2011 NJSDD Online Winner Announced!

CONTACT:

Michelle Vernuccio, Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey

973-467-2100, ext. 24

E-mail: michelle@drugfreenj.org 

 

NEARLY 100,000 ONLINE VOTES CAST FOR NJ HIGH SCHOOL

DRUG PREVENTION MUSIC COMPETITION

 Winner advances as a Finalist in the

2011 New Jersey Shout Down Drugs Prevention Concert   

Millburn - The votes are in!  The Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey announced the winner of the Online Voting People’s Choice Finalist for this year’s New Jersey Shout Down Drugs music competition.  The Bergen County band, Third Party Witness, garnered the most support, collecting 16,058 votes out of the 48 entries received. The five-member band includes Northern Valley Regional High School at Demarest Students Won Jun (Thomas) Cho, Dmitry Kofman, Jennifer Landi,  Austin Paragas, and Dumont High School student Raj Sanghvi.  The People’s Choice Online Finalists will advance to perform their song, No Temptation, at the May 5th Annual Prevention Concert, at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, along with the contest’s county finalists.  That night the top three winners will be awarded music contracts worth $5,000, $3,000 and $2,000.  The remaining finalists will be chosen by county and announced on www.shoutdowndrugs.com on March 1. 

This is the first year that the public had the opportunity to vote for a finalist from all the entries that were submitted from all corners of New Jersey, containing a wide range of music genres.  “In only a two-week period, close to 100,000 votes were cast,” stated Angelo Valente, the Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey’s executive director.  “More importantly though is that tens of thousands of our young people were receiving substance abuse prevention messages as a result of their voting. Votes came in not only from teens in New Jersey, but from 42 states, and even 36 countries worldwide.” 

The program’s website, www.shoutdowndrugs.com, was launched last spring to a hugely successful online voting option to help select a 2010 winner.  All of the finalists for 2011 will again be featured on the site for this year’s second phase of voting, which will run from March 15 through May 4.  Those votes will be factored into the final scores of the finalists on the evening of the concert when first, second and third place winners will be chosen. 

The mission of the Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey’s high school music competition is to allow teens throughout New Jersey to utilize their musical talents to write an original song with a strong drug prevention message and influence their peers to live a drug-free life. Comcast, the title sponsor since 2006, will once again film the concert to be aired on the Comcast On Demand channel.  

Tickets to the Prevention Concert are free, but reservations must be made, beginning March 15, at www.shoutdowndrugs.com, or by calling 973-467-2100, ext. 19       

Best known for its statewide anti-drug advertising campaign, the Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey is a private not-for-profit coalition of professionals from the communications, corporate and government communities whose collective mission is to reduce demand for illicit drugs in New Jersey through media communication.  To date, more than $55 million in broadcast time and print space has been donated to the Partnership’s New Jersey campaign, making it the largest public service advertising campaign in New Jersey’s history. Since its inception the Partnership has garnered 97Advertising and Public Relations Awards from National, Regional & Statewide Media Organizations.

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