We want to know how you have been and can continue to be an agent of positive change. Honestly and thoughtfully respond to the prompt below. Share what you’ve learned through your life experiences and tell how you’ll apply that knowledge in helping to create a brighter future.
Submission Deadline Dates:
Grades 6-10 essay: NOW CLOSED
Grades 11 & 12 essay: NOW CLOSED
"Despite all the troubles of our world, in my heart I have never given up on the love in which I was brought up…In life, just as on the artist's palette, there is but one single colour that gives meaning to life and art–the colour of love" - Marc Chagall
Source: Baal-Teshuva, Jacob. Marc Chagall: 1887-1985. Taschen America LLC, 2008.
Marc Chagall was a Jewish artist born in 1887 in Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire. Chagall lived in France before the start of World War II and the Nazi occupation. In 1941, he escaped to the U.S. where he settled in New York City and continued making art.
In this quote, Chagall describes placing his hope for the world in the love he has seen and experienced throughout his life. This could be the love of a family, the love we have for our friends or neighbors, and even the love we show to strangers through kindness and helping others.
Being an upstander–standing up or speaking out for someone experiencing injustice–is an act of love because it shows care for someone who is in pain. Artistic expression (including visual art, music, poetry, and storytelling) can also be an act of upstanding love when we use art to shine a light on injustice or to celebrate diversity and acceptance. Chagall suggests that both art and life, no matter how beautiful, are meaningless without the presence of love.
For the essay contest: In 500 words or less:
- Write a personal narrative essay about a moment when you witnessed, learned about, or participated in an act of love or kindness in response to injustice, bias, discrimination, or exclusion. (Tell the story of how love or kindness was used as a shield or response to injustice.)
- In your story, be sure to include:
- What was the problem? Why was this act of injustice harmful?
- How did this act of love or kindness make a difference?
- What did you learn from this moment about how or why love and kindness can act as a shield against hate?
- How can you use acts of love or kindness to make a positive impact on your community and the world? (How have you or will you affect others positively through love or kindness?)
