A Georgia high school senior won the Doodle for Google contest after submitting artwork that honored her mother.
Arantza Peña Popo created a Doodle titled “Once you get it, give it back,” that shows “a framed picture of [the teen and her] mother carrying [her] as a baby (a real picture in [her] house) and below the picture [of Popo], caring for her [mother] when she’s older in the future.”
Popo said that she came up with the idea the day submissions were due. “I looked at the photograph of my mother (the real version that inspired the drawing) and thought, ‘Hey, why don’t I reverse it?’ I wanted to focus more on a message of helping out my awesome mother more than anything else.”
Well she is definitely helping her mother now. Popo’s win was announced Monday evening on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. As the winner, she gets her Doodle displayed on Google.com for one day, a $30,000 scholarship to college a $50,000 technology package for her school and a trip to Google’s headquarters in California.
The National Doodle for Google contest began in 2008 and is open to all students, K-12, who want to submit their artwork. Fallon served as one of this year’s judges. Popo said she has been interested in art since she was very young. She was having a hard time coming up with anything to submit for the contest but got inspired by her mother in the final hours. The theme for this year was “When I grow up, I hope…”
Popo, who was valedictorian of her class says she hopes to pursue studies in literature.
Congratulations, from all of us here at Because Of Them We Can.