School have made it to the final with its
partners from the Syrian Arab Republic, Benin and Egypt. The teams with
American involvement (see list below) have been working on projects dealing
with the topics of cultural diversity and war & peace. In each team students
from two schools in different countries have been working together.
Key criteria for the nomination were the intensity of the intercultural
dialogue between the partner teams and the creative implementation of the
projects. Areas of special focus in the current competition are "sport and
fair play," "sustainable future" and "cultural identity." The 50 nominated
teams are invited to Beijing/China from 25 to 28 September 2008. Here, the
partner teams will meet in person for the first time and present their
projects to an international jury. The jury will select the best three and
announce the winners at a festive Award Ceremony.
This year 2,740 school teams with a total of 36,000 school students
between the ages of 14 and 18 from 144 countries took part. More than one
third of the project groups come from Europe (980 schools, 35%) followed by
596 teams from the Asia and Pacific region (22%), 524 schools from Latin
America and the Caribbean (19%), 356 schools from Africa (13%) as well as 237
schools from the Arab states (8%) and 47 schools from North America (2%).
The contest, initiated by Daimler and UNESCO in 2003, is the largest
global contest on intercultural dialogue. The aim of this global contest is to
encourage dialogue between school students of different cultural origins, who
work together across continents on a joint project: examples include musical
works, plays, collages, photographic documentation, sculptures or Internet
pages. Through the intercultural project work, school students are intended to
develop understanding, tolerance and respect for people with different
cultures, religions, languages and origins.
The Mondialogo School Contest takes place this year for the third time.
Since 2003, a total of 60,000 school students around the world have
participated. Ambassadors of the initiative include the Brazilian author Paulo
Coelho and Swedish writer Henning Mankell. In addition to the school contest,
the Mondialogo initiative includes the Mondialogo Engineering Award to
encourage intercultural dialogue among engineering students and promote
knowledge transfer between industrialized and developing countries. For
more information: www.mondialogo.org

Nominated teams with US-participation:

Team: Kinder Surprise
City: Lewisburg, West Virginia
School: Greenbrier East High School

Team: Beattie
City: Allison Park, Pennsylvania
School: A.W. Beattie Career Center

Team: Internation Conservation
City: Land O'Lakes, Wisconsin
School: Conserve School

SOURCE Daimler AG

Daimler AG, Stuttgart-Germany: Susann Rohr, +49(0)711-17-40622,
susann.rohr@daimler.com; or Daimler, New York-USA: Han Tjan, +1-212-909-9063,
han.tjan@daimler.com; or Mondialogo, Andre Paris, +49(0)69-74-34-88-309,
presse@mondialogo.org; or UNESCO, Sue Williams, +33(0)1-45-68-17-06,
s.williams@unesco.org