Esteemed guests and friends of the Yidan Prize Foundation: welcome to the 2025 Yidan Prize Awards Ceremony.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the Summit yesterday, in recent days, I’ve found myself seeing the red dot in the Yidan Prize logo in a new light. The educational mission this red dot represents radiates with the light of hope. Hope often feels brightest in difficult moments, especially when our local community is experiencing loss.

Tonight, as we witness the awarding of this year’s Yidan Prize to two new laureates, we also honor all of you who — over the past year, or for decades — have been serving your communities and advancing our shared humanity. 

Among us are principals, teachers, and creatives who champion their students — including those with visual impairment — to shine on stage at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. We have educators who bring community connections, computational thinking, and AI education into their schools, while also creating models and training for the wider education community.

We have pioneers who recently founded innovative schools in the Greater Bay Area, and others who have pursued education as an international movement for peace since the early 60s.

We are joined by media friends and business leaders who mobilize their corporations to serve the community far beyond market expectations, while personally mentoring and supporting young people and those in need. 

And with us tonight are university presidents, deans of schools of education, and higher education leaders who have boldly combined scholarship with public good.

We are grateful as well for a place like Hong Kong — a metropolitan city that welcomes people from over 50 countries to our events, including representatives from global organizations such as the Global Partnership for Education, the UN Refugee Agency, and foundations and trusts from around the world, including those from Finland, Singapore, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the Netherlands, the UK, the US, and more. 

Above all, we come together to honor and champion changemakers whose education research and education development work moves us toward a better world. 

You will all get to hear from our 2025 Yidan Prize for Education Research Laureate, Professor Uri Wilensky from Northwestern University, whose work in agent‑based modeling shows how technology — when used creatively and thoughtfully — can deepen understanding and open new ways of thinking. The frameworks and vocabulary he has given us to grasp complexity are a true gift in a world changing faster than ever. 

You will also hear from our 2025 Yidan Prize for Education Development Laureate, Mamadou Amadou Ly from Senegal. 

Through his leadership at ARED, he and his team have shown the life‑changing power of learning in one’s native tongue. ARED’s programs in Senegal and beyond are breaking down barriers to learning and strengthening foundational literacy at scale. ARED is also a model of collaboration — especially through its long‑term partnership with Senegal’s Ministry of Education to continually assess and refine effective interventions. 

Professor Uri Wilensky and Mamadou Amadou Ly: your respective contributions — in education research and education development — complement each other. Evidence grounds policy and practice in data and stories; transformative innovations open new pathways and deepen our understanding. 

I am honored to welcome you both to the Council of Laureates, a core part of the Yidan Prize Foundation. You have powerfully demonstrated why education matters — a belief shared by everyone in this room. 

I wish you all a wonderful evening ahead. Thank you for joining us tonight.

——

Dr Charles CHEN Yidan
Founder, Yidan Prize