Theme
The theme for Vinyl 2010's Essay Competition 2008/9 is ""Faced with today's food and energy crisis, how can society improve its well-being?"

Eligibility
The Vinyl 2010 Essay Competition 2008/9 European Prize Category is open to any citizen aged between 18 to 30 years* from within the European Economic Area (EEA) and beyond. 

Those entries submitted by citizens from within the EEA will be eligible to win one of the three European prizes.  The Global Prize wil be awarded to a citizen from a non EEA country.  All participants are eligible to be considered for the Special Industry Prize.  Should one participant be selected both as a prize-winner within the European Prize category or Global Prize category and also for the Special Industry Prize, the maximum prize money awarded will amount to €5,000 EUR.   Direct employees of the Vinyl 2010 organisation, affiliates and subsidiaries are not eligible to win one of the prizes.

*Participants who turn (a) 18 years of age by the competition deadline (that is, 31 January 2009) and equally (b) participants who are aged 30 years on or before 31 January 2009 are eligible to enter.
Why is the competition restricted to entrants aged between 18-30 years old?
This competition has been deliberately created as a platform for adults under the age of 30 to express their views. Some may still be in education, some may have started careers; some may still be looking for employment. But all represent a generation whose lives – and whose children’s lives, will be most impacted over the next 50 years by decisions that are being taken by those in charge within industry and government today. The lower age entry limit of 18 years old has been set because we are interested in adult views rather than those of the younger generation as a whole, who will generally have a less experienced perspective on the issues in question. 

Format
Each candidate may summit only one essay. All entries must abide by the following rules:

• All essays must respond to the following title, "Faced with today's food and energy crisis, how can society improve its well-being?"
• All essays must be in British or American English
• Essays must be submitted as a word document in A4 format, with left and right hand margins set at 3cm each, using 11 point Arial font
• Handwritten essays or essays presented in any other way will be disqualified
• Each entrant's essay must have two parts: a summary of 100 words and the main essay text of up to 1,000 words (Note: the word count includes articles and quotations)
• All entrants must pre-register on the Vinyl 2010 Essay Competition 2008/9 website by 1 December 2008 and the deadline for receipt of all essays in order to be eligible for the competition is 31 January 2009 (by 23:59 GMT+1)

Important!! Entrants must not put their name on the essay they submit.  Names should feature only on the Pre-Registration Form.   Upon submission, each essay entry will be allotted an ID Number to maintain anonymity during the competition judging process. 

Originality
Essays must be original, not in the public domain, factually accurate, and must not infringe or violate any law or the legal or aquitable right of any person or entity, nor contain material that infringes or violates any personal property rights or others or that constitutes libel, defamation, invasion of privacy, or an infringement of the intellectual property rights of any third person, nor be otherwise unlawful.

Submission
To submit their essay, each candidate must use the Submission Form which can be found on www.vinyl2010essaycompetition.org.
By submitting an essay, each candidate acknowledges his or her understanding of and compliance with these rules. Vinyl 2010 reserves the right to disqualify any entry deemed inappropriate for publication, at their discretion.

Jury
An independent Judging Panel will judge the competition.  A first round selection will be done to eliminate any essays which do not meet the Competition's basic evaluation criteria.  The evaluation criteria used for this pre-selection have been agreed with the Chair of the independent Judging Panel and any essays rejected in this pre-selection process will be supplied to the Chair for verification that elimination has been based on the agreed criteria.

Evaluation criteria
Essays will be judged on the following criteria:

1.    Argument/Creativity (30%)
2.    Structure (25%)
3.    Facts and examples (25%)
4.    Communication and readability (20%)

Prizes
In the European competition one candidate will be awarded €3,000 for the first prize. Another candidate will be awarded €2,000 for the second prize and an additional candidate will be awarded €1,000 for the third prize.  In the Global competition a single candidate will be awarded the €3,000 global prize.  A special industry prize of €2,000 will be awarded by a panel representing Vinyl 2010, the sustainable development voluntary commitment of the European PVC to one of the participants.  In the event that the industry prize is allotted to one of the European Prize category (first, second or third prize) or to the Global Prize category, this participant will win a further €2,000. 

In the event of a tie, the essay with the higher score for creativity will win. In the event of a second tie, the tying contestants will be required to submit a new essay on a topic of Vinyl 2010's choice which will be judged on the same criteria as the original entries.

Vinyl 2010 reserves the right not to attribute any or all of the prizes should it judge that the nominations are not of sufficiently high standards to meet the selection criteria.  Prizes are non-transferable.

Copyright
All essays and all rights to their publication become the property of Vinyl 2010, which may use, edit and excerpt these entries for promotional or any other purpose, including placing them online without compensation, additional or otherwise. Vinyl 2010 reserves the right to use participants' names, age and nationality in any advertising or promotional materials relating to this competition without further notification, permission, or compensation to the winners, except where prohibited by law.

Announcement of results
Winners will be notified at the latest by 31 March 2009 Winners' names will also be posted online at www.vinyl2010.org

Use of entrants and winner information
The data provided in connection with this Competition may be used by Vinyl 2010 to send you further information at a later date (e.g. further essay competitions). If you would like your name to be removed from this mailing list, please write to: Vinyl 2010, Avenue E. van Nieuwenhuyse 4, 1160 Brussels, send an email to the following address: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it , or send a fax to +32 2 676 7447.