Grade 11 student, Antoni entered a National short video competition called #SharetheShorts, a youth video creation competition intended to promote organ donation awareness in Canada. The competition is sponsored by the Ajmera Transplant Centre for Living Organ Donation at University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto.
The Ajmera Transplant Centre will use the content created to not only help raise awareness but also to “engage students and educators in the creation of engaging and informative content that will appeal to younger and more diverse audience, and to build a library of innovative short-form video content public awareness messages for participating partners, social media influencers and youth to share on social media.”
Many of the young creators worked collaboratively but Antoni chose to take on the challenge by himself and ended up creative a very emotional and impressive video called “The Gift of Life”. Antoni is one of three winners in Canada and the only winner outside of Ontario/Quebec. The winners were awarded prizes for their creativity and remarkable help in raising awareness for organ donation.
When asked why he wanted to participate, Antoni’s response was “Although filmmaking is certainly a hobby and passion of mine, my primary ambition in life is to enter the medical field as a doctor. As a result, when I learned about the contest focusing on the medical field, I thought it would be an excellent combination of my interests in both film and medicine. Initially I thought about making more of an informational, documentary-type film/short video to focus more on the scientific aspects (perhaps interviewing an actual doctor or two)—which would be more suitable given my interests in medicine— but due to timing, I ended up with the less informational (and more emotional) film submitted.”
Ian Goodall-George, the Manitoba committee member, said “His video is amazing considering he has no personal connection with organ donation and very powerful which impressed the judges.”
To view Antoni’s submission “The Gift of Life”, please visit: https://youtu.be/RvE7CTnt0Uk
#SharetheShorts invites submissions year-round with mentorship and up to $30K in prizes available for the winning submissions. The next submission deadline is June 16th, 2023. Students, teachers, and guardians are invited to visit the #SharetheShorts playlist on the @GiveLifeUHN YouTube channel or email livingorgandonation@uhn.ca to learn more about how they can get involved in the competition
