Declarations of Interdependence Contest for Schools
Elementary, Middle, and High School Categories

Closing Date for Submissions: February 15, 2027

After Independence…What’s Next?

In 2026 we’ve celebrated the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That Declaration was a remarkable milestone in the history of our nation and the world. But after the Revolutionary War was won and independence as a nation was affirmed, we would be faced with a new challenge, and a new opportunity: learning how to work together and how to best support one another. This work of interdependence has been our work in progress ever since.

The Mary Parker Follett Foundation invites elementary, middle school, and high school classes across America to reflect on interdependence, what it means, how we depend on each other, or how we should be able to depend on each other, and to draft and share Declarations of Interdependence that will illuminate, inspire, and challenge.

Winning submissions in the Elementary, Middle School, and High School categories will be awarded cash prizes. All submissions meeting criteria will be exhibited in a permanent online gallery.

Content of Declarations

In their Declarations, students can consider and express the theme of interdependence in any way they wish. Possibilities include but are not limited to:

• Interdependence at any scale from the classroom to the school, community, nation, or world;
• interdependence that includes broader contexts, such as the natural world (e.g., ecological interdependence);
• interdependence across time (e.g., inter-generational interdependence).
• how independence and interdependence relate to each other, their tension and/or how they support each other.

Eligible Formats

Declarations may be created and submitted in text form or may take artistic forms—poetic, visual, musical, dramatic, etc.

Eligibility for Participation

• Students in public, private, and faith-based schools are invited to participate.
• Submissions may be in the name of an individual classroom within a school (no limit to how many classrooms submit Declarations), an individual club within a school, or on behalf of an entire school.

Other Rules & Guidelines
• AI may not be used in the creation of submissions. Submitters must affirm that AI was not used.
• Declarations must be created by groups. Individual students are not eligible to submit their own Declarations. Declarations must be signed by at least five students, or accompanied by an affirmation by at least five students that they created the Declaration.

Evaluation Criteria
1. Inclusive Effort: Everyone in the class, group, or school (whoever is submitting the Declaration) had a voice and hand in contributing to it (this criterion to be self-evaluated)
2. Clarity: Should be understandle by people of the same age or older as those who created it.
3. Expansiveness: Shows or explores interdependence (at whatever scale is chosen) in multiple forms or dimensions.
4. Evocative: Gets people to imagine and envision.
5. Reflection-Provoking: Gets people to think about how they think, act, or relate.
6. Illuminating/Expanding: Shows the reader or viewer something new; expands the way people think about something.
7. Inspiring: Gets people to feel inspired about what is or what could be.
8. Well-Presented: Framed in a way that invites viewers to explore it and enjoy it.
9. Technical Quality: Shows care put into details, form, conventions, spelling, etc.

All submissions meeting basic criteria will be displayed in an online gallery on the contest website.

Prizes

$500 will be awarded to one grand prize winner in each of three categories: Elementary (grades K-5), Middle School (grades 6-8), and High School (grades 9-12).

Timeline

December 1 Submission form opens
February 15 Submission window closes
April 1 Winning submissions announced
April 15 Online gallery opens

How to Submit

Declarations should be submitted through the Submission Form that will be available on this site beginning December 1.

For Teachers

A Teacher’s Guide is being finalized. Check back for updates.

For more information, send a note to contest@follettfdn.org.