What's your story? video contest for NB children

CyberLaunch Academy is proud to announce the official launch of the special version of What's Your Story? video contest for school students. This contest is open for 7-17 years old residents of New Brunswick. Participants of the contest have to produce and submit by August 22, 2017 a short video where they will answer the contest question “What would you do to make the internet a safer place?” The winners of the contest will be announced in early September. They will receive scholarships for taking computer science courses taught by CyberLaunch Academy.

The special version of the What’s your story? contest is a part of a larger scholarships initiative piloted last spring by CyberLaunch Academy in partnership with Bulletproof Solutions Inc., PQA Testing, and individual philanthropists under the name “Sponsor a child in IT training”. During this pilot stage six aboriginal, low income and recently immigrated boys and girls from elementary and middle schools in Fredericton, NB received training in coding and website design.

“The pilot of our “Sponsor a child in IT training” initiative was quite a success. Both the impact on kids who otherwise wouldn’t be able to participate in our program and the interest in the community encouraged us to continue the program and expand it. What’s your story? contest that is run in partnership with Trend Micro corporation is the initiative that should help us to accomplish this goal” – Dr. Natalia Stakhanova, NB Innovation Research Chair in Cyber Security and a founder of CyberLaunch Academy.

Trend Micro’s What’s Your Story? is a campaign that was first launched in 2010, and now runs in multiple countries around the world. In 2017, the company is hosting a special version of What’s Your Story? to support the Cyberlaunch Academy’s mission to develop an appreciation of science and technology among students from an early age and help them build practical computer science skills gradually and systematically starting in elementary school and throughout the entire course of studies.

“The Trend Micro Canada team is proud to partner with CyberLaunch Academy on this fantastic video competition. Our company’s vision and commitment to make a world safer for exchanging digital information has remained the same for over 28 years. This initiative is a great opportunity to help tomorrow’s netizens gain a safer digital presence by understanding the online risks.” Marcia Sequeira, Vice President, Canada Sales & Marketing, Trend Micro

The CyberLaunch Academy’s scholarship program is intended as a community wide initiative. Its goal is to encourage partners from government, business, nongovernmental and faith organizations as well as individuals to take more proactive role in New Brunswick’s economic development. Early computer science training of children is believed to be an essential first step in preparing the next generation New Brunswikers for local economy. As the demand for high skilled workers worldwide will continue to grow, these people will become the key human resource for local businesses and will create synergetic momentum for economic growth. The CyberLaunch Academy sees its scholarship program as a program that that promotes more equitable access to computer science training to all families in New Brunswick.

“We are very excited that this international corporation with more than 5,000 employees in over 50 countries and the world’s leader in cyber security solutions decided to support our scholarships initiative. Not only did the company provided scholarships for our program, but offered us to use the resources of their signature What’s your story? campaign to create more opportunities for New Brunswick children from socio-economic groups that are underrepresented in science and technology disciplines.” – Dr. Stakhanova

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For more information: Oleg Stakhanov, Executive Director, CyberLaunch Academy, 506-440-0759

Email: oleg@cyberlaunchacademy.ca; https: www.cyberlaunchacademy.ca; Facebook: @cyberlaunchacademy

What’s your story? contest website: https://cyberlaunchacademy.trendmicro.ca/

Trend Micro https://www.trendmicro.com/en_ca/about.html