Media-X Prototype Fund Announces Inaugural Winners for 2019

Hong Kong, 24 June 2019. The University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre has announced the two inaugural grantees for its Media-X Prototype Fund. The two awardees are “Sustainable Asia”, a podcasting team sharing sustainability research from Asia to global audiences and “More than Success” a team working on audio programming featuring comparative educational approaches from around the world. Both teams are based in Hong Kong. Each awardee will receive up to HKD150,000 along with mentorship over a scheduled time frame of up to nine months to develop and implement their prototype plans.

Media-X launched the prototype fund in March 2019 with the generous support of the Xu Family Foundation. There were more than 25 applications from across Asia, many of which had a strong ‘social good’ focus, leveraging both human power and technology to work towards their goals.

“Media-X Prototype Fund was created to support media projects and platforms that encourage social good. All applications were assessed against our set criteria by a board of industry experts,” said Ruby Yang, chairperson of the board of Media-X. “The awardees stood out for their strong teams and their clear social goals.”

Sustainable Asia led by Marcy Trent Long, a long-time Hong Kong resident and RTHK3 host of Trash Talk, will expand its current series of successful podcasts to provide access to global environmental research with a strong Asian focus. The team will also work to create new audio content for audiences in Mandarin and Cantonese to support awareness and understanding of the environmental issues facing China and in particular Hong Kong.   “Asia is providing key solutions to global sustainability problems, Sustainable Asia is excited to be part of Media X inaugural awards to further build our audio documentary capacity to share these solutions with the region and the world,” said Marcy Trent Long

More than Success: Lessons from Global Education led by veteran Chinese journalist Zhou Yijun, will build a platform to support parents and teachers to understand educational practices from different global vantage points. The initial audio series will target Chinese teachers and educators with practical approaches to childhood education both in the classroom and in society at large. Ms Zhou commented, “With Media-X’s help, we hope to use audio to take people back to their childhoods, to look at education in a new light and to relive the experience of growing up.”

About JMSC

The Journalism and Media Studies Centre (JMSC) of The University of Hong Kong has, since 1999, offered world-class professional journalism education at Asia’s premier university. Our experienced, highly skilled instructors and support staff enhance professional standards and bolster journalistic integrity through its teaching programmes, research, professional services and partnerships with media major outlets. The JMSC curriculum is designed to produce graduates for all types of local, regional and international media organisations. Our location in Hong Kong has us ideally positioned to train the next generation of journalists who will be telling China’s—and Asia’s—story to the world.

About Xu Family Charitable Foundation

Xu Family Charitable Foundation is a non-public grant-making foundation registered in Hong Kong, China, with initial funding of US$22 million. The Foundation subsidizes public welfare programmes and non-governmental public welfare organizations which are in line with social welfare or conducive to social development. Dr. Eric Xu Yong founded the Foundation on the basis of investing into and enabling people with the will to make a positive impact to society and the world. He is dedicated to promoting the development of social welfare charities, positive and sustainable welfare organizations, as well as public philanthropy projects.

Press inquiries, please contact:
Cal Wong
Journalism and Media Studies Centre
The University of Hong Kong
calford.wong@hku.hk
+852 3917 4435

Partnership inquiries, please contact:
Kevin Lau
Journalism and Media Studies Centre
The University of Hong Kong
kevinlkw@hku.hk
+852 3917 4009