Field Placement: The Media Project
Location: North Hollywood, CA
Preceptor: Melissa Havard
Student Name: Armine Kourouyan
Year: 2004

The SHINE Awards

The Media Project is a non-profit organization based in North Hollywood that serves as a resource for the entertainment industry in the United States and Latin America to help educate and promote healthy reproductive and sexual health for adolescents. The Media Project strives to portray responsible messages through television programming to inform and encourage viewers to make healthy and safe decisions about sex and their bodies. They deal with a wide range of topics, including dating, condoms, pregnancy, STDs, HIV/AIDS, homosexuality, and abstinence. The Media Project works with writers and producers of television shows to provide research assistance, facts and figures, storyline ideas, and consultation on health issues to incorporate education into entertainment.

My internship focused on The Media Project’s annual SHINE Awards (Sexual Health IN Entertainment), which honors the professionals in the entertainment industry who portray accurate and healthy depictions of sexuality on their shows. This year’s show was held on October 16, 2004 at the House of Blues on Sunset Strip. To prepare for this event, I spent many hours watching the submitted shows for content analysis. The different categories that I evaluated include Comedy, Drama, Series Storyline, Entertainment Specials, Youth Episode, and Information/Documentary. I reviewed the entries for each category and rated the content in terms of topic, accuracy, information/modeling, impact, and entertainment value.

After the nominees were selected, I organized the Judging Event by recruiting potential judges from the entertainment industry, the public health field, educators, physicians, and teens themselves. The Judging Event was held at a nearby hotel, where judges viewed the nominees in different rooms and placed their votes for the most effective shows. This entailed creating outreach letters, making many phone calls, and handling reservations and registration for the judges. The winning shows would be announced and recognized at The SHINE Awards.
Also, I worked on a silent auction that would be held at the awards ceremony in order to raise money for the organization. This consisted of contacting potential donors that could give items or goods to be sold at the auction, or that could be used to fill goodie bags that would be given to the guests on the day of the event. I called and wrote to retail stores, restaurants, hotels, and airlines to solicit contributions for our cause. I worked closely with the Event Manager during this time to help with many miscellaneous tasks in preparation for the event, such as editing the invitation and program book.

Other duties of my position included research on reproductive and sexual health topics, putting together information packets for television writers, conceptualizing storyline ideas, and outreaching to new and existing shows to further our network.

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