Grandmother’s life lessons inspire Tencent co-founder to launch education prize
Charles Chen says he was taught to take his studies seriously from an early age and hopes his award can promote the best ideas in the field
Charles Chen Yidan’s earliest memories of school revolve around the sight of his grandmother in the early morning light in his hometown of Huizhou, a sleepy community in the Pearl River Delta.
“Every morning, she would be busy around the house, cooking eggs [for breakfast], urging me to go to school,” Chen said.
“She never said anything, but I could tell her expectations from the expression in her eyes.
“From the time I was very young, she hoped that I would take education seriously.”
More than three decades on, in an office overlooking Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, the low-profile co-founder of Tencent and pioneering philanthropist continues to push his grandmother’s message about education.
“My grandma was illiterate, but she insisted on sending my father to university. He stayed in the city after graduation, and we were born there. Education changed his life, which in turn changed my life,” he said.
My grandma was illiterate, but she insisted on sending my father to university ... Education changed his life, which in turn changed my life
It was under his grandmother’s silent, subtle influence that he internalised the importance of education and, after success with Tencent, gradually shifted the centre of his life to educational philanthropy, leaving the company in March 2013.
After working on several projects on the mainland, Chen decided to go global with an initiative that has been three years in the planning.
The result is the Yidan Prize, a project unveiled in Hong Kong yesterday to recognise outstanding individuals or teams in education research and development worldwide.
The two prizes, each worth HK$30 million, will be given for research that makes a significant contribution to education as well as innovative ideas that tackle big challenges in the field.
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Chen said one major challenge was keeping up with the rapid changes of an information society.
“You could say that today’s education system was developed to suit social development after the second industrial revolution. It will surely face challenges in the future, in an information society after the fourth industrial revolution,” he said.
Chen said the prize was global so that it could have a wider influence, and encourage more people to follow the most advanced education theory and practices.
“We’ve amassed a lot of experience with each project [in the past]. But a single project only affects a certain group of people, a certain school. But how can we affect the whole? Maybe with the promotion of [good] ideas about education, more people can be involved in education and spread those concepts, widening the scope of influence,” he said.
“The prize is merely a vessel. The significance lies in the idea behind it, which is to push everyone to help foster the development of education.”
