Prizes Throughout Human History

Throughout human history, prizes have been used as incentives for past achievement recognition and for future motivation to improve outcomes and competitive efforts. Prizes offer a simple and effective way to invite people and organizations to offer solutions to the problems around us and fund the best one. These are concepts that we are familiar with through the Nobel Prize, the X Prize and the Hilton Humanitarian Prize. These are all prizes that range in audience and focus. The Children’s Prize is structured as a peer-to-peer contest that, to a large extent, bypasses the need for a large charitable organization to act as an intermediary between the donor and his or her goal.

Today’s tech-mediated world seems to facilitate prizes. This is the idea behind the Children’s Prize being an online, global contest. In a world connected by the Internet and social media, a truly global conversation is beginning to take place. With today’s socially-enabled communication networks, organizations are no longer the only players effecting social change. Individuals now have the tools to more actively engage in solving social problems directly. The relationships created with these tools are igniting change in the world every day.

Interestingly, The New York Times published an article by Paul Sullivan indicating that “a report released last year by the consultant McKinsey & Company, the dollar amount for prizes over $100,000 has tripled in the last decade to $375 million a year. There has also been a shift from prizes that recognized past accomplishments to what Mc Kinsey calls ‘inducement-style prizes’ that focus on achieving a specific, future goal.'”

The Children’s Prize is a simple, global contest idea that is about money (i.e. philanthropy), children and saving lives. Below is our animation video detailing the Children’s Prize concept: