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Sick Children Can Also Be Happy Children
- The 1996 LEGO Prize has been awarded to a very special American summer camp
Film actor Paul Newman receives this year's DKK 1 million LEGO Prize on behalf of "The Hole In The Wall Gang Camp". The ceremony took place, Tuesday 8 October, at the camp, which is in Connecticut, north of New York City.
In 1988, Paul Newman, his wife Joanne Woodward and some of their friends opened a special camp for sick children - most of them suffering from cancer - between the towns of Ashford and Eastford in the New England state of Connecticut. They named the camp "The Hole In The Wall Gang Camp" after the gang in the well known western film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman.
The 1996 LEGO Prize has been awarded to "The Hole In The Wall Gang Camp" because, at the camp, American energy and organisational ability have been applied in full measure, sensitively and tirelessly, to the job of providing sick children - often mortally ill - with a good summer, good friends and happy memories to nourish them when they get back to everyday life. Their stay at the camp (usually for seven days) gives them renewed strength, optimism, selfesteem and the ability to enjoy life. Many of the children are in fact subsequently cured. Perhaps partly because the camp gives them new courage to face life and they discover that they are not alone in their illness.
Similar camps have now been established in the states of New York and Florida, as well as in France and Ireland.
This year's Prize winner was one of 15 nominations from LEGO companies all over the world.
Former Prize winners
The LEGO Prize has now been awarded for 11 years to a rich diversity of outstanding people, projects and idealistic organisations in many countries - for example, children's author Astrid Lindgren (Sweden), artist and designer Bruno Munari (Italy), pioneer educationalist Mario Lodi (Italy), music professor John Feierabend (USA), pre-school educationalist Loris Malaguzzi (Italy), author and child psychologist Vekerdy Tamás (Hungary), educationalist Jean-Claude Brčs (Switzerland), author and narrator of fairy tales Folke Tegetthoff (Austria) and Su-Nam Kim and the SaekDong Organisation (Korea), which has given impetus and system to the writing and telling of fairy tales and which trains and examines story tellers.
The LEGO Prize
The LEGO Prize is an international award. It was established in April 1985, with a monetary value of DKK 750,000. The amount was increased to DKK 1 million in 1989.
The Prize is awarded every year as an endorsement of and inspiration to individuals, groups of persons, associations or organisations who have:
- contributed through research to a wider knowledge of and insight into an understanding of the conditions under which children live and grow up
- undertaken specific initiatives or actions to promote children's welfare and development
- made an outstanding educational effort to the benefit of children
- in writing or in speech or through audio-visual or other media have helped generate a broader understanding of children, their situation and conditions.
The LEGO Prize cannot be applied for. The Prize Committee makes its annual selections on the basis of LEGO nominations from all over the world. The LEGO Prize can be shared by several recipients and it is a condition that the prize money is used in accordance with the idea underlying the Prize.
Apart from the monetary award, prize winners also receive a diploma and a statuette in LEGO bricks. Created by the late Gunnar Westmann, a Danish artist, the statuette is an interpretation of the Ygdrasil ash, the Tree of Life in Nordic mythology.
© 1996 The LEGO Group |
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