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OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE

• 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)
• 36,000 school students from 144 nations have taken part in the Mondialogo School Contest 2007/2008

Stuttgart, Germany / Paris, France, Aug 05, 2008 – 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

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