Walgreens Hosts Annual Expressions Challenge Awards

Walgreens recently awarded more than $15,000 to Chicagoland high school students, teachers, and schools as part of the Walgreens Expressions Challenge. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Walgreens Expression Challenge
Walgreens recently awarded more than $15,000 to Chicagoland high school students, teachers, and schools as part of the Walgreens Expressions Challenge. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Walgreens Expression Challenge

Walgreens Hosts Annual Expressions Challenge Awards Ceremony

BY KATHERINE NEWMAN

Walgreens recently hosted the annual Expressions Challenge Awards Ceremony and Reception at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Several Chicago students submitted artwork and at the event, first and second place prizes were given in the categories of creative writing, visual arts, and media arts.

The Walgreens Expressions Challenge program was launched at the suggestion of the Walgreens Community Task Force after noticing the alarming rise in incidents of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV and AIDS, among high school students ages 14 to 18. At its core, the Expressions Challenge is about guiding students to make better life choices about their overall health and well-being, according to the Expressions Challenge website.

“The Walgreens Expressions Challenge is in its ninth year and it was established in order to allow teens, aged 14 through 18, to express their feelings about many of the subjects that are important to them and that are on their minds such as anxiety, depression, even suicide, also sexual responsibility, and self love and to give them an opportunity to express that through the arts whether that is artwork whether that is video or whether that is in spoken word and poetry,” said Lydia Davis Eady, media relations representative for the Walgreens Expressions Challenge.

By enabling students to artistically express themselves, the Walgreens Expressions Challenge empowers young people to become a positive influence on their classmates, their school, and their community. The teens that participate are encouraged to find a voice in their preferred art form and use it to communicate their perspective on topics including bullying, self-esteem, and sexual responsibility.

“I think that the young people were most impressive when they talked about their art and they talked about how they were the most pleased when people looked at their art.” said Eady.

“The energy at the Awards Ceremony was very exciting because it was all the winners at that point, they were the finalist and they finally found out what they won that night.”

During the event, Walgreens gave away $15,000 in total to the winning students and their schools. During the nine years that this challenge has been taking place, over $200,000 has been awarded to students and their schools.

The three first place winners received a $2,000 cash prize along with a monetary donation for their school and the three second place winners received a cash prize of $1,350 and a donation for their school.

“The important thing I think is that Walgreens is committed to the community and to teenagers,” said Eady. “Everyone at the event was there just to celebrate these young people who were extremely talented and to look at the gallery of artwork created by teens from all over the city. The way that they portrayed so many topics through their art was really amazing.”

To learn more about the Walgreens Expression Challenge visit www. expressionschallenge.com/about/.

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