New Jersey Resident Wins
InDebted Digital Challenge and $10,000 Prize
mtvU And Peter G. Peterson Foundation To Develop Online Game
to Raise Awareness of the Dangers of Personal and Government Debt
New York, NY – January 27, 2009 – MTV’s 24-hour college network mtvU and the Peter G. Peterson Foundation today announced that 25-year-old Brian Haveri of Milburn, NJ, who graduated from Lehigh University, has won the Indebted Digital Challenge and a $10,000 prize. The Indebted Digital Challenge invited young people aged 18-28 to submit creative, original ideas for an online video game that focuses on the nation’s fiscal crisis. Haveri’s concept will be developed into a game that will be used to spread awareness of the country’s dangerous financial condition and encourage young people to take action to turn the tide.
Increasing levels of government and personal debt mean that today’s young people will be the first generation not to enjoy the same growth in standard of living as their parents. Today, nearly two-thirds of all four-year college graduates have student loans, averaging around $20,000—and that number will continue to climb. Fifteen years ago, less than half of college graduates had student loans.
At the federal level, with a national debt now nearing $11 trillion, plus $43 trillion in promised benefits for Social Security and Medicare and other liabilities, the government’s real national debt amounts to a staggering $56.4 trillion—or $184,000 for every American. Although the government will have to spend more than it earns to boost the US economy in the short term, it also must become more responsible about managing its longer-term finances.
In December 2008, mtvU and the Peter G. Peterson Foundation launched the Indebted campaign for college students to raise awareness about the dangers of personal and government financial irresponsibility and promote action to help stop the nation’s fiscal crisis. The Indebted game is the Peterson Foundation’s latest use of popular and new media to educate Americans about the country’s growing fiscal challenges. “I.O.U.S.A.” is the Foundation’s feature documentary about the rapidly increasing national debt and its consequences for the US economy. A 30-minute online version of “I.O.U.S.A.” has been viewed by nearly 350,000 people and can be seen at http://indebted.com/iousa-video/.
The Indebted video game will follow the success of previous student-led video games mtvU has launched to promote social action, including “Pos or Not” (www.PosOrNot.com) and “Darfur is Dying” (www.DarfurisDying.com). “Pos or Not,” which was created in partnership with the Kaiser Family Foundation, is an online game that challenges the stereotypes and stigma that prevent people from openly talking about HIV/AIDS, getting tested, and using protection. To date, the game has been played over 9.6 million times by 645,000 people. “Darfur is Dying” (www.DarfurisDying.com), an mtvU student-developed video game—now played more than 3.6 million times by over 2.1 million people—is designed to spread awareness of, and spur action to end the genocide in Darfur. The game is a key element of mtvU’s student-led, Emmy Award-winning Sudan campaign.
For more information on Indebted and the Indebted Digital Challenge, please go to the official campaign site, http://Indebted.com.
About mtvU
Broadcast to more than 750 college campuses and via top cable distributors in 700 college communities nationwide, mtvU reaches upwards of 9 million U.S. college students – making it the largest, most comprehensive television network just for college students. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, mtvU can be seen in the dining areas, fitness centers, student lounges and dorm rooms of campuses throughout the United States, as well as on cable systems from Charter Communications, Verizon FiOS TV, Suddenlink Communications, AT&T u-Verse and nearly 70 others. mtvU is dedicated to every aspect of college life, reaching students everywhere they are: on-air, online and on campus. mtvU programs music videos from emerging artists that can’t be seen anywhere else, news, student life features and initiatives that give college students the tools to advance positive social change. mtvU is always on campus, with more than 250 events per year, including exclusive concerts, giveaways, shooting mtvU series and more. For more information about mtvU, and a complete programming schedule, visit www.mtvU.com.
mtvU also owns and operates the College Media Network, the largest interactive network of online college newspapers in the United States, and RateMyProfessors.com, the Internet’s largest listing of collegiate professor ratings. The College Media Network comprises nearly 600 campus publications that serve institutions including Brown University, the University of Illinois, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin and Duke University, with a combined enrollment of over 5.5 million students, reaching an average of 5 million unique users each month. RateMyProfessors.com reaches approximately 2.9 million college students each month, via the site’s more than 6.6 million student-generated ratings of over 1,000,000 college professors.
About the Peter G. Peterson Foundation:
Founded by the former senior chairman of The Blackstone Group with a commitment of $1 billion, the Foundation is dedicated to increasing public awareness of the nature and urgency of key fiscal challenges threatening America's future, and to accelerating action on them. To address these challenges successfully, it works to bring Americans together to find sensible, long-term solutions that transcend age, party lines and ideological divides in order to achieve real results. For more information, see www.PGPF.org.
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Contacts
Myra Sung / Elizabeth Wilner
Peter G. Peterson Foundation
212-542-9200 / msung@pgpf.org
Janice Gatti
mtvU
212-846-8852 / janice.gatti@mtvstaff.com
