Olympia High student wins global video competition with short on pay inequality

Growing up, Maria Aurelio would follow her dad, a physical therapist, around his work in the Philippines, talking to his patients and learning about different research stories.

Seeing him form one-on-one relationships with the people he cared for sparked her interest in the field.

Aurelio and her family immigrated to the U.S. when she was 7, and her passion continued to grow. While she attended Olympia High School, she volunteered with Panorama Convalescent and Rehabilitation Center, playing violin for patients.

“It was so inspiring to see my parents work in the field, and I knew it was something I wanted to do as well,” she said.

But as her interest grew, she also became more aware of problems in the healthcare sphere. A history class she took in her junior year discussed gender inequity in the industry, where she learned about glaring disparities in pay.

When the World of 8 Billion Student Video Contest, hosted by Population Connection, came up on her Instagram feed, she said she felt immediately drawn to its mission and topics. This year, the contest asked students around the world to create a solutions-oriented 60-second short on climate change, waste or gender equality.

Aurelio took the opportunity to look more into sexism and build on her previous learning. In May, she learned that her video, focused on closing the gender gap in labor equality, had won first prize overall.

The competition started in 2011, and its requests for short videos have become a tradition for Population Connection, said Barbara Huth, the online learning manager. While the 60-second time limit is a big challenge for many students, the rule is enforced so that students have to think about what information is most important to share.

“It proves that you really understand it if you’re able to communicate your message in a minute or less,” Huth said. “The video needs to be memorable and creative.”

Aurelio’s creativity was one thing that Huth said judges — who Population Connection selects based on their expertise in the field — noticed instantly. The video is structured so that it runs in a full circle, opening and closing with a quick story line.

“Sally sells seashells by the seashore,” the video starts, “But what if I tell you Sally sells 77 cents for every sand dollar Samuel sells?”

After she came up with the framing for the video, Aurelio said everything fell into place. She incorporated her research on challenges in women’s labor and her proposed solutions before concluding on a hopeful note, illustrating a world where Sally’s and Samuel’s seashells are worth an equal amount.

Though Aurelio wasn’t able to incorporate all of her research into her video, she was happy to learn about new ways healthcare would ultimately become more accessible, and examine other perspectives while developing her own solution.

The solution she developed centered around the U.S.’s failure to provide paid leave for parents. In her video, she proposes adopting a gender neutral policy for paid parental, family, medical and sick leave.

“A lot of the time I think people really talk about the problem, but not the actual solution to the problem,” she said. “It was cool to see how several people think about this issue and suggest several different strategies to combat it.”

The judging team was impressed by Aurelio’s strong solution, clear explanations and the video’s overall quality, Huth said. The fulfillment of these criteria, combined with her clever structuring, made it stand out to everyone, she said.

After Aurelio found out about her first place win during a physics class, she excitedly told her friends and family. She plans to put the $1,200 in prize money toward her education: She will attend Cornell University in the fall, where she intends to explore neuroscience and biology.

In the future, she hopes to become a psychiatrist, following in her family’s footsteps.

“I definitely want to continue work in the equity sphere because this is a topic that has been really important to me and intersects a lot with what I want to do in the future,” Aurelio said. “I don’t think I can be a good physician if I don’t know these problems that are really impacting every individual that I might be talking to.”