NPP, AFSC Reach Out to Kids
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Valley Advocate
Maureen Turner
09/28/2010
By the end of this month, the U.S. will have spent $1.05 trillion to fight the wars in Iraq ($747.3 billion) and Afghanistan ($299 billion), according to the Northampton-based National Priorities Project.It doesn't take a lot of imagination to come up with a long list of ways that money could be spent instead—on jobs programs, healthcare, education, infrastructure improvements. Unfortunately, too many of the people empowered to make those spending decisions seem to operate with a severe imagination deficit. That's why NPP is turning to a different group, one with far greater reserves of imagination and thoughtfulness: kids.NPP and the American Friends Service Committee recently sent out a call to young people to create videos addressing the question of how that money might instead be spent. The "If I Had a Trillion Dollars..." contest is open to kids aged 13 to 23. Winners will be flown to Washington to have their videos screened before the media and members of Congress and the Obama administration. The full rules can be found online at www.afsc.org.Some early entries are already on YouTube (www.youtube.com/user/IHTDVideos), where footage shot by Chicago teens of their struggling neighborhoods and shoddy schools make a pretty compelling case for dramatically rethinking our spending priorities
