Maurice Lacroix is the exclusive watch partner of the US non-profit What's Your Issue? project, a global youth initiative and competition, encouraging the next generation of leaders and social entrepreneurs. The project is outreaching to 200 million young adults to engage in issues and propose local solutions to front-burner issues, submitted digitally via three-minute videos. In 2010, What's Your Issue is inaugurating a new Young Entrepreneur Award, sponsored by Maurice Lacroix. The It's Time for Leadership award will be awarding a special edition watch to the youth winner.

The front-burner issues highlighted for 2010 are environment, education, healthcare, poverty, national security and defense, public service, human and equal rights, technology and the economic recession. Winning solutions, chosen by the VIP Jury and public, online, will be presented to senior officials within the Obama administration; at a VIP event in Washington, DC; at an Awards Ceremony co-hosted by Sony Pictures in Los Angeles. Winners, announced in late spring, will be posted on iTunes, and presented on Best Buy screens in every store around the globe.

This year's VIP Jury consist of Tom Brokaw, Jack Black, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, Yoko Ono, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, Oprah Winfrey Network CEO Christina Norman, NAACP President Ben Jealous, Apple Education Vice President John Couch, Sony Pictures Entertainment Executive Vice President Jim Kennedy, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Best Buy Senior Vice President James Damian, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Actor/ Writer/ Director Liev Schreiber, Global Philanthropy Group President Trevor Neilson, Carnegie Corporation of New York President Vartan Gregorian, and Actor and Philanthropists Kirk Douglas and Anne Douglas.  Past leadership VIP jurists include Barack Obama and George Clooney.

About "What's Your Issue?"

The What's Your Issue? Foundation is a US not-for-profit organization which runs an internet-based film and song competition, as well as Y/e, The Young Entrepreneur Network and a program of Video Tutorials. The mission of What's Your Issue? Foundation is to provide a unique national platform for young adults to propose creative solutions to some of our nation's most important challenges and for that voice to be heard, honored, and acted upon by leaders in government, the media, the private sector, and the nonprofit world. The broader year-round mission of this dynamic and multi-faceted initiative is to encourage and support civic engagement by young adults supported by an educational platform offering leadership and social entrepreneurial skills, as well as video-making skills.

The Film Your Issue competition, in its 5th year, is looking for solution-project ideas to front-burner issues from young adults 14 to 24 in a 3-minute video format, with accompanying one-sheet description.

The new Issue Song competition is looking for original 3-minute songs using the power of music to illuminate front-burner issues.

About Maurice Lacroix

Since the launch of its first watch model in 1975, Maurice Lacroix has developed to become a sought-after Manufacture brand. With its own factories producing complex components for mechanical calibers, Maurice Lacroix joined the exclusive league of Swiss watchmakers at the end of 2006. Thanks to continued innovative development both in technical fields and in design, Maurice Lacroix has registered several patents and trademarks.

Maurice Lacroix is one of the few independent watchmakers and employs more than 200 people worldwide, the majority of whom are based at the international head office in Zurich and the production facilities in Switzerland.