HONG KONG — He is sometimes called the Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates of China.
And like Zuckerberg and Gates, Chen Yidan — also known as Charles Chen — has used his financial empire to make education a top priority.
Education has become a personal mission of the 46-year-old billionaire who has founded the world’s biggest education prize — the Yidan Prize — to call attention to scholarship aimed at advancing educational research and practice at a global level.
“Education has the power to transform lives and make the world a better place, and this is achievable through uncovering, nurturing and expanding human potential to meet the needs and challenges of an ever-changing world,” says Yidan. “We must do everything we can to broaden the horizons of our children, so that they can thrive in a world that lives only in our imagination now.”
The soft-spoken philanthropist, who made his billions as the co-founder of Tencent — a Chinese multinational conglomerate that specializes in various internet-related services in China and abroad — has invested his own money to support scholars who are making contributions in the field of education.
“First and foremost, the Yidan Prize pushes for progress in the field of education,” says Yidan. “I envision the prize as a platform that brings together the best ideas about education from around the world, to exchange pedagogical theories and practices that are effective and benevolent.”
In December, Yidan announced the inaugural winners of the Yidan Prize: Dr. Carol S. Dweck, the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, and Dr. Vicky Colbert, founder and director of Fundacion Escuela Nueva, a non-governmental organization that works to establish affordable schools in the South American country of Colombia.
