Moneeza Hashmi, President of the Public Media Alliance and seasoned Pakistani broadcaster, has been honoured with a special award as part of the 50th birthday celebrations for the NHK Japan Prize for educational media

Along with two fellow experts from the US and the UK respectively, Milton Chen and George Auckland, she has received the President of the NHK prize for outstanding achievements in educational media.

Moneeza Hashmi (pictured) served at Pakistan TV for over 40 years, making a significant contribution to female empowerment and awareness-raising for gender, human rights and education issues. Milton Chen has played a leading role at The George Lucas Educational Foundation in the US, with experience at the Sesame Workshop, the Harvard Graduate School of Education and PBS. UK’s George Auckland is the former Head of Innovation at BBC Learning and produced the broadcaster’s education website in 1996.

NHK, Japan’s public service broadcaster, holds the prestigious Japan Prize annually to recognise the best in programmes for learning from around the world.

The broadcaster thanked the three TV experts for their considerable and long-standing contributions to the development of the international prize. They were presented with their awards by NHK President Katsuto Momii at a ceremony in Tokyo on 22 October as part of the Japan Prize events.

This year the Japan Prize will award US$10,000 and US$3,000 to the two best proposals for TV programmes about literacy and language that contribute to education in an entrant’s country or region. Proposal pitching and the gala award announcement events also took place in Tokyo from October 15 to 22, see below for more details.