A local Georgia teen is #BlackGirlMagic and #BlackExcellence all rolled up into one—and she managed to do that by soaring high above all others for an annual Google contest by honoring her mother.
Arantza Peña Popo of Lithonia, Georgia and recent valedictorian of Arabia Mountain High School in Dekalb County, beat out a whopping 200,000 entries in order to be selected as Google’s 2019 “Doodle For Google” winner. The most touching part of her impressive accomplishment is that her design honors her mother.
As reported by @cnet, Popo’s Doodle is titled “Once you get it, give back” in response to this year’s theme of “When I grow up, I hope…” She says she quickly realized that her mother was the perfect representation to bring her design to life.
Her Doodle is a touching creation that shows her and her mother in front of a portrait of the pair at much younger ages. Popo explains it as “a framed picture of my mother carrying me as a baby (a real picture in my house) and below the picture is me, caring for her when she’s older in the future.”
Popo, who’s had a love for art since she was a child, admits that she came up with the decision to honor her mother for her Google submission at the last minute:
“I came up with the idea at the last minute, actually the day of the deadline. 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.”
She was announced as the winner on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon earlier this week, while her Doodle will be on display today, August 13th, for 24 hours. However, the biggest part of such a whirlwind experience is that Popo also received a scholarship worth $30,000 and a trip to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.
We want to send out a huge congratulations to this talented young lady and a beautiful design!
Roommates, what are your thoughts on this?
