Mayor Angel Taveras joined today with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to announce that the City of Providence is the grand prize winner in the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge, a competition to inspire American cities to generate innovative ideas that solve major challenges and improve city life – and that ultimately can be shared with other cities to improve the well-being of the nation. Providence was selected as a Mayors Challenge winner out of a pool of over 300 applicant cities, based on four criteria: vision, ability to implement, potential for impact, and potential for replication.
Providence will be awarded a $5 million innovation prize to implement its idea to improve the vocabularies of preschool-age children throughout the City by measuring and rapidly increasing the number of words spoken in their households. Providence will also receive a sculpture created by world-renowned designer Olafur Eliasson to commemorate each of the Mayors Challenge winners.
This is the moment I found out Providence won Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayor’s Challenge!Thank u @mikebloomberg! twitter.com/Angel_Taveras/…
— Angel Taveras (@Angel_Taveras) March 13, 2013
See also:
- The New York Times: Providence Is Top City in Contest of Ideas
- The Washington Post: Providence, RI, wins $5M Bloomberg contest with plan to boost poor children’s language skills
- Bloomberg Philanthropies: Bloomberg Philanthropies Announces Mayors Challenge Winners
The real winner is whoever is selling the gizmos.