Voices of Hope Productions wins Media Literacy Award, joins ranks with Jon Stewart, Bill Moyers

Lori Ersolmaz, President of Voices of Hope Productions accepted a Media Literacy Education Award from the National Association of Media Literacy Education (NAMLE) at their 10th national conference held July 22-25, 2011 in Philadelphia, PA. The NAMLE Media Literate Media Awards recognize people, programs, initiatives, or organizations that have raised the visibility of media literacy education or media literacy and have helped citizens better understand media literacy education or media literacy. The Media Literate Media Awards are designed to interest mainstream media in doing, covering or including media literacy in their work by recognizing outstanding contributions made by media professionals with national reach. Vanessa Domine, NAMLE’s First Vice President said of Voices of Hope Productions nomination, “Their work speaks for itself. It is authentic, altruistic, and the actual purpose of media literacy education. I hope more people catch their vision.”

Previous award honorees have included Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, Bill Moyers and NOW, Howard Kurtz for his Washington Post columns and CNN show, NPR’s “On the Media”, Van Jones, Esq., Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford, founder of the school’s Center for Internet and Society, and Chair of the Creative Commons Project, and Linda Ellerbee, Nickelodeon and Lucky Duck Productions.

Voices of Hope Productions was selected from the nominees by an awards committee of NAMLE members and ratified by the NAMLE board of directors. “I couldn’t be more excited or appreciative of this award, as well as NAMLE’s recognition and support of my work engaging youth and adults in media-making and civic engagement. It’s also a great thrill to be honored with highly recognized media professionals such as Jon Stewart, Bill Moyers, Lawrence Lessig, and Linda Ellerbee, all whose work I admire,” says Ersolmaz.

In its most global sense, media literacy education privileges diversity among media forms and educational constituencies. The 2011 NAMLE Conference created a global vision of media literacy education—a vision that acknowledges all forms of media as relevant, including (but not limited to) object, print, radio, photography, television, film, video, internet, and other digital devices. The 2011 Conference also commemorated the tenth anniversary of NAMLE and celebrated its growth as a professional development organization for an increasingly broad constituency of media literacy educators.

Voices of Hope Productions, a woman-owned creative services and multimedia production company dedicated to community-based social issues and documentary film-making as a means to educate, engage, empower and entertain while fostering leadership, citizenship and inspiration in adults and youth to make a difference in our society.

See acceptance speech presentation:

Voices of Hope NAMLE Presentation on Vimeo.

Posted on Tuesday, August 16th, 2011 at 4:42 pm. Filed under: Blog