ELEVEN YEARS! This year's Teen Digital Reel Showcase and Awards to be held Wednesday, May 2, 2007. Digital artistry/ literacy is the signature of our 21st Century and the universal currency of youth power and interconnectivity. Tower of Youth has pioneered this call to youth to create and showcase their best short movie works to make statements about heartfelt challenges and issues in our lives -- the environment, partnerships, wonder of sound and music, justice -- and to demonstrate their growing mastery in story telling and public service and commercial messaging. We are dedicated to enhancing community togetherness, quality of life, democracy, imagination, health, growth, literacy, peace, career success and beauty through this unprecedented art form. Our 11th Annual Showcase will feature youth works limited to school and community members who join the Sacramento Sierra Digital Studio Partnership. Thus, the major inventory of state of the art software awards provided to the entrants in the Showcase competition will be an investment and commitment to advancing true quality, professional standards and education reform.

Little by little, with industry support and investment we will elevate our regional member youth, teachers and schools to the highest level productions in the field. This 11th year, we have introduced a set of required teaching standards for all entries that encourages youth and their adult mentors to reach for, and meet, commercial and professional quality media arts productions. Our youth must have the skills and artistry to successfully compete, on a worldwide level, to fill California's digital, entertainment and telecommunications jobs and convince our home industries to seek their creative and technical level workforce here in the Sacramento Sierra region and among the other digital arts studio partnerships that we have fostered through the last decade's organizing work. Every young person must be able to look forward to working and living in their own communities, supporting their families and able to volunteer their services to the multitude of social causes and needs that make up our civic life. Youth are the solution and must strive to capture the magic possible in digital media arts and influence the world around them to be ever more human, noble, visionary, and interdependent.