Oregon OSHA announces winners of annual student competition

Salem, OR — Students from Portland’s Parkrose High School and West Linn High took the top prizes in this year’s Oregon OSHA media contest to promote young worker safety and health awareness.

The annual contest, organized by the Oregon Young Employee Safety Coalition, known as O[yes], invites high school students to submit a 30- to 90-second video or a graphic design to inspire young workers to take the coalition’s online safety training. Six schools were awarded $2,400 in prizes for their entries. 

The winning video, Screen Grab, depicts a group of young employees working unsafely in a variety of ways, which are noticed by two supervisors. The supervisors then log in to the O[yes] training website and invite the workers to view an online training course. As they all move closer to the computer, the workers and supervisors are pulled into the screen to begin their training. 

“The hardest part was that we had an almost 20-person cast and crew. As the director, it was challenging getting all the actors on the same page regarding the concept of getting sucked into the screen,” Parkrose video student Jolynn Ta said. “It required a lot of communication to get everyone up to speed.”

In the graphic design category, Filippa Rudnicki of West Linn High School won first place and a $500 prize for her 5 Things Every Young Worker Should Know graphic. Rudnicki is an exchange student from Denmark.