NPR MIAMI

NPR Miami w/ Carolina

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NPR Miami

Heard on Sundial (radio program)

What if you were given at least $300,000 to develop solutions for some of the biggest problems facing our planet? The inaugural Elevate Prize includes $5 million in funding going to 10 applicants with projects from around the globe.

Transcript of the radio interview

Luis Hernandez:

… there’s the people with ideas that’ll make the world a better place. Welcome back to Sundial on WLRN. What if you were given $300,000 to develop solutions for some of the biggest problems facing our planet? Well, the inaugural Elevate Prize is going to include $5 million in funding that goes to 10 applicants with projects that can spark movements, mobilize people and transform our world. Proposals from South Florida include educating communities in Latin America about climate change, building a dedicated greenway throughout Miami-Dade and serving black communities impacted by economic shutdown caused by COVID-19. Well, the Elevate Prize Foundation is a new nonprofit based in Miami. Carolina Garcia Jayaram is the executive director, and we spoke with her last week because the deadline is July 13th.

Luis Hernandez:

Carolina, you have governments and companies across the US and around the globe developing innovative projects and solutions to some of the biggest challenges that we face dealing with global pandemic, addressing systemic racism, et cetera. Why did your organization want to put the focus on the individual through the Elevate Prize to develop these solutions?

Carolina García Jayaram:

It’s been our experience, both Joe Deitch, who’s the founder of the foundation and myself over the years that individuals around the world coming from across sectors and all kinds of issue areas are solving some of the most pressing issues of our time. And oftentimes, they are funded vis-a-vis their organizations or institutions and not seen individually. And so they aren’t supported individually in the way that we’re interested in doing this. In particular with Elevate, what we’re interested in is not only supporting them with financial and professional development support, but also building them up as public figures, as celebrities, per se. Although the word celebrities doesn’t begin to get to what we’re trying to do for them, but by building them a giant following around the world, we think we’ll be able to do more for them than many of the other foundations and types of support that they might get.

Luis Hernandez:

We’re talking about $5 million in funding to 10 different people with visions that lead to this transformative change. Tell me a little bit more about how the prize works.

Carolina García Jayaram:

The way the prize works is that we work through with partners such as MIT Solve, who’ve been an incredible partner with us and trying to bring in partners who reach a very diverse set of problem solvers and change makers and heroic individuals around the world. And the purpose of that is to cast as wide a net as we can to collect the most radically diverse set of heroes that we can find. And through the application process, we hope to find individuals who not only are doing incredible work to address some of the most important problems and issues of our time, but ones who will benefit from the unique kind of investment that we’re going to make. So they’re either applying or they’re nominated, and through the selection process, we want to find this diverse cohort of people, who will be with us for at least two years, and that we will invest in over those two years. So the process is an application and then a judging process, and then they work very closely with us for the first two years and hopefully longer after that point as well.

Luis Hernandez:

So anyone can apply for the prize, and you’ve got some South Florida submissions. Can you tell us about some of those and the work that they’re doing right now?

Carolina García Jayaram:

Yes. We have seen several submissions from South Florida. We’re really excited about that. Some submissions have come through us from nominations, and some directly from applicants. One nominator is Rebecca Mandelman who was with the Miami Foundation for a long time, and is now with the Frost Museum of Science, and she nominated a woman named Valencia Gunder, who is a very well known and beloved grassroots organizer in Miami and helps everybody from incarcerated women struggling for access to female hygiene products to the elderly who’ve been left without power, to helping families who’ve lost loved ones to gun violence. Valencia is just kind of one of these incredible community activists who were just always responsive to the needs of her community. And we’re really excited to get her application. And we’ve also received an application from the Miami Underline, which is I’m sure you know, this incredible longest contiguous park that will go under the Miami Metro rail.

Carolina García Jayaram:

And we’re very excited to see the application come in from those guys, as well as an organization called Sachamama, which is an environmental organization based around Miami, but really looking to all of Latin America to help educate and empower those around environmental justice initiatives. And that organization is headed by Vanessa Huac, who’s with Telemundo and she and her brother who were the founders of the organization by Vice President Al Gore, which was a great nomination to receive, but in no way, do folks need to feel that they have to have a nomination. They can apply directly. Nominations are helpful, but they are not weighted in the application. I think that’s important to point out. But for your listeners, I think it’s a great way for them if they are not applicants themselves, I’m sure many of your listeners know wonderful individuals and change makers in our community who should be applying, and we really encourage them to nominate them.

Luis Hernandez:

I was speaking with Carolina Garcia Jayaram, she’s the executive director of the Elevate Prize Foundation, a new nonprofit organization based in South Florida providing $5 million in funding to 10 winners of the inaugural Elevate Prize. The deadline to apply is July 13th. We have more information on our social media at WLRN Sundial. So Carolina, how are the winners of the Elevate Prize determined? Who’s overseeing the process?

Carolina García Jayaram:

We are overseeing the process along with MIT. And the first round in order to get the applications down to a manageable number will be reviewers who we invite from around the world to help us read what we expect to be maybe up to 2,000 applications at this point. And once those are call down to a more manageable couple of 100 applications, then our very prestigious panel of judges adjudicate those applicants. And we will have about 20 to 25 of those judges. And they range from foundation leaders to business leaders, to leaders from the spiritual and community around the world. We really wanted the judges to represent the diversity that we hope to find in our winners.

Carolina García Jayaram:

And those judges will look at the applications, will then create a semifinalist applicant pool of 20, and then call that down to 10 through a series of interviews and pitches. Originally, this was going to be a live pitch event in New York City during the UN general assembly in September, but like everybody else, we’ve had to pivot that and create a virtual event. So we still don’t know how the live pitches will work, and hopefully we’ll be able to make those public because they’re extremely entertaining and interesting to listen to these pitches from leaders around the world. But at some point, those 20 will become the 10 winners, and we will be able to announce those in the fall.

Luis Hernandez:

You’re using the term heroes to describe the winners of these prizes. That carries a lot of weight. You think about the healthcare heroes working in the front lines of this pandemic, why brand the winners that way?

Carolina García Jayaram:

Well, it’s a really interesting question because like you said, it’s a very loaded word, and we felt and feel that this prize, if it’s truly to be for anyone in any sector, then the language that we use needs to be very deliberately accessible. And the word hero is something that I believe anyone in the world understands, and that it can be a person who has been in the field for 20 years. It can be somebody with a newer idea. It can be someone from all different kinds of sectors, and it can be the people who then become inspired by those heroes to become heroes themselves.

Luis Hernandez:

Carolina Garcia Jayaram, is the executive director of The Elevate Prize. Their deadline is July 13th. Find out more at WLRN Sundial. By the way, talking about history, we are reading black-

 

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