The theme for this year’s writing contest was easy enough: The Y2K hysteria (remember Y2K? It seems a distant memory now) came and went without an apocalypse and now it’s time to focus on what youths can do with their lives in the new millennium.
The responses, however, portrayed a world that is anything but easy.
This annual special section represents the best work submitted by high school students all over Chicagoland in a contest sponsored by the Chicago Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Chicago Tribune and Exito.
One category of the competition asked students to write essays in response to this question: “Brave new beginning: With the promise of the new millennium, what can I do in my lifetime to help the Latino community?”
La otra categoria pidio a los estudiantes la misma pregunta, pero escribir el ensayo en espanol: “Un gran comienzo: Con la promesa del nuevo milenio, que puedo hacer en el transcurso de mi vida para ayudar a la comunidad latina de Estados Unidos?”
You will also find winning photographs which mostly deal with Latino themes.
And you will find the winners of the best published newspaper articles, a category of competition that we reintroduced this year after several years’ dormancy.
All these entries are part of the 9th Annual High School Journalism, Photography and Writing Contest, organized by local Latino journalists with the goals of working with youths and publishing depictions of the nation’s fastest growing minority by its youngest members.
