Rap Song Scoops Top Prize in Pumped Schools' Video Awards

Jan 18, 2014

Students from St. Joseph’s College in Lucan have been revealed as the winners of this year’s Pumped Schools’ Video Awards, with their production titled “Active Teens, Healthy Hearts”. The Awards aim to encourage young people to get creative about science and health by producing mini-movies on a heart health topic. The Awards are organised by Bayer in partnership with the Irish Heart Foundation and the Federation of Irish Sport, with the winning students each receiving a tablet computer and St. Joseph’s College’s science budget receiving a much welcome cash boost of €5,000. The Awards were presented by pumped.ie Ambassadors, Olympic silver medallist, Kenneth Egan, and Olympic pentathlete, Natalya Coyle. The winning videos can be seen at www.pumped.ie.

Coláiste Éinde in Galway scooped second place in the competition with each team member receiving an iPod Touch, and a team from St Gerard’s School in Bray came third with students being awarded an iPod Nano. The Awards come in the light of research by Behaviour and Attitudes* of 500 teenagers last August that found that three in ten (31%) teens say that they eat a lot of junk food, and 34% that they have soft drinks at least daily.

The winning St. Joseph’s students – Gabrielle Fullam, Tina Ehiguese and Lisa Browne – produced an original rap to a catchy beat to encourage their peers to get active and take up a hobby. The video highlights why exercise is good for the mind, helps people feel happy, unwind, sleep better, and perhaps even get better grades!

Pumped.ie Ambassador and Ireland Olympic Silver Medallist, Kenneth Egan, was delighted to present the winning students with their prizes: “I really believe that it’s important that young people invest time and effort in themselves to gain what I would call ‘life fitness’. The Pumped Schools’ Video Awards point to the importance of getting active and eating a healthy diet if young people are to avoid cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes in the future. The videos do this in a way that other young people ‘get’ and the students are to be commended for taking this serious issue and presenting it in a way that gets the audience thinking and talking.”

Dr Angie Brown, Medical Director with the Irish Heart Foundation and Chairperson of the Judging Panel, commented: “Students used every creative means at their disposal – from drama and animation, to music and song – to engage, motivate and stir the audience and shine a spotlight on what is a key issue facing the health of our nation. The judging panel was very impressed by entrants’ creativity and ingenuity, and their depth of knowledge and information on the topic of heart health and that what we eat, being physically active, smoking and our body weight impact on our health. We know that one in five teenagers in Ireland is overweight or obese and that we have the second highest levels of overweight or obesity among children in Europe. So these videos by the young people themselves demonstrate to their peers why it’s vital that they take control of their heart health for a better future and quality of life.”

Conn McCluskey, Support Services Officer, Federation of Irish Sport, added: “The entries for these Awards were of a really high standard and were both entertaining and sobering at the same time. However each video had one common thread and that was the importance of young people eating well, getting out and being active. The research conducted in August of last year among teenagers found that just one in three were able to recall that the national guideline for physical activity is 60 minutes a day for children. We hope that this initiative, and others being adopted, such as the National Physical Activity Plan, will help to start to turn the tide of physical inactivity and obesity and cause young people to take the important messages being communicated, quite literally, to heart.”

Sinéad Duffy, Head of Communications at Bayer, concluded: “For over 150 years, Bayer has been a world leader in developing science for better health and life. Rather than having educational videos to ‘tell’ young people how to live their lives, the Awards give young people a fun opportunity to look into their own hearts and research the science behind heart health for themselves. We know that these years are formative in determining how they live their future lives and how the lifestyle habits that they learn now will stay with them for a long time to come, so it’s really important that they know the hard facts around obesity and heart health.”

About the Irish Heart Foundation

The Irish Heart Foundation is the national charity dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke and it relies on charitable donations for more than 90 per cent of its income. Today in Ireland more people die from heart and stroke-related illnesses than from any other cause of death. Against this background we work to bring hope, relief and a better future to families all over Ireland. We give vital patient support through our Heart & Stroke helpline and we provide high quality public information for all.

We support pioneering medical research, campaign for improved patient care, and promote positive public health strategies. We work in hospitals, schools and workplaces to support, educate and train people to save lives. As a charity, we are dependent on the generosity of the public to continue our vital good work. You can support our work by making a donation, giving of your time to volunteer or by learning the skills needed to save a life through our courses. For more information, visit:
www.irishheart.ie
www.stroke.ie
www.facebook.com/irishheartfoundation
www.twitter.com/irishheart_ie

About Bayer

Innovation for better health. Our commitment is to bring to patients around the world quality medicines for use in diagnosing, combating and preventing disease. Every day we work against time, researching new pathways, new molecules, new technologies – complementing our own capabilities with expertise of innovative partners from science and industry. The success of this work is evidenced in new medicines for areas with significant unmet medical need such as oncology, cardiovascular and blood diseases, as well as gynaecology and ophthalmology. Our aim is a better quality of life for all.