Some of our most creative AmeriCorps members and alumni took our challenge and submitted more than 300 entries for our 2012 AmeriCorps Photo and Video Contest. If you haven't checked out the submissions and cast your votes, well, now's the time!

The theme of this year's contest is "AmeriCorps Works" and contestants were asked to integrate this idea into their entries to help tell the AmeriCorps story and highlight the program's impact.

AmeriCorps members and alumni submitted more than 250 photographs and 65 one-minute videos for the competition via Challenge.gov and are now competing for big cash prizes -- $2,000 for the winning photo and $4,000 for the winning video. Voting will continue until 5 p.m. Eastern on Saturday, Sept. 1.

We encourage you to look over the entries and vote for the photo and video that does the best job of telling the AmeriCorps story. You only get one vote for each category, so make it count.

• Vote in the photo contest
• Vote in the video contest

When you're done, you can jump over to Twitter or Facebook and tell your friends to vote, too. We call that a “win win win” around here.