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HLA HLA WIN MC/MPA 2016 isn’t a morning person. So when the phone rang at 6:30 am on February 1, she groggily knew that something wasn’t right.

Each year, HKS honors several outstanding alumni and one alumni network for exceptional public service and significant contributions to the Kennedy School and to local, national, and global communities. These awards are typically presented each year at Reunion on campus—but not during the pandemic. We are excited to announce this year’s recipients and hope you will watch this brief video highlighting their achievements.

Ms. Hla Hla Win, CEO, an educator, is a serial entrepreneur, and received her master’s degree from the Kennedy School at Harvard University, her undergraduate degree in K-12 education from William Penn University and a leadership diploma from East West Center at Hawaii University. She advises both private secondary schools and the Myanmar government on educational innovation.

Ma Hla Hla Win is now the chief executive of 360ed, a social enterprise that helps achieve better education results for students in Myanmar, with the aid of Augmented Reality (AR) and Visual Reality (VR) technology. The Technology is called “Dat Thin Pone” (the digital tablet), and offers a platform from which students can learn science, math and languages via interactive app and flashcards.

Myanmar’s Pride Award is the recognition of people born in Myanmar or the Myanmar descent who represent Myanmar: presenting Myanmar proudly to the world through their talents and success. This pride is given in recognition of their success and the same times this is also a message that those people deserve to be honored for their contributions in different fields. Giving Myanmar’s Pride Award will also help other people inspire in their works and make Myanmar known to the world.

Hla Hla Win is CEO and Co-Founder of 360ed, a Myanmar-based EdTech social enterprise. She is on a mission to democratize access to quality education by leveraging VR, AR,, and mobile technologies to build engaging new educational tools. 360ed advises the Myanmar government and others on educational technology and transformation.

360ed, a Myanmar-based edtech social enterprise startup with a focus on virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies, was selected by Nikkei Asian Review as the winner of its distinguished Nikkei Asian Review Award for Excellence for the year 2020.

In Myanmar, education has traditionally focused on rote learning, or memorization, and most schools have lacked models and experimental installations for science education. Hla Hla Win says she wants to change this by using mobile devices that have rapidly come into wide use over the past decade. "Mobile phones are a computer in your pocket. Why don't we utilize it for education?" she said.

Rural education has a direct impact on rural incomes. There is a daunting need for a second green revolution with the prospect of nine billion humans on earth – and we need scientifically literate rural talent to do it. Thus, we need secondary and college-level scientific education and agricultural talent in rural areas that stay in rural areas.

Over the last century, the world has made great strides in improving access to education for children. The most significant challenges today for children include improving the quality of the education that currently exists and reaching the last groups of children who are still not in school. According to the United Nations SDGs, more than 91 percent of the world’s children now attend primary school, leaving 57 million children out of school.

Only a few months ago, Myanmar was shocked with news of the rape of a three-year-old girl who has since been given the pseudonym “Victoria”. Victoria was raped at a private nursery home in May. Then in September, she was able to testify through a video conference and identify her rapist. “It broke the hearts of so many parents but it was also a wake-up call that we can no longer see sex education as a taboo,” said Hla Hla Win

"Technology could help Myanmar fight a rise in rape cases, says an award-winning entrepreneur who is using augmented reality to bring sex education to the socially conservative country. The rape in May of a 3-year-old girl at a private nursery has sparked outrage, prompting thousands to take to the streets to demand justice and highlighting a paucity of sex education in the country.

When Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil founded Singularity University, they did so on the radical notion that exponential technologies could play a fundamental role in solving our biggest social problems. In particular they believed that digital technologies—which rapidly fall in cost, increase in sophistication, and globally scale—can create a world of abundance.

360Ed is an education technology company focused on doing exactly this by delivering immersive high-quality education to students everywhere using augmented reality and other new technologies. This company is now delivering its solutions in Myanmar with plans to expand to Indonesia and other places in Asia and Africa where accessible high-quality education is most needed.

Sex education remains relatively underdeveloped in Myanmar. Moreover, some false information even circulates across social media. “Misinformation is serious. Some teenagers still believe, for instance, that girl can become pregnant just by sitting next to boys or by swimming in dirty water,” said Daw Hla Hla Win, the mother of a four-and-a-half-year-old daughter.