Do your students love music, coding, and social justice issues? Enroll them in the “Your Voice is Power” competition! The free K-12 STEM competition challenges students to make social justice-themed music remixes using code. Winners receive $5,000 scholarships or grants for starting their own businesses.

The program, a collaboration between Amazon Future Engineer, Georgia Tech, and the nonprofit YELLOW, founded by musician Pharrell Williams, is a fun way to learn music and computer science while gaining valuable entrepreneurship skills. 

Students will make their remixes with EarSketch, a free online code editor from Georgia Tech. According to the competition website, remixes must promote a message of equity, and use of one of the competition’s three featured artists’ songs coded on the EarSketch platform,  including Pharrell Williams’ new song “Entrepreneur,” “Underdog,” by  Alicia Keys, and “New Normal” by Khalid. Submission requirements include:

  • Must be between 30 seconds to 3 minutes
  • Must include five distinct tracks
  • Must include one audio clip from Pharrell Williams’s Entrepreneur song
  • Must run in the EarSketch DAW without any errors
  • Code must include one custom function to define song sections (for MS/HS students only)

The competition also provides free curriculum and professional development resources for teachers. According to the education news site The Journal, the curriculum includes five or six modules, each to be used during one 60-minute class period. Each module comes with a scripted lesson plan, slide decks, digital student materials, code examples and videos.

Students can compete alone or with classmates. The first round of finalists will be announced in March, and the grand prize winners in August. A panel of industry professionals will judge submissions on the quality of remixes, code and messaging. Five students will each win $5,000 scholarships or grants for starting their own businesses, and five teachers will win $1,000 for exceptional instruction for the contest.

Round 1, which opened on December 1, will close on February 7. Round 2 will open on February 8, and end on June 19.

Go to the competition website to learn more.