Hersey students' video takes prize in White House film fest

John Hersey High School students Owen Connor and Elise Bang received an Honorable Mention at the 2015 White House Student Film Festival for their video on Hersey's charitable giving. The video, created by the media tech students, competed against more than 1,500 submissions. The piece highlights the charitable giving from the Hersey community this school year and the impact it has had on individuals and organizations. Connor and Bang spent four months getting footage of Hersey's philanthropy - documenting the school's ALS Bucket Challenge, canned food drive and a fundraiser for an army sergeant who lost both legs to an IED in Afghanistan. The 3-minute video will be featured on WhiteHouse.gov/FilmFestival and will be highlighted through White House social media channels. View it on youtube.com/watch?v=LovW_1K1wTY.

• After 26 years as director of the Kids On Stage Youth Theater Program for the Mount Prospect Park District, Paula Winkler is retiring. Through the theater program, and working for the past 10 years with her friend and assistant director Renee Bauer, Winkler nurtured children in second through eighth grades, teaching them to be a team, to help each other and have the confidence to be the stars of their junior high and high school theater productions. Some of her students went on to college theater and even a few to Broadway.

• Northwestern Mutual's McTigue Financial Group, in Rosemont, has promoted Amanda Lela Gonzalez of Des Plaines to director of New Representative Support. As director, Gonzalez will manage the Financial Representative Support Team and provide individual coaching to new financial representatives as they begin building a financial planning practice. Gonzalez, who joined the financial planning firm as office administrator in 2014, also volunteers at Homeless Outreach in Chicago.

Harper College student Garrett Smith won second place and a cash prize of $2,500 from Pearson, a provider of education products and services, in the company's second annual Student Coding Contest. The contest increases awareness of the importance of programming education, and was open to undergrads from the U.S. and Canada. Smith won for developing the app Curriculab, which allows instructors to create lesson plans inside one simple interface that provides them with dynamic resources that can be easily integrated into their plans.

• Tyler B. Awdisho. a Bartlett High School senior, is among the outstanding black American high school seniors who won Achievement Scholarship awards through the National Achievement Scholarship program of the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. Awdisho, a Bartlett High School senior, was awarded the National Achievement R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company Scholarship.

• Send your "Neighbor in the News"' items to Norrine Twohey @ ntwohey@dailyherald.com.