A Colombian school pioneer on Tuesday won the annual WISE Prize for Education in Qatar for a program aimed at improving education in her country’s impoverished rural areas.
The $500,000 prize, considered the Nobel Prize for education, was awarded to her during the opening ceremony of the 5th WISE Summit, held in Doha, Qatar.
Educator Vicky Colbert has been involved in developing education programs in Colombia since the 1970s.
The programs she co-founded are aimed particularly at enhancing the quality of education in underprivileged regions of rural Colombia.
Colbert’s educational concepts were so successful that they have been adopted as government policies in Colombia and later by the World Bank and UNESCO as part of programs for rural education in Latin America and Asia.
Dr. Al Thani of WISE described the merit of her work as the transformation of daily lives.