Help Me Choose My Win-a-Trip Winner!
By NICHOLAS KRISTOFEvery year I hold my win-a-trip contest to take a university student with me on a reporting trip in the developing world. This year will be the fifth trip and a milestone because I’ll also be taking along a senior citizen — and because this year for the first time I’m inviting readers to help me choose the winning student and winning senior. To weigh in, please go to my Facebook slide show or comment below.
The Center for Global Development in Washington narrowed the pool down to semi-finalists, and after an excruciating process (and much help from my assistant, Hilary Howard), I’ve narrowed the pool down to five students and five seniors. I would be thrilled to have any of these people with me, and I’d like to invite your input about who you think I should choose. I’m not exactly holding a vote and saying I’ll go with the winner, but I really would like to see who resonates with my readership and why.
So without further ado, here are the student finalists: Saumya Dave, Hannah Silver, Semonti Hossain, Marisa Wong, and Olivia Morris. And here are the senior finalists: Emilie Osborn, Noreen Connolly, Monica Jones, Alain Antoine, and Barbara Pagano (click on the links to see their videos and essays).
One thing that struck us is how women dominated the ranks of entries at both levels. I’m not quite sure why that is. The winners the last two years were both men, but women predominated this year among the best applicants. So guys: next year, step it up!
My main criterion in choosing a winner is not who will benefit the most, or who “deserves” it the most, but who can be most effective in interesting a larger audience in what we see. I firmly believe that many global problems fester because they’re invisible, and that the first step to addressing them is to build awareness — so I’m looking for people who have fantastic communications skills and a knack for shining a spotlight and getting people to care about distant problems. But I also welcome your suggestions for who should win based on other criteria: in that case, just explain why you think your favorite candidate should be on the trip.
I should also offer condolences to those many spectacular applicants who didn’t make it. There were many, many, many who had terrific applications. If I could have had a few more finalists in the student category, I would have added Sean K. Driscoll of Harvard Law School, Arvin Temkar of the Columbia University School of Journalism, and Pablo Toledo of Los Angeles.
As for the 60+ group, the competition was a little too fierce to include the impressive Betty Fitzpatrick, a nurse and nurse practitioner from Florida who coordinated the crisis response to the Columbine shootings, and then went on to provide crisis counseling in New Jersey after 9/11; and Laura Sklaver, an attorney in Connecticut who suddenly found herself at the helm of her son’s NGO in Uganda, ClearWater, after he was tragically killed in Afghanistan while serving in the military.
And there were countless others with great storytelling skills and great stories to tell.
The Center for Global Development in Washington narrowed the pool down to semi-finalists, and after an excruciating process (and much help from my assistant, Hilary Howard), I’ve narrowed the pool down to five students and five seniors. I would be thrilled to have any of these people with me, and I’d like to invite your input about who you think I should choose. I’m not exactly holding a vote and saying I’ll go with the winner, but I really would like to see who resonates with my readership and why.
So without further ado, here are the student finalists: Saumya Dave, Hannah Silver, Semonti Hossain, Marisa Wong, and Olivia Morris. And here are the senior finalists: Emilie Osborn, Noreen Connolly, Monica Jones, Alain Antoine, and Barbara Pagano (click on the links to see their videos and essays).
One thing that struck us is how women dominated the ranks of entries at both levels. I’m not quite sure why that is. The winners the last two years were both men, but women predominated this year among the best applicants. So guys: next year, step it up!
My main criterion in choosing a winner is not who will benefit the most, or who “deserves” it the most, but who can be most effective in interesting a larger audience in what we see. I firmly believe that many global problems fester because they’re invisible, and that the first step to addressing them is to build awareness — so I’m looking for people who have fantastic communications skills and a knack for shining a spotlight and getting people to care about distant problems. But I also welcome your suggestions for who should win based on other criteria: in that case, just explain why you think your favorite candidate should be on the trip.
I should also offer condolences to those many spectacular applicants who didn’t make it. There were many, many, many who had terrific applications. If I could have had a few more finalists in the student category, I would have added Sean K. Driscoll of Harvard Law School, Arvin Temkar of the Columbia University School of Journalism, and Pablo Toledo of Los Angeles.
As for the 60+ group, the competition was a little too fierce to include the impressive Betty Fitzpatrick, a nurse and nurse practitioner from Florida who coordinated the crisis response to the Columbine shootings, and then went on to provide crisis counseling in New Jersey after 9/11; and Laura Sklaver, an attorney in Connecticut who suddenly found herself at the helm of her son’s NGO in Uganda, ClearWater, after he was tragically killed in Afghanistan while serving in the military.
And there were countless others with great storytelling skills and great stories to tell.
