Boya Yang

Boya Yang is a psychologist and teacher, which is crucial to how she helps students and the difference she makes in their lives. Boya helps vulnerable students by offering psychological information and guidance to both parents and adolescents, supports parental-child communication and provides appropriate services or referral.

In the past three years Boya has set up a centre in her school to get teenage girls professional advice and support. She has established a group of teachers at local schools to implement personal and social education, supporting psychology education lectures in schools, even a prison, which have reached and helped more than 50,000 teenagers, teachers, and parents. Yang has also developed psychology courses to help raise student awareness and empowerment.

She has spoken at national conferences, been interviewed in the media about her work and is a 2016 Fellow at Harvard SEED for Social Innovation. She would use the prize funds to allow students and specialists to participate in her program, promote the integration of education and psychology, and spread the model of her centre more widely within China.

My hope is that schools can develop holistic psychological support programs for students and their parents so that they can develop as healthy individuals--not just physically, but mentally as well. This is why I love and pursue my role as a teacher and counsellor.