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Press Release

04 June 2007
Marshall Plan 60th Anniversary Contest: “Digitally Linking Generations”

In commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Marshall Plan on June 5, the United States Embassy and internet social-networking site Bebo, in partnership with the Imperial War Museum, are launching the "Marshall Plan Contest: Digitally linking generations." The contest invites participants to interview people in their families or communities who have memories of the reconstruction period in Great Britain following the Second World War and to turn these interviews and images or artifacts from the period into digital documentaries to post on Bebo. It is hoped that this initiative will preserve these valuable reflections for history and inform a new generation about the trials and triumphs of the post-war period.

U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall delivered his historic speech at Harvard University laying out what came to be called the Marshall Plan on June 5, 1947. This speech, in the aftermath of the Second World War, laid the foundation for a U.S. program of assistance to the countries of Europe to help them in their rebuilding of devastated cities and national economies.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom Robert H. Tuttle will formally announce the contest on June 5 as part of a major address at Oxford University on the historical importance, and continued relevance, of the Marshall Plan. In his address "The Marshall Plan: remembering the past, looking to the future" Ambassador Tuttle states that:

"George Marshall was instrumental in setting freedom on its feet, and from there the people drove not only Europe, but the world, towards a new international order. Marshall's enduring message is one that we would do well to look to today, and I believe he summed it up better than I possibly could in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Marshall said, ‘…we must present democracy as a force - holding within itself - the seeds of unlimited progress by the human race.’"

Contact information:

Chris Dunnett, Assistant Cultural Attaché
United States Embassy London
0207 894 0644
DunnettCG@State.gov

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