2019 High School Winners

Sarah Lee is an 11^th grader at Korea International School in Seongnam, South Korea, which she attends along with co-producers Crystal Lim and Rachel Hong. Sarah found the World of 7 Billion video contest on social media after researching competitions she could participate in to put her video production skills to practice. Sarah has always had an interest in Journalism and is passionate about protecting human rights, especially for children. “It’s a field a lot more personal for me, I am already involved in the field and feel like somewhat of an expert.” She is the club leader of a volunteer program that creates English tutoring resources for underprivileged youth. Because of her familiarity with the subject, submitting a video in the Protecting Human Rights category was a no-brainer for her. However, she was surprised when learning of the connection between population and human rights.

The group’s use of animation was inspired by the “Crash Course” Youtube video channel. Sarah says, “Using animation allows you to explain your ideas really quickly and efficiently.” Although this was the first video Sarah produced for a competition, she does enjoy regularly recording videos as a hobby. The most challenging part of this competition for the group was keeping their video under the 60-second limit. Sarah says, “Child labor is a complicated issue and there was just too much information to cover.” They decided to focus on the most important components of the issue rather than cramming as much information as possible into the one-minute video. Sarah has some advice for future contest participants, “Do not sacrifice your video content by speaking very quickly or overloading the viewer with information, delivery is important.” Sarah and her co-producers are thrilled about the cash prize and plan to do research on local orphanages to donate some of the winnings to.

In addition to having a passion in journalism, Sarah is also an entrepreneur! She participated in a high school entrepreneurship competition and invented a dust mask prototype, “Respiro 2”, that conforms to various facial structures. After noticing that the conventional dust mask does not work as well for people with facial disfigurements or facial hair, she decided to create a more inclusive product. Her mask placed in the top nine inventions!