TED wishes have ranged from a global art project that lets anyone paste up meaningful portraits to a network of math and science schools in Africa looking to inspire and find the next Einstein. Below, a list of past TED Prize winners who offered great wishes to inspire the world.
Anonymous companies don’t necessarily sound nefarious. But they protect corrupt individuals – from drug cartel leaders to arms dealers. Shell companies make it almost impossible to find the individuals responsible and hold them accountable for their actions. Anti-corruption activist Charmian Gooch wants to change that. At TED2014, she shares her brave TED Prize wish: to know who owns and controls companies, by changing laws and minds. |
Education as we know it was developed under the British Empire, to instill a sense of order. But kids can learn in other ways, too! In this fiery talk from TED2013, Sugata Mitra shares the results of his “Hole in the Wall” experiments, where he placed computers in remote parts of India and watched as kids taught themselves to use them. He calls for a new model — self-organized learning — where kids ask big questions, investigate on their own and teach each other. His wish: the School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children take control of their own learning. |
Artist JR makes human faces part of urban landscapes, pasting oversized posters in visually arresting ways. His projects always have a social purpose — to introduce posh neighborhoods to those living in nearby slums, to underline the similarities between Israelis and Palestinians, and to bring attention the quiet power of the world’s women. In this talk from TED2011, JR kicks off Inside Out, a worldwide participatory art project which, to date, has shipped 130,000 posters for pasting across the globe. |
Chef Jamie Oliver explains how he can improve the health of young people and extend their lifespans — not with medicine, but with information. In this talk from TED2010, Oliver assaults our ignorance about food and calls for a revolution. His wish: to teach every child about nutrition and the joy of food in school, and to generally inspire people everywhere to cook again. |
Sylvia Earle has spent her life exploring the deep seas. And she’s scared by the depletion she’s seen to them over the span of just a few decades – 90 percent of the fish in the ocean have been eaten and Arctic ice has eroded unspeakably. In this moving talk from TED2009, Earle asks us to turn our attention to the “blue heart” of the planet and use all the resources at our disposal to support a global network of protected marine areas. |
The director of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Jill Tarter poses a classic question: are we alone in the universe? In this talk from TED2009, she explains why she sees Earth as a “fragile island of life, in a universe of possibility,” and shares the growing array of tools that she and her team are using to search for signs of intelligence elsewhere in the universe. In this talk, she asks everyday Earthlings to join the search, by building a system through which data could be stored, accessed and analyzed in new ways. |
Jose Antonio Abreu is still amazed that his family and community supported his dream to be a musician. And so he created El Sistema, a national network of youth orchestras and choirs in Venezuela. El Sistema has changed the course of thousands of young lives. And at TED2009, he shared his TED prize wish: to bring El Sistema to other regions, including low-income areas of the United States, by training 50 young musicians. Read about the ripple effect this wish has had so far. |
There is one thing that underlies all major world faiths: compassion. And thus, religious historian Karen Armstrong came up with the idea for the Charter for Compassion — a pledge to unite those of different faiths, rather than divide them, in the pursuit of the common good. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2009, she shares her wish: to draft the charter and spread it widely — online and in physical form — to showcase in both religious and secular spaces around the world. |
Neil Turok was raised in villages in Kenya and Tanzania. Later, as a theoretical physicist, he wondered what became of the brilliant students he learned alongside as a kid. So he had an idea to set up an African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, bringing students across the continent to receive training in these fields. At TED2008, he shares his wish: to create out 15 more AIMS centers in hope that the next Einstein be African. |
Jehane Noujaim, who made the documentary Control Room and more recently The Square, has always been amazed by the power of film to bring people together. And so at TED2006, she offered a simple TED Prize wish: to create a day for people in towns, villages and cities around the world to have a shared cinema experience. Pangea Cinema Day was held on May 10 of the same year, with millions gathering around screens to partake in a 4-hour program of films. |
Architects have the potential to influence change on some of the world’s most pressing problems. In this talk from TED2006, Cameron Sinclair shares his work helping refugees returning to Kosovo to find shelter, creating mobile health clinics in sub-Saharan Africa and helping with housing solutions in disaster-hit areas of the United States. His wish: to create an open-source network to be a conduit between architects and the humanitarian world, and allow for the sharing of design solutions. |
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Note: This post originally ran in June of 2013. It was updated on January 13, 2015, when nominations for the 2016 TED Prize opened.