Love Equals
A Children’s Writing Competition
www.loveequalscontest.com
Love is listening with your heart. Love is a kiss on the cheek for no reason. Love is looking up at a blue sky. Love is taking care of the world for the people living in it. Love is when my dad takes me to school just so my mom can sleep in. Love means showing my heart to other people. Your heart can never be too full. You should be glad that we have love in the world.
When children from six to eleven years old were asked, “What does Love mean to you?” their answers were everything from profoundly truthful and poetic to philosophical and funny.
How surprising it is when children teach us simple truths. They connect directly to their hearts. They remind us of a world without complications or cynicism. How vital it is that we give them room to speak and to be heard. This is exactly what Screen Actors Guild Foundation and Zimand Entertainment hoped to do with this new literacy project.
When international philanthropist Henri Zimand and Screen Actors Guild Foundation met, we decided to create a writing competition for children on the topic of Love. The Love Equals team wanted not only to reach children in every sector of Los Angeles County, but to sign up a star-studded Celebrity Judging Panel for the competition, as well as for the Awards Ceremony on Valentine’s Day. Not only had this never been done before, but it needed to happen in less than four months, start to finish.
During the judging of over 10,000 submissions, it was easy to forget the kids behind the writings. But when we finally got to meet the sixty-four winners at Beverly Center on February 14th, 2007 we met a bunch of real kids. Nervous kids. Kids who were excited, shy, watching and laughing. Kids with lots of swinging legs. It was moving to finally put faces to the writings. You would never have guessed that these kids were thinking the kinds of thoughts we had been reading for two months. It was an important reminder that kids, all kids, are thoughtful, curious, capable, observant people.
Love Equals Judging Panel 2007
Ben Affleck, James Cromwell, Kirk Douglas, Jennifer Garner,
Adolfo Guzman Lopez, Jane Kaczmarek, John Lithgow, Masiela Lusha,
Constance Marie, Paul Newman, Keke Palmer, Burt Reynolds, Brandon Routh,
KJ Steinberg, Wanda Sykes, JoBeth Williams, Rainn Wilson
For more information about the Love Equals Contest visit the official site at www.loveequalscontest.com!
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