He replied, ‘Hope, hope keeps me strong.’ After I unexpectedly lost him at 13 due to a heart attack, it helped me overcome grief and support other children who lost loved ones.”Ĭongratulations again to Sadra, Elise, Marketa, Kiara Susana and Milo! As national finalists, our student winners will receive a $5,000 college scholarship, Google hardware for the school year and some fun Googley swag. I once asked my father how he overcame obstacles and became who he wanted to be. Meet our finalists:ġ0th-12th grade National Finalist: Milo Golding, Kentucky Title: Finding hope Artist statement: “I am strong because I have hope. We’re supremely grateful to each of these artists for trusting us with their inspiring stories of inner strength. Our finalists were chosen based on a combination of public voting and our judging criteria, including artistic merit, creativity and how well participants communicated the theme in their artwork and written statement. And today, we’re happy to share that the votes are in, the judges have deliberated and drum roll please…we’re ready to announce our five national finalists for the 2021 Doodle for Google contest!

After carefully reviewing all the submissions, we announced our 54 state winners and opened up public voting on our website. We received tens of thousands of submissions from students in all 50 states, as well as Washington D.C., Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. We kicked off the 13th annual Doodle for Google contest back in January and invited K-12 students across the country to submit their artistic interpretations of “I am strong because…”.

And that strength is boundless and inspiring.

This theme also presents an opportunity to not only honor, but also celebrate a more general beautiful truth that we sometimes don’t talk about enough: kids are strong and resilient. And not just because of the unprecedented pandemic and growing social movements and conversations we’ve seen sweep our nation and world over the last year. I’ve worked on the Doodle team at Google for more than five years - and I believe this year’s theme, “I am strong because…” is our most powerful prompt to date.

Google today doodle