Submissions Open for San Francisco LightHouse’s Holman Prize

by Christina Daniels

From the Editor: Improving the world for the blind is assisted by awards that offer both recognition and money. The NFB gives several of them, and so too do other organizations. The Holman Prize has certainly made substantial awards to people we know as Federationists, but beyond this, they have included a number of our members to help in the selection process.

Christina Daniels is an officer in our San Francisco Chapter and an active member of the California Affiliate. She works for San Francisco LightHouse for the Blind, and one of her jobs is advertising the Holman Prize.

For the fourth straight year, the LightHouse for the Blind in San Francisco presents the Holman Prize for Blind Ambition. The Holman Prize is an international competition that offers up to $25,000 each to three blind individuals to carry out ambitious ideas that push the winners to challenge themselves and shatter misconceptions about blindness around the world.

The Holman Prize is named after nineteenth century explorer James Holman. Holman was a member of the Royal British Navy. In 1810, while on duty in the Americas, he contracted an illness and became blind. He was given a lifetime of free room and board at Windsor Castle, and the only requirement was to attend church twice a day. Dissatisfied with this uneventful life, Holman left to study medicine and literature at the University of Edinburgh. He would leave again to take a grand tour of France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany and write his first book, The Narrative of a Journey through France, etc. in 1822. He became the first blind person to circumnavigate the globe in 1832. Holman would eventually travel to six continents and continued to chronicle his travels in writing. James Holman is the most prolific private traveler of anyone before the era of modern transportation.

The nine winners of LightHouse for the Blind’s Holman Prize so far represent five countries across four continents. They embody the spirit of James Holman, who was not content to conform to expectations and to live a life that did not satisfy or challenge him. Three of the winners have been active in the NFB:

• 2018 winner Stacy Cervenka is the founder of the Blind Travelers’ Network, an online community for blind travelers of all experience levels. The website includes a discussion forum, reviews of different attractions from blind users, a place where users can submit their events, and a blog where blind travelers give advice on everything from navigating airports to traveling with just a backpack on an international trip. For more information, visit blindtravelersnetwork.org.

• Conchita Hernández, who also won the Holman Prize in 2018, convened the first-ever blindness conference in Mexico led by blind people. Conchita, who is a doctoral student, and a team of fellow blind educators, presented topics such as daily living skills, low cost technology, employment and more to 120 conference attendees. Conchita’s wish is for the conference to happen again, but this time run by the people who live in Mexico.

• Dr. Mona Minkara, one of the 2019 winners, will soon be releasing her documentary series “Planes, Trains and Canes.” In the closing months of 2019, Mona traveled to five different cities: Johannesburg, London, Istanbul, Singapore, and Tokyo. She independently navigated the local public transportation in each city and visited local attractions. Her documentary series chronicles her adventures in each city.

All the Holman Prize winners have embodied the concept of blind ambition; that is, choosing to fulfill a dream on their own terms, regardless of the negative perceptions some have about blindness. Penny Melville-Brown of the United Kingdom taught people to cook across six continents; Ojok Simon of Uganda taught other blind Ugandans how to be beekeepers; Ahmet Ustunel of the United States kayaked solo across the Bosphorus Strait; and Red Szell of the United Kingdom completed an extreme triathlon, culminating in summiting Am Buachaille, a 213-foot sea stack. Mona’s fellow 2019 winners, like her, are in the midst of their adventures. Yuma Decaux of Australia is traveling the world to interview STEM professionals and creating an online community to make astronomy more accessible to blind people, and Alieu Jaiteh of The Gambia is bringing blindness skills training to rural Gambians.

The Holman Prize has funded blind adventurers, athletes, entrepreneurs and educators, and three more winners will be chosen this year. The application period is January 15 to February 29. Applicants must be blind and 18 years old by October 1, 2020. To apply, applicants will need to upload a 90-second video with their pitch to YouTube and fill out an application. The winners are picked by an international team of blind leaders who work in a variety of backgrounds from STEM to liberal arts to education to the nonprofit sector.

Are you a blind person with an ambitious idea? Start planning your pitch, and apply for the Holman Prize beginning January 15. For more information visit www.holmanprize.org.