A pair of Port Coquitlam students have their futures nearly secured after winning a French-speaking video contest.
And they're only in Grade Nine.
Meha Muralidharan took home the top prize — a $12,000 scholarship for post-secondary education — in the high-school division of National Immersion Clip 2022, a video contest hosted by the Association of French Immersion Teachers.
Her fellow Riverside Secondary classmate Agam Bokovza Mariash secured second place in the virtual competition, which was rewarded with an $8,000 bursary.
Both beat out several hundred other applicants in Grades Nine to 12, Riverside teacher Robert Mackenzie tells the Tri-City News.
Muralidharan and Bokovza Mariash were tasked to create a video explaining to judges, en français, how they're keeping the language alive outside the four walls of a classroom.
Videos had to be between 30 and 90 seconds long.
You can watch the PoCo students' submissions below.
Submitted clips were evaluated for originality, quality of the spoken French, narration, choice of images, soundtrack and overall editing.
The clip contest aims to promote French Immersion and French-language studies in Canada.
As well, it encourages participants to express creativity through information and communication technologies, and to encourage the pursuit of post-secondary studies in French.
Muralidharan and Bokovza Mariash are set to use the hard-earned funds towards one of four universities associated with the contest, according to the Association of French Immersion Teachers' website.
This includes:
- University of Ottawa
- Saint Paul University (Ottawa)
- Université Sainte-Anne (Nova Scotia)
- York University-Glendon Campus (Toronto)
- with a file from Dani Penaloza, Delta Optimist
