Deadline: 31-Mar-21
The Yidan Prize Foundation is seeking nominations for the 2021 Yidan Prize to progress learning by building a global community committed to advancing ideas in education.
The Yidan Prize is an inclusive education award that recognizes individuals, or up to three-member teams, who have contributed significantly to education research and development.
Prize Categories
Each year the Yidan Prize is awarded in two categories to individuals, or teams of up to three members:
- Yidan Prize for Education Research: Awarded for significant contribution to the science of education.
- Yidan Prize for Education Development: Awarded for instituting positive change in education and learning.
Prize Information
- Each prize comprises a gold medal and a total sum of HK$30 million (around US$3.9 million). Half is a cash prize of HK$15 million.
- The other HK$15 million is a project fund to help them expand their initiatives.
Eligibility Criteria
- Nominators can be members of government bodies, non-governmental organizations, professional associations, and thought leaders in education and learning. The nominator should be a credible witness to the impact of the nominee(s).
- Nominees can be either an individual or a working team of up to three people. They can be teachers, researchers, academics, policymakers, or advocates, among others. A nomination must be accompanied by at least two recommendation letters from supporters.
- Self-nomination is accepted from candidates who obtain recommendation letters from at least three supporters.
- Posthumous nominations are not accepted.
- Nominees not awarded the Yidan Prize may be nominated again in the future.
- Yidan Prize Directors, Judging Committee members, and Advisory Committee members are not eligible to make nominations or be nominated.
- Nominators and supporters should not be nominee family members.
Exceptions
There’s a handful of exceptions. You can’t make a nomination if:
- You’d like to recognize a member of your family.
- You’re one of their directors, or on their Judging or Advisory Committees.
- You’d like to recognize someone posthumously.
Nomination Process
- Register for a nominator account: They’ll need to take your full name, email address, post address, phone number, organization, and role at this point. They’ll also need a scan of your business card – any card issued by your organization with your contact details on.
- Biographies: Add biographies for each nominee. Biographies should be 200 words or fewer.
- Explain why they deserve this accolade: Write up to 500 words to explain the work of the nominee(s) and the achievements or outcomes their projects have created. You can include both the impact their work has now and what you think they could achieve with the help of the prize funding.
- Tell the judges how your nominee(s) meet the criteria: When their Judging Committee assesses applications, they’re particularly looking for nominations that meet their four criteria. Please write a maximum of 1000 words under each.
- Upload a two-minute video from the nominee(s): This is a good chance for the nominee(s) to say in their own words how they’d use the HK$15 million project fund. The video must be in MP4, MOV, M4V, or AVI format under 84MB, ideally with 1920 x 1080 (1080p) dimensions. (If you struggle to upload your video, you can link to it instead.)
- For Education Research, share the nominee(s)’ relevant publications: Please share at least one published work (or up to five). Research should be peer-reviewed, but they’ll also accept books, book chapters, articles, teaching materials, presentations, and digital media (such as videos). You can upload them as PDFs or links.
- Upload the supporters’ letters: Each letter should be less than 5000 words, and they need at least two (or three if you’re self-nominating). You can either scan in these letters (on official letterheads, please), or paste the text into the text box. Either way, they’ll need contact details for each supporter, and a scan of their business card, too.
Nomination Tips
- Making the most of the video upload: This is the nominee’s moment to speak straight to the judges. It’s not only a good chance to talk through their plan for the HK$15 million project fund; it’s also an opportunity to show their enthusiasm. Don’t worry about the production quality. The judges are interested in the video’s content, not style. The nominee is welcome to record in their native language – in fact, sometimes that can make it easier to show passion – they just ask you to remember subtitles, too. They only use this video for judging. They won’t circulate it or publish it without permission.
- Writing a shining letter of support: If you’re writing a letter of support (or asking someone else to), it’s up to you how you’d like to explain the impact of the nominee(s)’ work – you might have felt that impact personally, or observed it in action. They already ask for details on their idea and project, so think of this as a time to add a human touch. How has this nominee changed lives (or how could they change lives) with their work?
- Uploading supporting documents: The online nomination form lets you upload any extra documents that you think would be handy to see, so do make the most of this – for example, is there any external press coverage you’d like to share? For Education Development, They encourage you to include any independent evaluation reports on your nominee(s)’ work here. If any of these aren’t available in English, please include translations.
- Having everything to hand: It’s much quicker to upload your nomination if you’ve already got all the materials and details you need. So let’s see: have you got these things at the ready? The personal details of your nominee(s) – including full name, address and date of birth CV(s); Biographies; Two recommendation letters from supporters (or three if you’re self-nominating); Supporters’ personal details – full names, addresses and a scan of their business card Up to five relevant pieces of research (if you’re nominating for Education Research); A two-minute video You can fill in your nomination form in any order, and save as you go without submitting. They recommend you save every time you finish a section, just in case.
- Apply sooner rather than later: When you apply doesn’t make any difference to the outcome of the judging, but it means they have time to tell you if you’ve missed anything. If you apply by the end of February 2021, they’ll let you know if there are any gaps so you can update and re-submit your nomination before the deadline.
For more information, visit https://yidanprize.org/the-prize/nominations/