ECHO Awards presented for role models and inclusive education

The winners of the ECHO Award 2022 were announced on Tuesday 6 December. Khalid El Haji, Parwana Rezai, Naznin Musa and Dina Bousbaa received the prize at the head office of Loyens & Loeff, one of the partners of the ECHO Foundation. They distinguished themselves because of their ability to translate their experience of Diversity & Inclusion into concrete solutions and interventions with an eye for intersectionality. The winners will be rewarded with a fully catered Summer Course at UCLA in Los Angeles.

When the ECHO Award was first presented more than 20 years ago, diversity was still a new theme. Stories from students with a non-Western background were hardly visible and the social debate was mainly focused on problems related to diversity. Diversity & Inclusion has now become mainstream and the current generation of students is creating more and more space to discuss topics such as institutional racism. For the ECHO Award 2022, the jury therefore looked at candidates who have made the next step in the social debate.

This year, 35 candidates were nominated by universities of applied sciences and universities throughout the Netherlands. These students distinguish themselves because of their entrepreneurial attitude, organizational ability, active social involvement and constructive approach to challenges related to exclusion. An independent jury with representatives from education and business selected 15 finalists. Four of them have been declared winners. The recorded livestream video for the ECHO Award 2022 ceremony is available below.