EDC Update Magazine Wins Beacon Award

Congratulations to Daphne Northrop and here communications team!

EDC Update, the quarterly print magazine of Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), has received the prestigious Beacon Award for Excellence in Education Marketing. This top prize is bestowed annually by the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP), a national association whose members include publishers, schools, universities, researchers, and both for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations.

The Fall 2009 issue of EDC Update entitled “What a Catch” was selected in the Magazine/Newsletter category. The cover story, “Building Opportunity Around the World” describes EDC’s work to develop job skills and employment opportunities for youth in Timor-Leste, Bangladesh, and the West Bank.
The award was announced and presented to EDC Director of Communications Daphne Northrop at a luncheon ceremony June 8 at AEP’s Annual Summit in Washington, D.C.

According to the AEP website, awards honor outstanding resources for teaching and learning “and aim to identify products that exemplify the highest standards of professional, quality educational content, and set benchmarks to which the rest of the industry can aspire.”

The Beacon Awards recognize marketing products in 13 categories, including annual reports, brochures, catalogs, and e-mail marketing. Beacon winners, which have included The Wall Street Journal, Scholastic Inc., and Pearson Education, are judged on design and editorial quality, efficacy in reaching intended audience, and overall cohesiveness.

In addition to its international cover story, EDC’s winning entry also featured examples of domestic work, including programs focused on elementary science teaching and suicide prevention.
For more than four decades the AEP Awards have honored outstanding resources for teaching and learning. The EDC annual reports “Tangible Results” (2007) and “Portraits of Learning in Action” (2004) were previous Beacon Award winners.

Personally, I'm delighted to have shot the images for the cover story for EDC, it's nice to know that one's photos are making an impact.