Destination Imagination Global Finals 2015 Coming to Knoxville
CHERRY HILL, N.J. (PRWEB) March 12, 2015 -- Destination Imagination (DI), a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering students' curiosity, courage and creativity through open-ended STEM, fine arts and service learning challenges, will host Global Finals 2015, the world’s largest celebration of creativity, May 20-23 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tenn.
“Destination Imagination is an extremely well-rounded challenge-based learning program that teaches kids project management skills, perseverance, collaboration and global competency,” said Dr. Chuck Cadle, CEO of Destination Imagination, Inc. “Our program participants have been preparing for this Global Finals competition for months and raising funds to come.”
DI’s progressive competitions begin with regional academic competitions, which serve as prerequisites for the highest scorers to attend the state and country competitions. The teams with the highest scores at these competitions are advanced to Global Finals.
According to PMI’s Industry Growth Forecast across seven project intensive industries, 15.7 million new project management jobs will be available around the world between 2010 and 2020. With such a demand for project managers to work in the new digital ecosystem, Destination Imagination will be able to contribute to filling those future positions by preparing young people with the tools they will need through creativity programming and competitions.
Global Finals 2015 is expected to be the largest in history with 1,400 teams scheduled to attend. Eighty percent of the teams come from 48 U.S. states, including Texas, California, Florida, New York, Colorado and Tennessee. Twenty percent are made up of international participants from 20 countries with China as the leader, closely followed by Canada, Turkey, Qatar, South Korea and Mexico.
“Our goal through Destination Imagination and Global Finals is to teach kids how to think, not what to think,” said Cadle. “We are in the imagination business, and we are teaching kids to open their eyes to the world and learn how to compete using their creativity and other 21st century skills. It is very exciting to return to Knoxville as the community has become like a family to us.”
Global Finals has been hosted in Knoxville a total of 18 years with 2015 being the fifteenth consecutive year. Beyond impacting participants, Global Finals has been a major economic contributor to Knoxville and the surrounding communities. Every May, for the past 10 years, the event has contributed $20 million annually to the local economy. Directors deem Knoxville the ideal location for the competition as it offers safety as well as ample space for students to participate in the competition, skills workshops and the Innovation Expo.
For more information about Global Finals or for the full agenda, visit http://globalfinals.org.
About Destination Imagination
Destination Imagination, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) volunteer-led non-profit organization whose purpose is to inspire and equip students to become the next generation of innovators and leaders. The most popular education offering is the Challenge Program, where student teams solve open-ended STEM, arts and service learning Challenges and present their solutions to trained appraisers. Founded in 1982, Destination Imagination has impacted more than 1.5 million students. To learn more, please visit http://destinationimagination.org.
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For additional information, contact:
Heather Ripley
Ripley PR
865-977-1973
hripley (at) ripleypr (dot) com
Heather Ripley, Ripley PR, http://www.ripleypr.com, +1 865-977-1973, [email protected]
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