Standing up for-and creatively expressing-beliefs is paying off this week. On Friday, April 25, the VOICES Project will hold a showcase to celebrate its first “This I Believe” contest at Saint Louis University and award each of three winners a $1,000 prize. The winners of the contest will be announced at 6 p.m. in the Pere Marquette Gallery in DuBourg Hall, and the contest entries will be displayed for the public.

The VOICES Project encourages individuals to “integrate what we believe with our daily lives and try to live very holistically,” said Mary Beth Gallagher, director of the program.

Starting late last semester, VOICES asked students, faculty and staff to “express their unique and strongly-held beliefs in a variety of formats” and submit their work to the contest, Gallagher said. Entrants turned in poetry, essays, videos, original songs and art before the Mar. 1 deadline.

“We thought [holding the contest] was a really exciting way to delve into the personal beliefs of people here at SLU,” said Erin Klein, a graduate assistant with VOICES. “I was really surprised at the diversity” of the entries, she said.

“There were some surprises,” Gallagher said of the entries. “A professor of physics wrote music, [and] one person submitted a recipe.”

A panel of nine faculty, staff and students from the Frost Campus and medical center judged the entries.

“We wanted diversity so that many different perspectives would be represented in the judging,” Gallagher said

Three winners-one student, one faculty member and one staff member-will be announced at the showcase, Klein said. The event will also feature an address by Donna Bess, associate director of Student Life, as well as a showing of the contest’s video entries, Klein said.

Klein said that individuals who RSVP to [email protected] by Monday, April 21, to attend the showcase will receive a complimentary dinner and a free DVD copy of the video entries at the event.

The “This I Believe” contest is based on the National Public Radio program of the same name, which broadcasts individuals’ three-minute-long essays about their core beliefs. According to www.thisibelieve.org, CBS broadcasted the first “This I Believe” program on the radio in the early 1950s, with journalist Edward R. Murrow as host. In the ’50s, the public declared their beliefs in the face of the Cold War and McCarthyism. According to the website, NPR revived the program in 2005 to encourage discussion of people’s core values.

The contest seems to espouse the mission of the VOICES Project, which, Gallagher said, promotes “personal reflection.” Klein said VOICES encourages people to ask themselves “What are the things I believe . and value?”

“A lot of people don’t get around to stuff like that,” she said. “It’s something you have to make time for.”