(MENAFN- Gulf Times) A total of three winners of WISE Prize for Education 2024-2025 were announced yesterday at the closing session of the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE 12).
Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation, awarded the winners - global changemakers who are redefining how the world learns.
The winners are: TUMO (First Place), headquartered in Armenia; Queen Rania Foundation ( Jordan) the organisation that developed Iqrali ( Second Place) and Darsel headquartered in the USA ( Third Place). The winners collectively received a total prize fund of $1mn with $500,000 awarded to TUMO; $300,000 to Iqrali, and $200,000 to Darsel.
TUMO, headquartered in Armenia, is reimagining after-school creative learning experiences; Iqrali, headquartered in Jordan, is a parental platform designed to support children's Arabic literacy development; and Darsel, headquartered in the USA, provides AI-driven math tutoring in low-connectivity settings.
Since its inception, the WISE Prize for Education has become one of the most respected international recognitions in education, honouring visionary individuals and organisations whose work delivers lasting, systemic impact for learners and communities worldwide.
Under its new structure that expands the impact of education solutions, six finalists were shortlisted for the accolade, with three winning educational solutions being chosen and awarded during the summit's closing ceremony.
Stavros N Yiannouka, CEO of WISE, said:“Each year, the WISE Prize reaffirms that transformative educational change begins with individuals and organizations who dare to rethink what learning can be. These winning solutions demonstrate what is possible when innovation is grounded in evidence and committed to improving learning and life outcomes at scale.”
Yiannouka also noted that three themes have emerged from WISE12. He stated:“The first is that education must remain a deeply human endeavour. The second theme that emerges is that tools and technologies have always been part of the human story. But they exist to serve us, not the other way around.
“Today we are on the cusp of something potentially very different. We are introducing not just a tool or a technology, but potentially an alien intelligence. We are introducing it into our homes, into our workplaces, and into our classrooms. We must ensure that it is fully aligned with our interests, our values, and that it supports and not detracts from human partnership.”
Abhijit Banerjee, Nobel Prize winner and a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology speaking at the closing session noted that with artificial intelligence and with the rise of different access to technologies, there is also a vivid promise of a future.
“It could be entirely different where access would be through many different mechanisms that we haven't visualised right now. I think that it is very important that in this moment we hold on to the excitement and the optimism because I think one of the things that almost surely will happen is already happening,” he added.

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