MALTZ MUSEUM OFFERS $100,000 IN SCHOLARSHIPS AND PRIZES FOR THIRD YEAR
Stop The Hate: Youth Speak Out! Essay Contest Fights Discrimination and Prejudice
Cleveland, Ohio, October 20, 2010 – The Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage is again challenging students in grades 6-12 to take personal responsibility to combat hatred, discrimination and intolerance by participating in the 2010-11 Stop the Hate: Youth Speak Out! essay contest.
Now in its third year, Stop the Hate gets students thinking, writing and talking about what they’ve seen and heard, and taking responsibility for how they can help stop prejudice and discrimination. In two years, more than 3000 entries were received. Subjects ranged from bullying to racial discrimination to Jewish/Palestinian relations.
Forty-six students have received awards in the first two years, including twenty scholarship finalists, a diverse group from a range of gender, ethnic and geographic backgrounds and from public and private schools. 2010 grand prize winner, Andrea Bestor, is now a senior at Avon Lake High School where she continues to be involved in preventing bullying and teen suicide. Matt Soble, the 2009 grand prize winner, is continuing his studies as a sophomore at Ohio University.
Stop The Hate asks students to describe an act of discrimination, reflect on their own response and write a 500-word essay with a plan of action to affect change. Essays are scored on content, writing, originality and creativity, and utilization of the theme of personal responsibility. Top-scoring entries advance to the finals.
High school juniors and seniors are eligible for three college scholarships to attend an Ohio college or university, as well as other prizes and educational resource materials for their schools. Scholarship finalists also receive presentation training and read their essays at a ceremony to be held in April, 2011, where winners will be selected. Students in grades 6-10 are eligible for cash prizes and educational resource materials
Essays for 6th-10th graders are due December 1, 2010. The deadline for 11th and 12th graders is January 5, 2011. Students are asked to submit their essays electronically through the official Stop the Hate website at www.mmjh.org. Complete information, guidelines and deadlines are also available at the website.
Schools can arrange for a Stop The Hate guided tour of the Museum designed to help them prepare students to write their essays, or dozens of other tours aligned with Ohio State Academic Content Standards. “The Stop the Hate essay contest gives young people a chance to express themselves about the consequences of bullying and become leaders for change,” remarks Judi Feniger, Executive Director of the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage. “As students tell us their own stories, it became apparent our children know more about discrimination and prejudice than we’d like to think they do in 21st century America.”
About the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage: An American Story
Opened in 2005, the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage introduces visitors to the beauty and diversity of that heritage in the context of the American experience, promotes an understanding of Jewish history, religion and culture and builds bridges of tolerance and understanding with people of all religions, races, cultures and ethnic backgrounds. It includes An American Story, tracing Ohio’s immigrant history and heritage, and The Temple-Tifereth Israel Gallery, an internationally-recognized collection of Judaica. One admission includes unlimited access.
The Museum was created as a partnership of The Maltz Family Foundation, the Jewish Community Federation’s Centennial Initiative and The Temple-Tifereth Israel, with research support from the Western Reserve Historical Society.
