f. Announcing the winners / awarding prizes

There are many different means available for announcing the winners of the contest:
C Newspapers, radio and television. By the time the contest press conference comes to an end, the project team will hopefully have established such good relations with members of the media that they will volunteer to convince their editors to announce the winners of the contest without charging you for an _advertisement_. Your chances of success probably depend on the number of names on the winners_ list; it might be no problem to slip ten names into an article or radio show, but fifty could be way too many to consider.

C Internet. Depending on where the contest was held, this medium could be very useful in announcing the winners.
C Partners in the organization of the contest. You can send each of the structures a list of the winners with the request that they distribute that information in whatever way they feel most appropriate. The local partners can certainly take on the task of personally informing the winners themselves.

One way in which local partners could help get the word out would be for the coordinators to print up another set of small posters, this time with the winners_ names, and for these to be distributed in exactly the same way as the posters announcing the contest.

Many options are also available for awarding prizes. The project team, perhaps in dialogue with some of the winners (that depends on how badly you want to surprise them), should discuss the matter to determine what would be the most meaningful way to proceed. Would it mean most to young winners in your region if the awards were presented at their homes in the presence of their immediate families, at a public square in their neighborhood with their friends and extended family present, at an event organized by your local partner organization, at school in front of their classmates, or on stage at a packed stadium during national youth week?
The important thing is that this decision is based on what would mean the most to the young person in question. We_ve seen far too many awards ceremonies that were actually a (costly) moment of self-aggrandizement for the structure that organized the contest.
At or right after the event when a young winner receives her or his award, be sure to take some time to get to know that person well and to establish a real sense of partnership. It is also a good opportunity to discuss the young person_s role in subsequent stages of the project, most immediately possible collaboration during the adaptation of her or his scenario by a professional script-doctor.
We have had the pleasure of developing some great relationships with winners of the Scenarios from the Sahel contest. They have become invaluable advisors and close friends.