Ashoka: quietly encouraging innovators
At an Asia Society event this Monday, I had the pleasure of dining with Ashoka VP Carol Grodzins. The stories she told about what Ashoka Fellows are doing worldwide are truly amazing. These social entrepreneurs receive a three-year stipend from Ashoka to go out and change the world. To give one example: in collaboration with cement firm Cemex, Patricia Nava is leveraging her network of safe-sex educators to help families in Mexico’s urban slums save for home additions one room at a time. (Not sure how many birds she's killing with that stone.) There are 1700 more stories in need of better publicity.
Ashoka believes that for every 10 million people, there is 1 standout social entrepreneur. Thus, they are excited to be preparing a launch in China, where they expect to meet 130 of them.
Read more about Ashoka from FastCompany or vote online in their Changemakers competition.
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Thank you, Christine, for your warm remarks about Ashoka and the social entrepreneurs we work with. I especially appreciate your mentioning Ashoka's Changemakers initiative, which just launched a global competition on affordable housing in partnership with Habitat for Humanity. Entries can be submitted until August 23: http://www.changemakers.net/journal/300606/
Posted by: Karin Hillhouse | Jun 22, 2006 3:20:06 PM
The World Bank Institute will be hosting a videoconference with Changemakers on July 12th to link and showcase the social entrepreneur finalists from the last global competition on "How to Improve Health For All." Should be an interesting session.
Posted by: Michael Jarvis | Jun 27, 2006 10:30:24 AM