Innovators Unleash Empathy in Schools: Winners of Activating Empathy Competition Emphasize Real-World Skills

WASHINGTON, June 14, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Fourteen winners have been chosen in the Activating Empathy: Transforming Schools to Teach What Matters global competition by Ashoka Changemakers, spotlighting breakthrough innovations that advance empathy in education. More than US $110,000 in cash and in-kind prizes was awarded via the two Judges' Awards selected by a panel of judges, a People's Choice winner selected by Ashoka Changemakers' online community, and the winners of five "special-focus" prizes.

"In a world defined by increasing connectivity and rapid change, every child must master empathy if they're to be successful," noted Ashoka President Diana Wells. "Thanks to the Activating Empathy competition, we can now point to hundreds of educators and social entrepreneurs who have found powerful ways to unlock and sustain these skills in children, opening the door to a new generation of life-long changemakers." 

Judges' & People's Choice Awards

Two Judges' Award winners were selected by an expert panel of judges, including Founding Director of Greater Good Science Center, Dacher Keltner; Kiran Bir Sethi, founder of Design for Change; Liz Dwyer, education editor at GOOD; RandomKid CEOs, Talia and Dana Leman; and Vicky Colbert, co-founder of Escuela Nueva.

Winners include: No Bully, an organization based in San Francisco that helps schools implement a bullying response system by leveraging student empathy to stop bullying their peers and Changing Worlds, which uses an arts-infused curriculum to encourage cross-cultural sharing and learning in low-income schools in Chicago.

The People's Choice winner, Sports for Sharing, based in Mexico City, was also selected from a pool of 14 finalists that emerged from 628 entries as innovative models that have strong potential to scale-up. Each winner will receive a cash prize of US $5,000.

Special-Focus Prizes

More than $110,000 in additional awards include:

• Mattel prize for efforts to support the future of play (four prizes totaling US $25,000)
• 1440 Foundation prize for leveraging technology and/or social media in education (US $10,000)
• Townsend Press and DonorsChoose.org prize for anti-bullying efforts in U.S. public schools (five prizes totaling US $30,000)
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation prize for social and emotional learning in pre-K through high school classrooms (three prizes totaling US $30,000)
• Chemins d'Enfances prize for Europe-based solutions engaging high-risk youth (three prizes totaling US $5,000)

Winners will be showcased on Changemakers.com and StartEmpathy.org: a digital home for parents, educators, students, and others looking to understand why empathy matters and to share and discover the best practices for developing it.

To view the winners and learn more, visit the prizes page.

Ashoka Changemakers is a community of action that connects social entrepreneurs around the globe to share ideas, inspire, and mentor each other. Through its online collaborative competitions and Open Growth platform, Changemakers.com is one of the world's most robust spaces for launching, discussing, and funding ideas to solve the world's most pressing social problems. Changemakers builds on Ashoka's three-decade history and belief that we all have the ability to be a Changemaker. Ashoka is the global association of the world's leading social entrepreneurs—more than 2,500 men and women with system-changing solutions for the world's most urgent social problems.

Contact: Lauren Parnell Marino
[email protected]
703.600.8302

SOURCE Ashoka Changemakers