I am so impressed with the quality and scope of many of the Passion Project groups over the last few weeks.  You truly are proving what one person can do!  This week each team will complete their Project 4 Awesome video for youtube upload on Friday.

We are authorized to use any of these graphics in our videos.  There are more options available on youtube if you have access outside of school.

ONLINE CREATORS DECREASING WORLDSUCK

The very first Project for Awesome was organized in 2007, and has been held every year since. Starting in 2014, Project For Awesome changed dates, now occurring annually on the second Friday & Saturday of December, which this year is December 11-12, 2015.

During Project for Awesome, thousands of people post videos about and advocating for charities that decrease the overall level of world suck. As a community, we promote these videos and raise money for the charities.

In 2014, the community raised over $1,200,000, including several generous matching donations. These were split between two organizations chosen by John & Hank – Save the Children & Partners in Health – along with twenty charities chosen by the online video community.

Legally speaking, the Project for Awesome is a project of the Foundation to Decrease World Suck, Inc. a Montana-based 501(c)3 charitable organization. You can see a list of all the charities that the FTDWS has disbursed money to in the past here.

Video-Making Tips

• Try not to make your video too long. People are going to be watching a ton of videos on the on the 11th and 12th, and they don’t want to sit through a rambly, unedited vlog for ten minutes. Keep your video short and to the point so that people will watch the whole thing and learn all about your cause. A good length to aim for is 2 – 4 minutes, unless you have such compelling content that it just needs to be longer.

• Try not to spend too much time explaining what the Project for Awesome is. Most people watching your video will already know, so just put an explanation in the description as well as a link to projectforawesome.com, and people who stumble across your video can click through to this website to learn all about it.

• Similarly, try not to spend too much time promoting your own channel in your video. One or two sentences is fine to explain the type of videos you usually make if they’re different from what you’re doing for your P4A video, but much more than that and it just looks like you’re using the P4A to help promote yourself, which isn’t what this is all about.

• Long gone are the days when putting an image in the exact middle of your video would always be the thumbnail. If you can’t upload your own custom thumbnail, consider putting the logo for the P4A in the corner of your whole video so that no matter what thumbnail YouTube’s algorithms choose, the logo is always there.
• We can’t feature your video if we can’t find it! Put “Project for Awesome 2015” or “P4A 2015” in the title of your video as well as phrases like “Project for Awesome 2015” and “P4A2015” in the tags. Be sure to also submit your video to the P4A website on December 11th so we can browse through them all in one place.

The livestream will run from 12:00pm EST on December 11th through 11:59am EST on December 13th.

All funds raised during the first half of P4A (12:00am EST on December 9th through 11:59am EST on December 12th) will benefit Save the Children and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

All funds raised during the second half of P4A (12:00pm EST on December 12th through 11:59pm EST on December 15th) will be divided between the organizations chosen by the community.