VIDEO: Marion native wins YouTube prize for ‘Beautiful Revolution’

Actress, photographer and Marion native Alisabeth Caraway, 22, sees beauty in the faces all around her, not just the faces in the movies and on billboards.

“Everyone has something unique to offer this world, and that's how I define beautiful,” she says in her contest winning video “The Beautiful Revolution.”

So many others have seen the beauty in her vision that she won the top prize Sunday in Target and Converse One Star's “Challenge, Create, Change” YouTube video competition.

Caraway's video includes footage from New York City, where she moved Jan. 3, along with photos of Iowans. Out of 900 videos submitted for the contest, judges deemed “The Beautiful Revolution” one the top three finalists.

It was posted on YouTube in early July and garnered so many viewer votes, Caraway was named the winner in a ceremony at the Wanderlust Festival in Lake Tahoe, Calif. She won the title, $10,000 and a $1,000 Target/Converse gift card, which will come in handy to buy more of the Converse high-top tennis shoes she loves.

She says the aim of the contest was to see “how you are challenging, creating and changing something in your world - how you want to change the world and how you're starting with yourself.”

The video grew out a photo idea.

“I started ‘The Beautiful Revolution' in January,” she says. “I was going to take one photo of one person I didn't know every day, tell them I thought they were beautiful, hand them my card and tell them to check out the pictures on my Web site, www.alisabeth.org”

For now, the prize money is going into savings and the project is staying on her Web site. But that may change.

“I'm thinking about making it a non-profit,” she says. “I contacted Dove. They liked the idea and asked if I would go around and talk in schools. I would love to go to the next level with it, so we'll see. To be announced.”