Luminari Award" width="800" height="441">
Apply for the 2026 Luminari Award Today!
Every year, the Luminari Award invites students across our region to pause, reflect, and imagine a better world not in abstract terms, but through the power of their own lived experience. What began as a simple essay contest has grown into one of Luminari’s most meaningful traditions: a celebration of curiosity, empathy, and the courage to think beyond the expected.
At its core, the Luminari Award is more than a scholarship. It is an invitation. An invitation for young people to articulate what inspires them, what challenges them, and what kind of future they want to help build. In a world that often asks teens to move quickly, the Award asks them to slow down and consider the deeper questions that shape who they are becoming.
This year’s prompt continues that tradition, encouraging students to explore the ideas, people, and moments that have illuminated their path. The essays we receive are always as diverse as the students themselves some deeply personal, others boldly imaginative, but all of them share a common thread: a spark of insight that reminds us why youth voices matter.
The winner of the Luminari Award receives a scholarship for the I Want to be an Ambassador! camp, where they join peers from across the region to learn about communication, leadership, and everyday diplomacy. For many students, this experience becomes a turning point, a chance to see themselves as changemakers, bridge-builders, and citizens of a wider world.
But the impact of the Award extends far beyond a single summer. Past recipients have gone on to pursue careers in public service, education, international relations, and community advocacy. They often tell us that the essay they wrote and the reflection it required helped them discover something essential about their own voice.
As we open submissions for the 2025–2026 school year, we invite teachers, families, and community partners to encourage the young people in their lives to participate. You never know whose story might shine a little light for the rest of us.
The Luminari Award reminds us that inspiration is everywhere, in classrooms, in conversations, in quiet moments of insight, and that when we nurture young thinkers, we nurture the future.
