Caroline Hartnell

If you’ve been thinking that everything has gone a bit quiet on the Olga Alexeeva Memorial Prize, all that is about to change! We have a shortlist of seven wonderful candidates for this year’s prize, and we plan to announce them one by one on Latest from Alliance over the next few weeks. These announcements will take the form of a brief profile of the finalist plus a short interview in which they explain in their own words what they do to promote philanthropy in their country. The first will appear tomorrow, the next one on Friday.

In the meantime, material on all the finalists will be going to our distinguished panel of judges, who will have a difficult decision to make. They are:

• Akwasi Aidoo, TrustAfrica, Senegal
• Ana Valéria Araújo, Brazil Human Rights Fund
• Shenyu Belsky, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, China
• Christopher Harris, independent consultant and former Philanthropy Bridge Foundation trustee, USA
• Kavita Ramdas, Ford Foundation India

In early February, alongside the official judging and when all the finalists have been announced, we will invite all of you to take part in an online poll on the Alliance website and pick your own winner, to be announced on our blog. The judges’ winner will be announced at the WINGS Forum in Istanbul, to be held 27-29 March.

So watch this space over the next few weeks!

Caroline Hartnell, is editor of Alliance magazine.