2021 Middle School Winners

Emalee Leishman is in the 8^th grade at Idaho Arts Charter High School. She has livee in Nampa, Idaho all her life. Emalee found out about the contest in her science class where it was assigned. She chose to create a video addressing Re-Imagining Industrial Systems due to her interest in animal factory farming. Additionally, she said, “it was the one I knew the most about. I have chosen that topic before on a few projects and it was the easiest for me. I know it’s also a big problem.” Her familiarity with the subject, based on past research, facilitated her video submission.

This is Emalee’s second experience with filmmaking; the first time was also with the World of 7 Billion student video contest. Emalee shared, “last year, we also created a video for the contest about how we can make crops better and improve farming.” The editing process presented some obstacles for Emalee.  She found it difficult to come up with ideas and to formulate them properly in order to relay her message about concentrated animal feeding operations. Finally, Emalee strategized by writing “a whole bunch of stuff down until I condensed it to where I needed it to be.” This is also not Emalee’s first time receiving an award. Although the awards were not for projects she has worked on, Emalee has won character awards, “a character trait for each month and if you got that character trait, you get an award”, she recalled. Following the obstacles Emalee overcame, she advises future contest participants to, “keep an eye on the time limit, and make sure you stay under that.”

In her free time, Emalee likes to play the cello, draw, and read. Her favorite food is spaghetti and meatballs and she loves spending time with her dog, a German short hair/cocker spaniel mix named Livy and her parakeet, Rocky. She is inspired by her mom, reveling how “she works really hard and she is super awesome.”