Local Ideas Festivals

Mobilizing schools & communities around issues & ideas

Bezos Scholars return home from the Aspen Ideas Festival with the inspiration, tools and resources to launch their own big ideas. Scholars work as Student and Educator teams to create sustainable, Local Ideas Festivals that focus on issues of relevance in their communities. During the next academic year, teams apply for $1,000 seed grants for planning and implementing their Local Ideas Festivals.

Scholars’ passions are mobilizing classmates and community members to conserve water, communicate across cultural differences, increase literacy and address critical global issues. Results are dramatic. By forging strategic partnerships with universities, world-affairs councils, local media stations and nonprofit organizations, Scholars' Local Ideas Festivals are raising awareness and igniting powerful calls to action on diverse issues in communities across the nation.

Creating a ripple effect

Many schools have completed third and fourth annual Local Ideas Festivals, and one school completed its fifth annual offering. To date, the Bezos Family Foundation has offered seed grants to 79 first-time festivals and 47 continuation festivals. A Huffington Post feature recently lauded the Bezos Scholars Program for “incubating big ideas and model citizens—one high school at a time.”