ETCO Informs

Video contest educates students about piracy

Finished with an exciting award ceremony, held on the 8th, the 5th edition of the Video Legal Contest was attended by 520 students from the cities of São Paulo (SP) and Brasília (DF). The initiative, which is sponsored by the Brazilian Institute of Ethics in Competition - ETCO, aims to educate elementary school students about the damage caused by piracy.

In the city of São Paulo, 120 students from the municipal network gathered in groups to create videos on the topic. In the Federal Capital, the number of applicants was surprising: 400 pre-adolescent students from the Inter-school Language Centers (Cils), a complementary education network in Brasília, participated in the contest.

In São Paulo, of the ten piracy videos produced by students and selected for the final stage, six were awarded. The trophies and prizes were delivered at Amcham's headquarters, the American Chamber of Commerce, in the south of the city. Teachers, pedagogical coordinators, students and representatives of sponsoring institutions were present.

For Heloisa Ribeiro, executive director of ETCO, the messages that the students transmitted with the content of the videos were important for the personal training of each one. They also serve as an example to family and friends, encouraging the fight against piracy and increasing awareness of the problem.

The consul general of the United States in São Paulo, Dennis Hankins, stressed that the objective of the contest was to show students that producing an intellectual work requires effort, and that authors have the right to be rewarded for their work.

In addition to ETCO, the initiative was sponsored by the United States Consulate General, Eli Lilly, Microsoft, HP, Walt Disney Company, Sport Club Corinthians Paulista and the São Paulo Municipal Department of Education.

The winning students in each category won the right to visit the Microsoft Technology Center in São Paulo, along with the winners of the Brasília stage. In Capital Federal, the winning work was Beware, pirate glasses, from Cil 1. In São Paulo, the six winning works were:

Category 1 (10 to 12 years)

1. Municipal Elementary School (EMEF) Professor Máximo de Moura - Piracy? Copyright? What is it?

2. EMEF Doctor José Dias da Silveira - Jornal Zé Dias

3. EMEF Professor Primo Páscole Melaré - Nature asks for passage

Category 2 (12 to 14 years)

1. EMEF Professor Sylvia Martin Pires - A Pirated Addiction

2. EMEF May 8 - The old piracy

3. EMEF Zilka Salaberry de Carvalho - Zilka news on modern piracy

Source: Amcham of Brazil

Anti-piracy project gains strength in schools

In addition to accounting for an increase in the number of participating educational establishments, which today number 198 public and 22 private schools, the Escola Legal Project - created to raise awareness among young people about the harms of piracy - begins to advance in other areas. The launch of the new portal and the presentation of the program's first institutional video marked the year.

On December 12, 2011, more than 180 guests were present at the annual closing event of the Escola Legal Project, an AMCHAM initiative, developed with the aim of raising the awareness of young people in elementary school about the problems caused by piracy in Brazil and in the world.

The Escola Legal Project is already implemented in 220 schools, distributed in seven Brazilian cities: São Paulo, Goiânia, São Bernardo do Campo, Caieiras, Blumenau and Porto Alegre, both in private schools and in the public school system.

“Although it is still restricted to these locations, it is a great example of an effort to combat piracy, as it focuses on the education of young people who, in addition to multiplying the knowledge acquired in the family and in their friendship, he will become a future defender of legality as an adult ”, analyzes Roberto Abdenur, chief executive of ETCO, one of the project's sponsors. Today, Escola Legal has an impact on more than 40 thousand students, and has around 3.200 teachers involved.

The multiplier effect is increasingly explored by the project, which seeks new ways to communicate with its target audience. A good example is the new portal, which launched in 2011, received a total of 45.912 hits from unique visitors, that is, those who first entered the site.

Participation in events and lectures are also on the agenda of Escola Legal, in order to disseminate the idea among teachers and education agents. In 2011, the project held two Educator Forums; attended the “Education in Action” Week in Caieiras; held support lectures for more than 1.000 students; and presented lectures to educators at the 30th Brasília Book Fair.

The new institutional video, presented at the closing event of 2011, will be an important support tool for the actions carried out by the project, which, in 2012, will further open the range of activities, with the launch of a cultural contest, still under development .