The Government of the Azores announced Friday that a group of students from Ribeira Grande Secondary School, consisting of students Inês Furtado, Filomena Gonçalves and António Garcia, won the second edition of the "Azores: Sea of Cultures" contest.

The contest, sponsored by the Government of the Azores through the Regional Directorate for Communities, was focused on the theme of immigration in the Azorean islands. It was targeted at 10th and 11th form students enrolled at regional schools as well as at students attending level 4 vocational training courses.

With the background of several scenarios of the Azorean landscape, the winning work focused on the general context of immigration in the archipelago. It highlighted aspects of the migratory stories of various immigrants, throughout the reasons and expectations that led to their departure from their country of origin, their arrival in the archipelago and their integration in the host society.

The report prepared by three students from Ribeira Grande Secondary School depicts the Azores as a space that welcomes diversity and rejects any form of racial and cultural discrimination and featured the testimonies of immigrants living from Canada, Brazil , Cape Verde, Mozambique, England and Italy that are currently residing on the island of S. Miguel.

The competition aimed to raise awareness of young students and encourage them to further study this issue in an island context, highlighting and emphasising two essential factors for the success of the full social integration of immigrants, namely cultural diversity and interculturalism. Participants were also encouraged to use new communication and image technologies to achieve this goal.

  Students competed in groups of three that also included a teacher, who was in charge of monitoring the development of the project. The works in competition were submitted in video format on the theme of immigration in the Azores, featuring a journalistic or historical report or a creative story.

The works in competition were assessed by a jury composed of representatives of the Regional Directorate for Communities, the Azores Immigrant Association (AIPA) and Cresaçor - Community Centre for Immigrant Support, filmmaker Manuel Bernardo Cabral and journalist Rosário Quaresma (RTP/Açores).

The winners will be awarded a trip to Cape Verde, the country of origin of the main immigrant communities in the Azores, where they will have the opportunity to visit several institutions working in the area of migrations as well as to know some social and cultural aspects of the Cape Verdean society.