Teen Travel Writing Scholarship

We are so excited to announce the 12th annual Teen Travel Writing Scholarship! It is a perfect marriage with the new division of Hip Homeschool Moms called Homeschool Road Trips! We are thrilled to be one of the sponsors for this writing scholarship and want to encourage your teens to enter!

If you have a teen who loves to travel and enjoys writing about it, you need to know about this opportunity for your teen to enter for a chance to win a cash grant for great writing! This teen travel blogging scholarship is easy to apply for too (because we know how busy you are!).

The Family Travel Forum (FTF), the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW), and TMSjrs have teamed up to offer this chance for teens to share their own travel experiences and photos with the world. We all know that teens have opinions, right? And we know they often love sharing their opinions, ideas, and experiences with others. So this is a great way for teens to share with others who are interested in reading about them. And it’s a great way for your teen to have fun, get great practical writing experience, and have a chance at winning some cash!

Maybe your teen has advice about places to go and things to do at a particular destination. Or maybe he or she has tips for making the most of a camping trip or a train trip or a flight. Perhaps your family has taken a fantastic vacation together, and your teen wants to write about it. Or maybe just the opposite happened, and everything went wrong!! (It’s much funnier looking back than it was at the time, right?!) No matter what your teen’s writing style or objective for writing, Family Travel Forum invites your teen to submit writing that is serious, funny, or informational.

The top winners will receive cash awards as well as a GoBag Travel Bag provided by Allianz Global Assistance USA. Twenty finalists will win honorable mention awards and travel gifts.

What do you need to do to enter?

First, have your teen watch the video below. It shares tips for writing a great essay!

Second, read the rules (listed under the video) to be sure you know the rules and eligibility requirements.

FTF TEEN TRAVEL WRITING SCHOLARSHIP

• First Place: $1,000
• Second Place: $500
• Third Place: $250
• Leading travel insurance provider Allianz Global Assistance USA will award the top three prize winners a “Go Bag” comprised of a GoPro, portable power pack, and a passport holder with RFID protection.
• 20 Honorable Mentions will win travel prizes including a subscription to Lonely Planet magazine–which aims to inspire today’s traveler through immersive storytelling, rich photography, practical advice, and accessible travel ideas.

All winners will receive a Family Travel Forum Certificate of Commendation, and selected submissions will be published on Family Travel Forum’s MyFamilyTravels.com website.

FTF TEEN TRAVEL WRITING SCHOLARSHIP RULES

Eligibility for FTF Teen Travel Writing Scholarship

• Applications will be accepted between May 1, 2018 and July 9, 2018.
• Applicants must be ages 13-18 and attending grades 8-12.
• Applicants must be attending junior high or high school in the United States or Canada, or an American international school abroad, or be enrolled in a U.S. homeschool program.

Submission Requirements for FTF Teen Travel Writing Scholarship

• Travel blogs (essays) must be no more than 600 words in length, and the trip must have been taken in the last five years.
• Entries must include text and be illustrated by at least one photo, digital artwork, or video.
• Travel essays must include practical details so that others can follow in your footsteps. Details should include names of attractions, museums, theme parks, resorts, restaurants, the local beach, etc. with URLs as appropriate.
• Travel blogs must be submitted online using the FTF Teen Travel Scholarship Essay Submission Form. Please create a strong, descriptive blog title, and use the editing tools provided to make paragraph breaks or add punctuation and to upload your photos. If you are submitting a video, please enter the URL at the bottom of your entry, and we will add it to your blog post.
• All applications must be received no later than 11:59pm ET on July 9, 2018. Late entries will not be considered.
• Your travel blog must be your original creation and must not have been previously published.
• Multiple submissions are not allowed.

How do you know if you won?

All Finalists will be contacted by August 20, 2018 and asked to send a copy of your transcript from your school or homeschool as well as a permission letter from your parents (if you are under 18). For more information about the Parent Permission Letter, click here. These documents will have to be received by email, fax, or snail mail by September 4, 2018.

Judging the FTF Teen Travel Writing Scholarship

Travel blogs will be judged on originality, quality of expression, and a sense of place, as well as in accordance with standard rules of English grammar, mechanics, and spelling. A panel of esteemed educators, professional writers, and editors will make the final selection of winners.

• All applicants will be contacted by email when the Judges have completed selecting the Semi-Final round of essays and posted them online.
• Only Finalists will be contacted for follow-up documents to verify their eligibility.

The FTF Teen Travel Writing Scholarship Winners

If you are not a Finalist but you’d like to see the winning entries, please visit MyFamilyTravels.com after September 14 when the 1st, 2nd, 3rd place, and Honorable Mention blogs for 2018 will be announced.

If you’d like to see the work of past Scholarship Winners, you can do that at this link: MyFamilyTravels Scholarship Page.

We would love to see some of our HEART (Homeschool Enrichment Adveture Road Trip) participants enter this contest! And we would love to see other teens who belong to our Hip Homeschool Moms community enter too! We hope our homeschooled teens will sharpen their pencils (or open up their computers or tablets) and start writing some awesome essays to enter into this contest.