Kid Witness News

Through the Kid Witness News program, Panasonic provides state-of-the-art, high-definition digital video technology to participating public school students in grades 4-12. With these tools, students are equipped to bring their stories to life, expand their understanding of the world, and make an impact on others.

Although KWN includes students from schools across the country, the messages in their videos have common themes. The topics reflect the world they live in and touch upon issues that impact their everyday lives, such as the environment, peer pressure and drug prevention. More recently, projects have covered human interest stories. Through these videos, we can see stories from their point of view.

Each year, national and regional judges recognize the best videos submitted by students. Top entries are entered into our global awards contest, and winners will be invited to our Global Awards Summit.

At the Summit, students will meet other students from around the world and see their work. As representatives of their countries, they’ll also get to contemplate social issues with their peers from a global perspective and work together to create a proposal for the future.

Kid Witness News program started with 19 public schools in the United States in 1989. During the 1990´s, the program spread throughout the U.S. and Canada, and with the dawn of the 21st century, the expansion reached a global scale.

From around 2005 onward, workshops were organized to present kids with video shooting and film-making lessons by professionals.
2014 marked the 25th anniversary of KWN. It’s our sincere wish that the program’s global exchange activities continue to expand with the participation of children from even more countries and regions.