Education Reform Group, Communism Watchdog Receive Heritage Foundation Innovation Prizes, Among Others

The Heritage Foundation awarded five organizations a prize for innovation on Thursday during its 50th anniversary celebration.

The Heritage Innovation Prize is an annual award given to successful nonprofits in regard to research, litigation, education, outreach, or communications. Each year a group of recipients is selected and up to $1 million in prize money is distributed to the winners.

This year’s recipients are Communio, the National Association of Scholars, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Speech First, and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

“The dual objective of these prizes is not just to achieve policy wins, especially outside [Washington, D.C.], but as some of these winners’ projects indicate, to revitalize American society: families, communities,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Robert explained while announcing the awards Thursday. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)

Roberts said the five organizations are “vital” to success in public policy.

Communio, a nonprofit organization, focuses on family building and will receive $100,000. The organization’s National Center for Black Family Life was designed to help build black families “through innovative research, educational programming, and a wide range of support services,” according to Hampton University.

The National Association of Scholars, another nonprofit, aims at reforming higher education. It also focuses on improving K-12 education, and reorienting it toward traditional civics. The National Association of Scholars will receive $100,000 to expand its project to study Confucius Classrooms, which is the CCP’s gateway to influencing American children.

Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs will receive $250,000 for its award, which will bolster the nonprofit organization’s work on ensuring that the nuclear family is strong in the state of Oklahoma through the Preserve and Empower Oklahoma Families Initiative.

Speech First protects the free speech rights of students on college campuses. Heritage is awarding $100,000 in “support of its work to defend students’ constitutional rights—specifically, its efforts to dismantle threats to free speech in universities across the country through its Strategic Litigation Free Speech Project.”

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation will also receive $100,000 to expand its mission, to inform the public about the evils of communism and authoritarian communist regimes.

According to a statement from The Heritage Foundation, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation prize will help the organization “expand its China Studies Program by funding high-impact research on the CCP’s human rights abuses and security threats, promotional efforts through major media campaigns, advocacy engagement with partner network, and their annual China Forum conference.”

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