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BKFK and CosmoGIRL! Magazine Announce the 'Mind Your Own Business' Challenge
for Girls with a $10,000 Grand Prize
Contest seeks hot new entrepreneurial ideas created by girls for a changing
world
STAMFORD, CT – April 1, 2008 – BKFK, the youth empowerment
company, and CosmoGIRL! magazine today announced the launch of the CosmoGIRL!
Mind Your Own Business Challenge "CG! MYOB Challenge." The CG! MYOB Challenge
will discover America's hottest new entrepreneurial concept created by a girl -
and then help that girl make her idea a reality. The grand prize winner will
receive $10,000 in seed money from BKFK to get her business off the ground.
She'll also get media attention and entrepreneurial support along her path to
success. Piczo.com, the world's
leading online teen community, is the Presenting Sponsor and The BizWorld
Foundation and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County are the Educational
Partners of this competition.
Celebrity judges of the CG! MYOB Challenge include: Dr. Freeman Hrabowski,
president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Jesse Draper, star of
Nickelodeon's Naked Brothers Band and inspiration for The BizWorld Foundation;
George Gendron, former editor-in-chief of Inc. magazine and director of the
Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at Clark University; and Tina Wells,
millionaire entrepreneur, renowned expert in youth marketing, and CEO of Buzz
Marketing Group.
Only girls who are citizens of the United States, aged 13 – 22, are eligible to
participate in the CG! MYOB Challenge. The contest period runs from April 1st,
2008 until 12:00PM EST on June 30, 2008. All entries must be received online at:
www.bkfk.com. BKFK.com's exclusive social
entrepreneurship platform, the "Idea Locker™" will provide powerful online tools
for idea generation and brainstorming, to support the creative process of this
competition.
In addition to the $10,000 Grand Prize, the winner will be featured in an
upcoming issue of CosmoGIRL! magazine.
"In terms of youth entrepreneurship, girls have traditionally been
underrepresented," noted Susan Schulz, editor-in-chief of CosmoGIRL! magazine.
"We want to give young women the chance to prove how smart, talented and
innovative they are. We hope to find, inspire and help nurture the next Anita
Roddick, Madame C.J. Walker or Oprah Winfrey!"
"The CosmoGIRL! Mind Your Own Business Challenge represents an important
opportunity for more of America's girls to dream out loud and express their
creative visions and business ideas," said Norman Goldstein, Founder and CEO of
BKFK. "We are very excited to partner with CosmoGIRL! to spotlight the next
generation of female entrepreneurs- and to help the grand prize winner cross the
entrepreneurial finish line!"
In addition to the CG! MYOB Challenge, BKFK is also launching three other
national competitions on April 1st, 2008. The Akitas to Zebras (A-Z) Animal
Challenge seeks new ideas to protect and improve the lives of animals, The
Design Squad Trash To Treasure Competition challenges teens to create cool new
stuff from discarded items, and the Advertise Your Cause Challenge seeks ideas
from young people on creative new cause-related advertising and awareness
campaigns. All four BKFK competitions launching April 1st will be hosted online
at www.bkfk.com and each offers a $10,000
Grand prize and "connections to reality."
About By Kids For Kids Co.
By Kids for Kids® (BKFK®) is a youth marketing and media company partnering with
the worlds' leading corporations to provide a platform to foster, share,
showcase, and commercialize youth innovation and entrepreneurship. Their mission
is to inspire, motivate and stimulate the innovative spirit within all young
people.
The closely held Stamford, CT-based corporation has been dedicated to making
youth ideas a reality since 2003. Thru its website (www.bkfk.com)
and its social community (Idea Locker™), online competitions, TV show (Think
Big™), Magazine (Possible™), press, and education outreach the company engages
youth in the US and around the world. BKFK® youth-created products are available
nationally and serve as a testament to the power of youth innovation and social
entrepreneurship.
More information about the company and its successes helping young innovators is
available online at www.bkfk.com
About CosmoGIRL! Magazine
CosmoGIRL! (www.cosmogirl.com) empowers
and inspires young women to be leaders in all aspects of their lives. From
setting the latest trends to standing up for what they believe in, our readers
were Born To Lead. CosmoGIRL! publishes ten issues annually, as well as
CosmoGIRL! Prom. Teens can also interact with the brand on the digital front,
with CosmoGIRL.com, CosmoGIRL! mobile (m.cosmogirl.com),
and an original webisode series covering up-and-coming fashion designers. In
addition to its U.S. flagship, CosmoGIRL! publishes 7 editions around the world.
The magazine is published by Hearst Magazines, a unit of Hearst Corporation (www.hearst.com)
and one of the world's largest publishers of monthly magazines, with nearly 200
editions around the world, including 19 U.S. titles and 20 magazines in the
United Kingdom, published through its wholly owned subsidiary, The National
Magazine Company Limited. Hearst reaches more adults than any other publisher of
monthly magazines (77.4 million total adults, according to MRI, Fall 2007).
About Piczo.com
Piczo empowers teens worldwide to creatively express themselves, build personal
communities, and share ideas and experiences with their friends in a safe online
environment. Piczo's easy-to-use, drag-and-drop website editing tools spotlight
member creativity without requiring technical skills of any kind. Piczo is one
of the leading online teen communities worldwide according to comScore
MediaMetrix with 10 million unique users per month and over 1 billion page
views.
http://www.piczo.com
About The BizWorld Foundation
Founded in 1997, The BizWorld Foundation's mission is to challenge and engage
children across the cultural and economic spectrum through experiential learning
programs that teach the basics of business, entrepreneurship, and money
management and promote teamwork and leadership in the classroom. To date, The
BizWorld Foundation has reached over 190,000 students in all 50 states.
http://www.bizworld.org/
About UMBC
UMBC is a medium-sized public research university of 12,000 undergraduate and
graduate students who collaborate with faculty to address real-world challenges.
Located just south of Baltimore near I-95 and the BWI airport, UMBC's
residential campus houses state-of-the-art facilities in the sciences,
engineering, arts, social sciences and humanities. UMBC combines the energy of a
research university with the close community feel and attention to individual
students found in liberal arts colleges.
http://www.umbc.edu/
Contacts:
For BKFK: John Forrester | (323) 702-3684 |
media@bkfk.com
For CosmoGIRL! Corinne Kotler | 212-649-2583 |
ckotler@hearst.com
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