Coming January 2021: Applications Open for The Holman Prize for Blind Ambition
2021 is less than two months away and there is much to look forward to, including a new round of the Holman Prize for Blind Ambition. Now it its fifth year, the Holman Prize awards up to $25,000 to three blind people with ideas that will transform perceptions about blindness worldwide. It’s named for James Holman, an 19th-century blind explorer who is the most prolific private traveler of anyone, blind or sighted, before the era of modern transportation. The prize has been awarded so far to 12 people in seven countries across five continents. More than 500 people have applied.
If you are blind or have low vision, and will be 18 by October 1, 2021, you are eligible to apply. It’s time to get your thinking caps on and develop your 90-second YouTube pitch. That’s right, to apply, you’ll fill out an application and pitch your Holman Prize idea in a YouTube video that’s no longer than 90 seconds.
Want examples of good pitches?
Watch the 2020 Holman Prize Finalists playlist here: #HolmanPrize 2020 Matteo Fanchini – YouTube
Will you be a fifth-year Holman Prize winner?
Setting Our 2020 Holman Prizewinners up for Success. When you win the Holman Prize, we don’t just shake your hand and send you out in the world to make it happen on your own. We spend time working with you to give you the tools to make the best of your Holman year and make your ambition real. But, this year, like everyone else, we’ve had to adjust how we do things. Normally we fly our three winners to our headquarters in San Francisco for a week where they get to know LightHouse staff, community members and each other.
Since we couldn’t do that this year, we developed a three-week period called Welcome Season. We met with our winners over Zoom for two hours three days a week for three weeks. They received training in talking to the press, storytelling, which colors look best on camera, in-kind donations, and social media. They met with staff from all the LightHouse programs to find out about the variety that LightHouse offers and shared their stories at a mixer with a group of LightHouse donors. And afterward, they all decided to meet once a month to swap stories and share progress on their Holman endeavors. We wish them all the best of luck.
Carrying Out a Holman Prize During a Pandemic. The pandemic has caused our winners, past and present, to adjust how they implement their Holman Prize. Below, we check in with Tiffany Brar (2020) and Alieu Jaiteh (2019).
Tiffany is using her Holman Prize funds to provide training to blind people in rural India. While the original plan was for Tiffany and her team of trainers to provide instruction in the students’ hometowns, Coronavirus safety guidelines in the state of Kerala, India required that students be brought to the Jyothirgamaya Foundation, which Tiffany founded, to receive their training. “It’s not the way I planned, and there are still a lot of travel restrictions, but we have six people we could bring to the center. We are doing training and it’s going well,” Tiffany reports.
In early 2020, 2019 winner Alieu embarked on his Holman Prize journey of providing blindness skills training to students in rural Gambia. Because of the pandemic, Alieu and his team of instructors were only able to finish one segment of training before they had to stop, due to safety guidelines. Alieu’s Holman Prize year has been extended to give him back the time he needs to complete his work. Training has now resumed with standards such as temperature checks and using personal protective equipment. Recently a short documentary was released on the training that happened earlier this year. In it, Alieu says, “As a Holman Prizewinner, I really feel that this support has brought a change in the rural Gambia, not only for blind people but also for the misconceptions of people with disabilities.”
Want more Holman Prize updates? Visit www.holmanprize.org, or follow Holman Prize on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And don’t forget to spread the word and start thinking about your pitch for Holman Prize 2021.
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