2008 Winners

Print

1st Place:

Girl Scouts of Eastern Oklahoma

Runners Up:

Web

1st Place:

Fresh Artists

Runners Up:

Video

1st Place:

MediaRites Productions

Runners Up:

Other

1st Place:

METRAC

Winners

Print | 1st Place

Girl Scouts of Eastern Oklahoma

Tulsa, Oklahoma
www.gseok.org

Girl Scouts of Eastern Oklahoma

 

In Oklahoma there are more women in prison than anywhere else in the United States (per capita), and their daughters are 4 to 5 times more likely to end up in prison than their peers. In response to this crisis, in 2002, the Girl Scouts of Eastern Oklahoma created Girl Scouts Beyond Bars: Project M.E.N.D. As part of this project, the girls wrote and recorded songs about their lives and experiences, and using Adobe donated software, created a 16-page album booklet. Through the project the girls learned the principles of graphic design, and gained confidence and the determination to make a good life for themselves. Since 2002, the program has expanded to its 5th prison and is now working on including a re-entry program for the mothers as they exit the prison system. Eastern Oklahoma is forever changed because of Project M.E.N.D. and TechSoup provided the tools to give the program a voice.

Web | 1st Place

Fresh Artists

Lafayette, Pennsylvania
www.freshartists.org

Fresh Artists

 

Fresh Artists is transformational and empowering, especially for inner city children living in danger and deprivation. Fresh Artists delivers art supplies to Philadelphia's most vulnerable children by enabling those children to unleash the astonishing power of children's art to speak their stories to corporate America. Here's how it works: Children donate the use of their prize-winning artwork to Fresh Artists to raise money for art supplies. High-resolution digital photographs of artwork are taken and processed in Photoshop. Donors make cash gifts to Fresh Artists and receive a large-scale, high-quality reproductions of children's artwork as thank-you gifts. The artwork is either hung on their business walls, or donated to our "Freshen Up a Public School" program which hangs the pieces in struggling local schools, health clinics or homeless shelters. With the money raised, Fresh Artists purchases and delivers art supplies directly to the most under-resourced public schools, more art is made, and kids are honored and empowered seeing their work enlarged and installed in prominent local businesses. We believe we can bring our novel student-centric philanthropy to other school districts struggling with massive cutbacks in art funding, with the ultimate potential of empowering hundreds of thousands of children's lives through art.

Video | 1st Place

MediaRites Productions

Portland, Oregon
www.crossingeast.org

MediaRites Productions

 

MediaRites Productions used Adobe software to create, market and promote its groundbreaking series on Asian American history. The series was created both for radio and as a visual experience through flash history movies using Macromedia flash. These movies have been linked to many history and Asian American sites and have had several thousand views on youtube. They were also essential marketing tools to encourage more than 230 public radio stations to air the series and millions of listeners to tune into the eight-hour radio programs. As a result, in 2007 MediaRites Productions won a prestigious Peabody award for the movie Crossing East.

Other | 1st Place

METRAC

Toronto, Ontario, Canada
www.metrac.org

METRAC

 

In June 2007, METRAC released RePlay: Finding Zoe, a casual online video game that promotes healthy, equal, and non-violent relationships amongst diverse youth aged 8 to 14. After extensive consultations with 250 youth in the province of Ontario, RePlay was created using Adobe Flash CS3 as a youth-friendly and relevant approach to violence prevention towards girls and young women. From June 2007 to April 2008, it received 3588 visits and 2853 unique visitors, all without any concerted promotional strategy and generated a great deal of excitement and interest amongst schools and educators. RePlay: Finding Zoe uses the popular medium of video games to open a dialogue about abuse, address the "rumour mill" youth often experience, educate players about healthy relationships, encourage young people to build respectful relationships, and teach players about places they can go for help. As a result of the game's initial success, the Ontario Government extended its original project funding and an enhanced English/French version of game was released in June 2008.

Runners Up

Print | Runner Up

Southeast Neighborhood Development, Inc.

Indianapolis, Indiana
www.sendcdc.org

Southeast Neighborhood Development, Inc.

 

Southeast Neighborhood Development (SEND)'s annual "Fab For Less" event showcases housing programs, and this year's focus was to educate property owners on ways to improve their dwellings and to demonstrate the need for infrastructure improvements to the Indianapolis Department of Public Works. By the end of the 18 month long project, Fab For Less will renovate 3 three houses, build one new house, make improvements on 14 additional properties, and change the owner occupancy of the blocks from 41% to 57% owner-occupied homes.

Print | Runner Up

Evergreen

Toronto, Ontario, Canada
www.evergreen.ca

Evergreen

 

Evergreen, a Canadian not-for-profit organization, makes cities more livable by empowering individuals to take a hands-on approach to their environment. Believe it or not, worm poop (or "castings" to use the preferred term) was the perfect tool. Through distinctive, high-impact branding as "Woop," Evergreen's creative team, enabled by Adobe products, transformed worm poop into a successful retail and public education campaign that furthered our mission to bring nature to cities across the country.

Print | Runner Up

SAY Sí

San Antonio, Texas
www.saysi.org

SAY Sí

 

SAY Sí provides students, especially those from the urban corridors, with a state-of-the-art multi-media studio, professional software, and the technology training enabling them to design and edit arts publications, create digital videos and short films, animations and design web pages/sites. In conjunction with the NCAA 2008 Men's Final Four that took place in San Antonio, students created a retrospective and digital murals in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Hemisfair Park.

Print | Runner Up

Los Angeles & San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council

Los Angeles, California
www.lasgrwc.org

Los Angeles & San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council

 

Under the Sustainable Landscapes WeedWatch Program (www.weedwatch.org), the Watershed Council developed a guidebook to educate residents living within the wildland-urban interface (WUI) on fire-safe practices both in and around the home. This includes planning a good fire response strategy, employing fire-resistant building materials and architectural features to structures, developing a fire-resistant landscape where plants and hardscape are maintained to avoid easy fire transmission, and establish a defensible space to reduce the risk of fire transmission onto the property. The guidebook was designed as a calendar with each month referencing a particular subject. The calendar section was designed with a perforation, so months could then be torn off and the guidebook could be saved for future reference.

Video | Runner Up

International Rivers

Berkeley, California
www.internationalrivers.org

International Rivers

 

International Rivers' "We All Live Downstream" slideshow is a rapid-fire worldwide tour of dam issues. This slideshow has reached over 2,500 people, in over 150 countries and has been so popular with our members, board, and viewers, that a total of 4 have now been created and several more are in the works.

Video | Runner Up

Project Walk Spinal Cord Injury Recovery Center

Carlsbad, California
www.projectwalk.org

Project Walk Spinal Cord Injury Recovery Center

 

Project Walk provides the most comprehensive exercise-based physical recovery program for individuals suffering from spinal cord injuries. The promotional videos were developed to raise awareness of the program to not only bring in new clients but also to fund their operations and to offer scholarships for clients who would not otherwise be able to attend the program. As demand for exercise based recovery has increased, Project Walk has certified additional programs in New Jersey, Kansas, Japan, Australia, and Spain (with Texas and England opening soon) and develops a customized promotional video for each new site.

Web | Runner Up

Second Chances, Inc.

Somerville, Massachusetts
www.secondchances.org

Second Chances, Inc.

 

Second Chances provides homeless and lower income people with the clothing that will not only build their self-esteem, but could open the doors to a brighter future. Using Adobe CS3, Second Chances has been able to refresh and update the site content more frequently which has resulted in a dramatic increase in both web traffic and contributions (up 75% over last year) enabling them to increase donations to the agencies and people they serve.

Web | Runner Up

New Door Ventures

San Francisco, California
www.pedalrevolution.org

New Door Ventures

 

New Door Ventures operates the social enterprise Pedal Revolutions, a retail bicycle shop that provides jobs and job training for at-risk youth. Adobe software allowed Pedal Revolutions to update its website inexpensively to provide more up to date information about store sales, free workshops, the latest, greatest bicycles or locks or other accessories in stock, and other updates of interest. In addition, they were able to create a Blog and used Photoshop post new pictures every week on the blog to continue their conversations with the cyclists in the community.