Martin County - Thursday May 26, 2022: Sophie Araque-Liu, a junior at Martin County High School, has been named Florida's winner in the 14th annual Doodle for Google competition. Doodle for Google is an annual contest where K-12 students create their own versions of the Google logo.
Araque-Liu is one of the 54 state and territorial nominees announced by Google Thursday in its 14th annual Doodle for Google competition. This year the theme for the competition was "I care for myself by...".
In her submission on that theme Araque-Liu wrote:
"I care for myself by accepting [that] others care for me," Sophie wrote as part of her submission packet. "Often I struggle to shoulder a burden on my own and forget that I have so many people, like my mom, who care about me and want to help. Opening up and letting others support me not only relieves my stress, [but] it [also] lets me tackle things I could never do on my own."
Sophie is a junior at MCHS. She was one of the 54 U.S. State and Territory winners, with her Doodle having been selected as Florida's winner. Google's guest judges - Selena Gomez (recording artist, actress, entrepreneur and philanthropist), Elyse Fox (director, model and mental health activist) and Juliana Urtubey (2021 National Teacher of the Year) - were instrumental in selecting Sophie's Doodle out of the thousands of entries received this year.
Students and staff at MCHS celebrated Sophie's achievement during a surprise assembly at the school.
Residents in each state and territory are free to vote for their favorite Doodle from any of the 54 State and Territory Winners.
Voting is open until June 3 at this site: https://doodles.google.com/d4g/. Public voting will determine the five national finalists (one in each grade group). Google will announce these five national finalists in June, one of which will have their Doodle featured on the Google homepage for a day.
The national winner will take home a $30,000 college scholarship and their school will receive a $50,000 tech package for the establishment or improvement of a computer lab or technology program.