Manama: The World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) has announced the names of six winners of the WISE 2011 awards, recognising their innovative approaches and positive impact on societies and education.

Al Jisr School-Business Partnerships in Morocco, BBC Janala in Bangladesh, Connexions based in the USA, Creative partnerships in the UK, SueñaLetras in Chile and Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa are the winners of the third edition of the WISE awards.

"Innovation is crucial for continuing to improve both access to and quality of education. The WISE awards aim to showcase inspiring projects and give them the exposure they deserve," Shaikh Abdullah Bin Ali Al Thani, Chairman of WISE and Chairman of the WISE Awards Jury, said in Doha.

"The 2011 WISE awards winners have often had to overcome preconceived ideas and find creative solutions to break down barriers to innovation in education. They have already been rewarded by the positive results of their projects. I would like to congratulate them all for their perseverance and worthy achievements. They are genuine role models for the entire WISE community," he said.

This year's awardees were selected under the theme of Transforming Education: Investment, Innovation and Inclusion, and will each be presented with a cash prize of $20,000.

The winners will also get the opportunity to exhibit their projects to 1,200 leading international experts at the WISE Summit in November. All six winners of this year's WISE awards have started initiatives that have progressively helped build a global community of educational innovators.

Al Jisr School-Business Partnerships in Morocco is an organisation working to improve the quality of education by mobilising and involving businesses and moving them beyond charity or philanthropy towards true engagement.

The efforts of Al Jisr have already improved the quality of education and school facilities for 150,000 students in 300 schools. BBC Janala project in Bangladesh uses mobile, web and print media to enable millions of people to learn English in a simple and affordable way.

To date, Bangladeshi people have listened to BBC Janala English learning lessons through mobile phones more than 13.8 million times, visited the BBC Janala website more than one million times, and downloaded BBC Janala English Learning audio lessons more than 240,000 times from the mobile Internet site.

Connexions, based in the USA, benefits people around the globe as a content platform that enables the free and open use of high-quality educational materials by a global community.

Over two million people in more than 190 countries have benefited through this project. The Creative Partnerships project of the Creativity Culture and Education (CCE ) in the UK operates in around 2,500 schools throughout England each year and is designed to develop the creative skills of young people. It helps to raise aspirations, skills and attainment levels and prepare young people for the world of work.

SueñaLetras, based in Chile and reaching people in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, Costa Rica and Spain, is a tool that supports the literacy learning process using sign language as a bridge to reach written language.

To date, it has been translated for five countries, and on each occasion several institutions, educators and deaf people have actively participated Teacher Education in Sub Saharan Africa benefiting people in the sub Saharian Africa is working to improve access and the quality of school-based training for existing teachers, student teachers and aspiring teachers across sub-Saharan Africa.

It aims to increase the number of skilled teachers working in African schools. 400,000 teachers and student teachers. The WISE awards have since 2009 identified, showcased and promoted innovative educational projects from around the world. To date, 18 projects have been awarded and 98 finalists have been shortlisted from 116 countries.