President Obama to Host First-Ever White House Film Festival

Announces $400 million in new private sector commitments toward ConnectED goal

WASHINGTON, DC - Today, President Obama will host the first ever White House Student Film Festival, an event that will showcase the power of technology to boost learning and the Administration’s commitment to bringing America’s classrooms into the 21^st century with high-speed internet and cutting-edge educational technology.

In the East Room of the White House, President Obama will discuss ongoing progress towards his ConnectED goal of transforming American education by connecting 99% of students to next-generation broadband and wireless technology within five years. In keeping with his pledge to make 2014 a year of action using the power of his pen and his phone, the President will announce $400 million in new private sector commitments from Adobe and Prezi to make free software available to teachers and students to help introduce creative learning materials to classrooms all across the country and help realize the promise of e-learning.

The commitments the President will announce include:

• Adobe – Making available over $300 million worth of free software to teachers and students, including Photoshop and Premiere Elements for creative projects; Presenter and Captivate to amplify e-Learning; EchoSign for school workflow; and a range of teacher training resources. 
• Prezi – Prezi, a software tool for creating memorable presentations, is providing $100 million in Edu Pro licenses for high schools and all educators across America. 

These build on the $750 million commitments the President announced earlier this month — by using the power of his phone, the President inspired private-sector leaders to pledge well over $1 billion in value to America’s students through these private-sector commitments in the last month alone.

Last November, the White House announced the first-ever White House Student Film Festival, a video competition created for K-12 students to create short films on how technology is used in their classroom and the role technology will play in education in the future, and to support learning in key fields such as science, technology, engineering, and math. More than 2,000 videos were submitted.

Following the President’s remarks today, the White House – in collaboration with the American Film Institute (AFI) – will screen the 16 “Official Selections.” The selected videos will be screened in four groups: (1) Young Visionaries; (2) Future Innovators; (3) World of Tomorrow; (4) Building Bridges. The films will be presented by Kal Penn, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, and AFI President and CEO Bob Gazzale. Conan O’Brien will also address the students by video. Details on the selected student videos can be found below.

In addition to the celebration of the student films and the President’s remarks, FOX and National Geographic Channel will treat the attendees to a sneak peek of the first episode of the upcoming COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODYSSEY television series that celebrates the scientific perspective and the importance of science, technology, engineering, and math education.

The students who submitted the Official Selections will be joined in the audience by students who submitted honorable mention videos, parents, teachers, business leaders, and education advocates.

Details on the Official Selections for the first-ever White House Student Film Festival

Young Visionaries

Technology, Documentary, My Dad, and Me. Seventeen-year-old Shelly Ortiz became interested in filmmaking once she began attending the Metropolitan Arts Institute in Arizona in eighth grade. In "Technology, Documentary, My Dad, and Me," Shelly tells us about how the technology in her school has allowed her to find her passion and ability as a filmmaker and use that ability to tell the story of the people she cares about. 

Teleportation Investigation of 2014. Delaware, Ohio High school students Lexus Lexus Wolf, Natalie Koeritzer, Caroline Proffit, and Elizabeth Russell make up the group The Extrazzlers. In their video "Teleportation Investigation of 2014,” The Extrazzlers created an original music video about the technology in 2014 and what it might look like in the future. 

Through the Lens of a Tiger. Seniors Alicia Oluhara and Jason Perry attend Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, D.C. In their submission to the White House Student Film Festival, they detail the many ways technology has enabled them to learn about broadcasting and journalism to tell stories and chase their dreams. 

Stay Curious: Technology in the Classroom. Seventeen-year-old Kayla Briët from Cypress, California has a passion for film, music, and the arts. Her submission focused on how technology can foster both academics and creativity. Kayla is also an accomplished musician who produced and recorded the original music featured in her film "Stay Curious: Technology in the Classroom."

Discovery. Irvington High School sophomore Tiffany Lin from Fremont, California learned about the White House Student Film Festival by following the White House on Instagram. Her film, “Discovery,” shows how technology is used in the everyday life of a student through the advents of an action figure and an omniscient person who guides it.

Beyond the Crossfire. High school students Gabriel Garcia, Tirsa Mercado, and Rachel Walden from High Tech High in Chula Vista, California submitted a short film about a larger documentary being produced by more than 45 fellow students designed to elevate youth voices in the discussion about how to prevent and reduce violence and make our schools, homes, and neighborhoods safer. 

Future Innovators

Art Tech Collaboration. Elementary school students Emily Villazon, Sarah Matus, Jessica Barney, Reyah Doshi, and Garrett Dahn at Highlands and Mill Street Elementary Schools in Naperville, Illinois came together to create this dramatization of the interaction between two schools without ever meeting face to face. Student volunteers helped animate paper cutouts, created props, edited the film, and composed a soundtrack. This was a collaborative effort that required students to work together to create a cohesive story. 

PIP. High school students Richard White, Nicolas Ramey, and Emil Willmann from Louisiana teamed up to tell the story of a young boy who uses technology to make a presentation on what he wants to be when he grows up. 

Technology and Me. First graders Emily Kretschmer, Eleanor Daken, Malaika Wande, Yoan Pinsonneault, Veronica Techane, Makaia Spittel, Bezawit Gessesse, and Sydney Humpert from Silver Spring, Maryland gave us a pure and simple look at how the youngest of our students see the past, present, and future of classroom technology. 

World of Tomorrow

Technology in Education: A Future Classroom. High school junior Daniel Nemroff from Wynnewood, Pennsylvania set out to show us what education might look like in the future. In "Technology in Education: A Future Classsroom," Daniel replaces standard texting with a conceptual example of Objective-Based Learning where students work independently, at their own pace, and are motived by achieving a virtual objective. 

Full S[T]EAM Ahead – How Technology Rocks the Classroom. Elementary school students Miles Pilchik and Gabrielle Nafie from SciTech Kids in New York, New York came together to show us how technology can spark children's innate curiosity through hands-on experiences. From iPads to 3D printers, "Full S[T]EAM Ahead" shows us how STEAM activities requires them to think like scientists, inventors, and Makers. 

Tomorrow's Classroom. Eighth grader Alexander Emerson from Manchester, Massachusetts shows us how his classroom uses technology to collaborate with students in Uganda, Rwanda, and Brazil to design a more efficient cookstove. Alex has been making films for several years, including an adaptation of Ambrose Bierce's short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." 

Building Bridges

Alex. Eleventh grader Aaron Buangsuwon from Atladena, California shot his video "Alex" about his brother, Alex, to shed light on how technology is helping kids with dyslexia and/or dysgraphia learn in a modern school environment. In order to stand out from the other submissions, and in honor of his brother's love of the outdoors, Mitch recorded his video out in nature instead of inside the classroom. 

Posnack Technology: A Day in the Life of Kyle. Seventh graders Marni Rosenblatt, Justin Etzine, and Rachel Huss at the David Posnack Jewish Day School in Davie, Florida came together to tell the story of fellow student Kyle Weintraub, who is being treated for lymphoma in Philadelphia but continues to attend school at Posnack through the use of a special robot. Using the robot, Kyle is able to interact with friends and teachers, venture through the hallways, and participate in class as if he were physically present. 

Double Time. Eighth graders Joshua Leong and Stephen Sheridan from Longfellow Middle School in Falls Church, Virginia told the story of two sister schools who collaborate on a school project from different parts of the world by using technology. Josh and Stephen wrote the script and traveled to schools and airports to tell their story. 

Hello From Malaysia. Seventeen-year-old Kira Bursky from Asheville, North Carolina has been making films since she was only 10. Her film chronicles a fictional girl, Aiman, who, after being sent to boarding school in the United States, uses technology both to maintain a connection with her family back home in Malaysia and also to share her culture and build connections with her new classmates. 

Readout of the President’s Meeting on “My Brother’s Keeper”

This afternoon in the State Dining Room, the President met with foundation and business leaders as well as elected officials and senior administration officials to discuss his “My Brother’s Keeper” Initiative. The President reiterated his belief in the core American value that if you work hard and play by the rules, you should have the opportunity to succeed -- regardless of the circumstances of your birth. The President thanked the business and foundation leaders for their important work and commitment to make this vision a reality and ensure that more boys and young men of color have the opportunity to get ahead. The foundations supporting today’s call to action have already made extensive investments, including $150 million in current spending. The President vowed to continue collaboration with the business sector and foundation community to build on their success and his call to action. Today, the foundations announced that over the next five years they seek to invest at least $200 million, alongside additional investments from their peers in philanthropy and the business community, to find and rapidly spread solutions that have the highest potential to expand opportunity for these boys and young men of color. The President, foundation and business leaders, as well as elected officials and public figures who have come together around this important initiative are resolved to build ladders of opportunity and unlock the full potential of boys and young men of color – something that will benefit all Americans. 

Participants in the meeting included:

Business Leaders

• Joe Echevarria, CEO, Deloitte
• Glenn Hutchins, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Silver Lake
• Magic Johnson, Founder and CEO, Magic Johnson Enterprises
• Adam Silver, Commissioner, National Basketball Association
• Thomas Tull, Founder and CEO, Legendary Entertainment 

Foundation Leaders

• The Honorable Michael R. Bloomberg, Founder, Bloomberg Philanthropies
• Cedric Brown, Managing Partner, The Kapor Center for Social Impact
• Alberto Ibargüen, President and CEO, John S. & James L. Knight Foundation
• Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, President and CEO, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
• Dr. Patrick McCarthy, President and CEO, The Annie E. Casey Foundation
• La June Montgomery Tabron, President and CEO, Kellogg Foundation
• Christopher G. Oechsli, President and CEO, The Atlantic Philanthropies
• The Honorable Colin Powell, Founder and Chairman, America’s Promise Alliance
• Dr. Robert Ross, President and CEO, The California Endowment
• Doug Wood, Program Officer, Ford Foundation (not sitting at table)
• Kenneth H. Zimmerman, Director, U.S Program, Open Society Foundation 

Elected Officials

• The Honorable Rahm Emanuel, Mayor, City of Chicago
• Representative Marcia Fudge, Chair, Congressional Black Caucus
• Representative Rubén Hinojosa, Chairman, Congressional Hispanic Caucus 

Administration Officials

• Secretary of Education Duncan
• Secretary of Labor Perez
• Secretary of Transportation Foxx
• Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor
• Dan Pfeiffer, Senior Advisor
• Gene Sperling, Director of the National Economic Council
• Cecilia Muñoz, Director of the Domestic Policy Council
• Broderick Johnson, Cabinet Secretary
• Acting Deputy Secretary of Education Jim Shelton

Danielle Gray, former Cabinet Secretary

First Lady Michelle Obama Applauds Learning Care Group's Commitment to Creating Healthier Child Care Environments

Major child care provider commits to implement nutrition and physical activity standards that align with Let’s Move! Child Care goals

WASHINGTON, DC—Today, First Lady Michelle Obama joins the Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) and Learning Care Group to announce Learning Care Group’s commitment to providing a healthier environment at 900 schools across the country.  Working with PHA and the Nemours Foundation, Learning Care Group will implement best practices that align with Let’s Move! Child Care goals in five areas: physical activity, screen time, food and beverages, infant feeding, and parent engagement. 

To highlight this announcement, the First Lady is visiting La Petite Academy in Bowie, Maryland, a member of the Learning Care Group family, where she will engage in physical activity and eat healthy snacks with children at the center.  Last year, the CDC found that obesity rates among low-income preschoolers declined in 19 states and territories across the country, including Maryland, for the first time in decades. 

“Healthier eating and regular physical activity are becoming the new norm for children across the country,” said First Lady Michelle Obama. “I am thrilled about Learning Care Group’s new commitment to implement best practices in schools across our country to instill healthy habits in our children from a young age.”

Today’s announcement comes on the heels of the release of a CDC report which found that the prevalence of obesity in children ages 2 to 5 has declined 43% over the past 10 years.  Learning Care Group’s commitment to make their school environments even healthier will play a vital role in continued efforts to reduce obesity prevalence.

Since Let’s Move! launched in 2010, organizations across the country have joined the First Lady in her efforts to encourage children to eat healthy and get active.  Helping kids develop healthy habits in their earliest years is vital to their future health. Since many young children spend the majority of their day in child care, it is critical that these centers are healthy environments where parents can rest assured that the hard work they are doing at home to keep their kids healthy will be reinforced when they are in child care. 

“We were so honored to have First Lady Michelle Obama with us today at La Petite Academy as we reaffirmed our commitment to ensuring a healthy environment for all of the young children in our care,” said Learning Care Group CEO Barbara Beck. “Through our internal Grow Fit initiative, we’ve made healthy living a daily part of our school culture. Now, together with the Partnership for a Healthier America and Let’s Move! Child Care, we’re providing a solid foundation for lifelong fitness for children nationwide.”

Specifically, over the next three years, Learning Care Group is committing to:

• Promote healthy eating by serving fruits and/or vegetables at a minimum of two meals or snack per day, eliminating fried foods, and encouraging kids to drink water.
• Provide at least one hour of physical activity each day and work with parents and caregivers to limit children to no more than one hour of screen time per day.
• Inform parents about healthy eating and physical activity through materials and events and supporting mothers who wish to continue breastfeeding.

FACT SHEET: Opportunity for all: President Obama Launches My Brother’s Keeper Initiative to Build Ladders of Opportunity For Boys and Young Men of Color

President Obama is taking action to launch My Brother’s Keeper – a new initiative to help every boy and young man of color who is willing to do the hard work to get ahead. For decades, opportunity has lagged behind for boys and young men of color.  But across the country, communities are adopting approaches to help put these boys and young men on the path to success. The President wants to build on that work. We can learn from communities that are partnering with local businesses and foundations to connect these boys and young men to mentoring, support networks, and skills they need to find a good job or go to college and work their way up into the middle class. And the Administration will do its part by helping to identify and promote programs that work. 

That starts by using proven tools that expand opportunity at key moments in the lives of these young people.  The President believes this includes ensuring access to basic health, nutrition, and to high-quality early education to get these kids reading and ready for school at the youngest age.  But that’s not enough.  We need to partner with communities and police to reduce violence and make our classrooms and streets safer.  And we need to help these young men stay in school and find a good job– so they have the opportunity to reach their full potential, contribute to their communities and build decent lives for themselves and their families.

New Presidential Task Force to Expand Opportunity. President Obama will sign a Presidential Memorandum establishing the My Brother’s Keeper Task Force, an interagency effort, chaired by Assistant to the President and Cabinet Secretary Broderick Johnson, that will help us determine what public and private efforts are working and how to expand upon them, how the Federal Government’s own policies and programs can better support these efforts, and how to better involve State and local officials, the private sector, and the philanthropic community in these efforts. 

The Task Force will work across executive departments and agencies to:

• Assess the impact of Federal policies, regulations, and programs of general applicability on boys and young men of color, so as to develop proposals that will enhance positive outcomes and eliminate or reduce negative ones.
• Recommend, where appropriate, incentives for the broad adoption by national, State, and local public and private decision makers of effective and innovative strategies and practices for providing opportunities to and improving outcomes for boys and young men of color.
• Create an Administration-wide “What Works” online portal to disseminate successful programs and practices that improve outcomes for boys and young men of color.
• Develop a comprehensive public website, to be maintained by the Department of Education, that will assess, on an ongoing basis, critical indicators of life outcomes for boys and young men of color in absolute and relative terms.
• Work with external stakeholders to highlight the opportunities, challenges, and efforts affecting boys and young men of color.
• Recommend to the President means of ensuring sustained efforts within the Federal Government and continued partnership with the private sector and philanthropic community as set forth in the Presidential Memorandum. 

Investments from Leading Foundations and Businesses to Advance the Achievement of Boys and Young Men of Color.  Leading foundations and businesses have long worked with others in philanthropy to create opportunities for young men and boys of color and today are committing significant resources to research critical intervention points in the lives of boys and young men of color; change the often-damaging narrative about them; and catalyze coordinated investments to seed, replicate, and scale up effective community solutions.

The foundations supporting today’s call to action have already made extensive investments, including  $150 million in current spending that they have already approved or awarded. Building on that, today these foundations are announcing that over the next five years they seek to invest at least $200 million, alongside additional investments from their peers in philanthropy and the business community, to find and rapidly spread solutions that have the highest potential for impact in key areas, including: early child development and school readiness, parenting and parent engagement, 3rd grade literacy, educational opportunity and school discipline reform, interactions with the criminal justice system ladders to jobs and economic opportunity and healthy families and communities.

The foundations will work over the next 90 days to design a strategy and infrastructure for coordination of these investments, which can be aligned with additional commitments from a diverse array of actors from other sectors.

These foundations, who are joining President Obama at today’s announcement, include The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Atlantic Philanthropies, Bloomberg Philanthropies, The California Endowment, The Ford Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Open Society Foundations, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and The Kapor Center for Social Impact. Many of the foundations are members of the Executives’ Alliance to Expand Opportunities for Boys and Men of Color – a coalition of philanthropic institutions committed to leveraging philanthropy’s role in improving life outcomes for boys and men of color.

In addition to the leadership from the philanthropic community, the My Brother’s Keeper initiative will leverage participation from the business community and elected officials to support this cross-sector effort.  As part of today’s announcement, President Obama will meet with a number of business leaders – including Joe Echevarria of Deloitte, Magic Johnson of Magic Johnson Enterprises, Glenn Hutchins of Silver Lake Partners, Adam Silver of the National Basketball Association and Thomas Tull of Legendary Entertainment – to discuss ways in which they and their companies can work with the Initiative to improve the life outcomes of boys and young men of color.

The President will also be joined today by public sector leaders including General Colin Powell, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Honorable Michael Bloomberg.  Additionally, several other prominent members of the business community—including Rosalind Brewer of Sam’s Club, Ken Chenault of American Express, and Don Thompson of McDonald’s—have already expressed their support for this effort, and the White House expects additional commitments in the coming days and months.     

*  *  *

Data shows that boys and young men of color, regardless of socio-economic background, are disproportionately at risk throughout the journey from their youngest years to college and career.  For instance, large disparities remain in reading proficiency, with 86 percent of black boys and 82 percent of Hispanic boys reading below proficiency levels by the fourth grade – compared to 58 percent of white boys reading below proficiency levels.  Additionally, the disproportionate number of black and Hispanic young men who are unemployed or involved in the criminal justice system alone is a perilous drag on state budgets, and undermines family and community stability.  These young men are more than six times as likely to be victims of murder than their white peers and account for almost half of the country’s murder victims each year.  

The effort launched today is focused on unlocking the full potential of boys and young men of color – something that will not only benefit them, but all Americans.  The Task Force and new private sector partnership will take a collaborative and multidisciplinary approach to building ladders of opportunity.  Both the Task Force and the partnership will take action immediately while planning for long-term success.