Habitat for Aviation is honored to be a Contender for the $1M Yass Prize
We have BIG news from our hangar: Habitat for Aviation is one of 26 contenders for the 2026 $1 Million Yass Prize!
Often called the “Pulitzer of Education Innovation,” the Yass Prize recognizes organizations creating transformational learning opportunities for young people. As a contender, we will participate in the Yass Prize Accelerator and travel to Miami in September to share Habitat for Aviation’s work alongside 25 other superstar education innovators.
We are honored to stand alongside organizations from across the country that are transforming education. We look forward to learning, strengthening our work, and bringing new ideas home to our community.
What is the Yass Prize?
The Yass Prize finds, rewards, celebrates, and expands education organizations that create new possibilities for students and families. Since 2021, the Yass Foundation for Education has awarded more than $60 million to education innovators across the country.
The Yass Prize looks for organizations that embody four principles known as STOP:
Sustainable: Build the partnerships, resources, and organizational strength needed to endure and grow.
Transformational: Change how young people experience learning and what they believe is possible.
Outstanding: Deliver meaningful, measurable results for students, families, and communities.
Permissionless: Create opportunities, remove barriers, and move good ideas forward without waiting for conventional systems to lead the way.
These principles reflect what we do in our hangar and beyond. They guide the learning ecosystem we are building.
Our Habitat
After years of working at the edges of education transformation in Vermont and across the country, I heard too many young people say some version of,
“I can’t wait until school is over so I can start living.”
This broke my heart. Education should help young people find meaning, purpose, belonging, and the thrill of doing something that matters—NOW.
Our habitat connects young people with real work, lasting relationships, and opportunities to discover what they are uniquely built to contribute. We want every participant to know that they belong, that their work matters, and that they can build a future in aviation and related skilled trades.
Our Pink Door Invitation
When newcomers walk through our iconic pink door, we welcome them immediately as members of our community. Curiosity and a willingness to learn offer a starting point. We invite questions and encourage people to try new things, share what they know, and learn alongside our mentors.
Inside our hangar, young people work alongside skilled industry mentors to BUILD, FIX, and FLY real airplanes.
Relationships, relevance, and practice shape everything we do.
Technical manuals sit open on repurposed ironing boards. Partially assembled aluminum wings for our RANS S-21 two-seat airplane rest on long tables with pink legs, ready for the next step in assembly.
In our multigenerational learning environment, participants begin where they are and take on greater responsibility as their skills and confidence grow. Our intergenerational team supports them along the way. Over time, participants move from learners to contributors, and eventually to mentors of new builders.
We are building more than airplanes.
We work closely with schools to create Personalized Learning Plans that award academic credit for the powerful learning that happens in our hangar. Through the International Big Picture Learning Credential (IBPLC), learners build portfolios that show how they are smart and document the knowledge, skills, and broader capabilities they develop through real work both in and out of our hangars. Each IBPLC learner can earn a credential, warranted by a prestigious university, that serves as the equivalent of a high school diploma.
Belonging and rigor go hand in hand. When learners feel known, supported, and trusted, they take risks, persist through challenges, and discover what they really can do.
Meaning & Mattering
The work inside our hangar leads to practical skills, recognized credentials, career pathways, and relationships that last a lifetime.
To date, our participants have:
Completed more than 6,800 hours toward FAA Airframe and Powerplant certification.
Taken part in more than 100 WOMEN BUILD PLANES program days.
Earned more than a dozen Harbor Freight Fellowships.
Received scholarships for postsecondary education and training.
We also count milestones that rarely appear in traditional measures of learning. These include participants:
Earning private pilot licenses before graduating high school and continuing training toward instrument, commercial, and flight-instructor ratings shortly after.
Getting driving experience with mentors like Granny, Auntie Bonnie, Cliff, and other members of our aviation family as they work toward their road tests.
Earning an International Big Picture Learning Credential that recognizes their learning and serves as the equivalent of a high school diploma.
Accepting paid internships and aviation jobs, receiving full rides for college, and entering technical training, military service, and engineering pathways.
Leading hangar tours for distinguished guests, testifying at the Vermont State House, and proudly representing our team at public events.
Earning a yellow ribbon at our local fair at age 10 for a sculpture welded during our program.
Representing Cold Hollow Career Center and Habitat for Aviation for two years as the only girl in the SkillsUSA Aviation Maintenance competition.
Launching a STEM program for middle school girls as part of a junior-year high school internship.
Earning commissions for welded sculptures at ages nine and fourteen.
Becoming known in their communities for who they are, what they can make, and what they are uniquely built to contribute.
These conventional and non-conventional measures capture our emphasis on meaning and mattering. Success is when a participant walks through our pink door for the first time, returns the following Sunday, begins teaching someone else, comes to know themselves deeply, becomes deeply known, and eventually finds a pathway into work they love.
Sammie welding (note her need for a bucket to reach the table and the shop towel to make the helmet fit).
STOP in Practice
The Yass Prize looks for education organizations that are Sustainable, Transformational, Outstanding, and Permissionless. We bring each principle to life in our habitat:
Sustainable: We live within our means, share costs with trusted partners, and own a 9,600-square-foot facility that we are developing for year-round programming. We are also building mission-aligned income through our RIVETED furniture, artwork, and jewelry lines, along with plans for aircraft restoration and rental, events, and coaching future Habitat sites.
Transformational: We combine meaningful work, professional mentorship, and real responsibility with academic credit and recognized credentials. Our unique WOMEN BUILD PLANES program provides a visible proof point that expands who belongs in aviation and what rigorous learning can look like when relationships, relevance, and practice are prioritized.
Outstanding: Our participants persist, progress, and launch into real pathways. They demonstrate literacy, math, problem-solving, and communication by reading technical manuals, measuring precisely, troubleshooting, documenting their learning, and contributing to airplanes that will return to service. Belonging fuels rigor.
Permissionless: We believe the community is the school and our youth are the curriculum. We work alongside young people, families, schools, and mentors to create personalized, credit-bearing pathways grounded in each learner’s interests and the meaningful work available within our community.
What the $1M Prize Would Mean for Us
Winning the $1 Million Yass Prize will help us strengthen Habitat for Aviation as a proof point for apprenticeship-based, community-connected learning.
It will allow us to:
Further invest in the people power needed to expand our programming.
Build more robust school and industry partnerships.
Offer the International Big Picture Learning Credential to more youth.
Influence conventional education systems to honor powerful out-of-school learning in Vermont and beyond.
Winterize and renovate our 9,600-square-foot facility so participants can BUILD, FIX, and FLY throughout the year, every day of the week.
Expand build-day capacity and provide more tools, materials, transportation support, scholarships, and mentorship opportunities.
Strengthen our sustainability as we develop mission-aligned income pathways through our new product line, RIVETED.
Document what we are learning and create tools and coaching programs that other communities can use to cultivate their own habitats so they can offer similar opportunities across the country.
Thank You for Helping Get Us Here
In the weeks ahead, we will participate in the Yass Prize Accelerator in Miami, learn alongside 25 other education innovators, sharpen our story and strategic plan, and prepare to deliver a three-minute pitch that could change Habitat for Aviation’s future.
We look forward to bringing what we learn home to our hangar and using it to strengthen our opportunities for young people.
This recognition belongs to every participant, volunteer, mentor, partner, champion, and supporter who helped build our habitat.
We are grateful to the Yass Foundation for Education and the Center for Education Reform for welcoming us into this year’s cohort of education innovators. We feel honored and excited for what comes next.
Follow our journey, and help us spread the word.
Keep building with us.
Fingers Crossed.
