June 2012
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Launching The Innovation Fund - are you in?
Over the last 30 years, Ashoka has built the world’s largest association of leading social entrepreneurs – over 3,000 men and women in 70 countries. These Ashoka Fellows are practical visionaries who introduce and fully commit themselves to realizing an important new idea to solve pressing social problems. With creativity and entrepreneurial skill, they push ahead their idea until it changes a...
Will Byrne kicks off conversation about Civic...
Roughly one year ago Ashoka Fellow Will Byrne came to panel in DC - the last step in the Fellow selection process - to tell us about his work on Civic Consumption. He is driving this concept forward through Groundswell and recently kicked off a series on Fast Company about this emerging movement.
It was great to see in the article that he mentioned the work of Kyle Zimmer at First Book as a...
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Great investigative journalism on National... →
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“Luis is taking a leadership role for the first time thanks to this opportunity....”
– http://unitedfrontmn.org/education/2012/06/21/students-take-the-lead/
Bloomberg's take on the list of most promising... →
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Aung San Suu Kyi And The Value Of A Prize
Sometimes I wonder about the value of prizes. Ashoka uses prizes and recognition in a myriad of ways. We use prizes as incentives for innovation through the Changemakers platform; Ashoka Fellows tell us that the label of Ashoka Fellow serves as a validation of their identity as a social entrepreneur. But when there are such critical needs for funding, for talent, and other “mission critical”...
Lonesome George
Yesterday marked the passing of Lonesome George, the last Pinta Island Tortoise. Ashoka Support Network member and Founder of Lonesome George & Co, Eduardo Balarezo, shares the message of changemaking that Lonesome George inspired:
“When I first met Lonesome George I was captivated by his presence and immediately felt the need to take action in the surrounding Galapagos community and...
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Enough arguing already: Create an experience &...
A couple weeks back, we teamed up with the folks behind Insight Labs to try to crack just what it’s going to take to make empathy a norm in today’s education system. Tucked away in an industrial warehouse in Half Moon Bay, and joined by more than a dozen leading thinkers & doers from across a variety of industris—including design, advertising, media, and academia—we...
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extraordinary women helping women & girls discover... →
Congrats to Ashoka Fellow Molly Barker and former Director of Ashoka’s Global Academy, Susan Davis, on making Fast Company’s League of Extraordinary Women list! These 60 all-star social entrepreneurs, business leaders, philanthropists, and full-time world-changers have collectively helped millions of women and girls realize their potential as changemakers. Talk about an impact.
Which...
Starting Empathy Through Song
(Photo Credit University of Cambridge)
With Ashoka’s Start Empathy Initiative in full swing, there may be a lot of wondering what ways teachers, parents, friends and family can begin to instill empathy in the young people they are surrounded by. For researcher’s at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Music...
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Cesar Hidalgo: It's all about resolution
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Essential for the future of journalism:...
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WatchJake Shapiro (Ashoka Fellow and founding CEO of PRX) explaining HOW TO TURN OFF YOUR SMART PHONE (in case you have never done it) - kicking off the 2012 MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference.
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Anna's thinking: CivicMedia 2012 Prep Work →
annaebbesen:
Despite it being a lovely day here in DC, I’m indoors preparing for tomorrows conference around civic media “The Story and the Algorithm” hosted by The Knight Foundation and MIT MediaLab.
We’ve been going over the attendee list this past week, looking to see if there might be some good good stories for our blog on Forbes as well as potential Fellow candidates. The line up and the...
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“It’s the past talking.”
– Bill Drayton on naysayers who say the sort of systems change we’re working on at Ashoka isn’t possible.
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Watch20 young adults skip college to change the world
PayPal co-founder and billionaire Peter Thiel announced yesterday his second class of fellows for his controversial fellowship program, 20 Under 20 Theil Fellowships. The 20 fellows will each be receiving a $100,000 grant to forgo college and pursue system-changing ventures. Thiel, a Stanford Law School graduate, believes that students can put a...
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Hack Capitalism For Social Good
Although many people hold a citizenship and therefore civil rights in their country, a huge number of those are not citizens of the economy - no access, no rights or privileges. Think about how often you take for granted that you have a bank account, can take a loan or get credit. Our coworkers working on getting every citizen an economic citizenship, can celebrate a small win: their essay around...
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The Journey of an Ashoka Intern
One year ago, I sat at my desk at the Brigham Young University Ballard Center for Economic Self-Reliance, writing up a newsletter for my job as the director of public relations. I stumbled across these photos on Ashoka’s website as I worked:
The entire office was throwing a birthday party for Bill Drayton,...
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Ashoka South Florida in the Miami Herald
Many reasons why I love this article, but the main one: it portrays a network of entrepreneurs working to achieve social impact, regardless of whether they are “social entrepreneurs” or “business entrepreneurs”.
Regardless of the for-profit or not-for-profit. Yes, there are differences among them. Yes, some may achieve higher impact than others. Yes, a social enterprise is...
Our own blog at Forbes →
Yesterday we launched our own space at forbes.com where we will be posting about social entrepreneurship and convening a group of people that can bring insights to the topic of social change, from philanthropists to innovators to thought-leaders to friends to skeptics. We hope to foster a dialogue that challenges some assumptions and blows some barriers between sectors. For business entrepreneurs...
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What you can't see right now
No photo for this post folks: the panel deliberation happens behind closed doors. (It would probably have been a pretty standard people-talking-around-a-table-photo anyhow, so you can use your imagination). Right now panelists are comparing notes on the changemakers they just met, debating the newness of new ideas, the viability of plans to scale, the promise of potential partnerships, etc...
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Top 3 Reasons Panel Is Not Like Hunger Games
(1) Candidates Aren’t In Competition
Not only are candidates not competing with each other to the death, they’re not competing with each other at all. There are no quotas; no “slots.” Let me repeat: fellow candidates are not competiting with each other.
(3) Panel is Not Nationally Televised
While panel isn’t a secret—you’re reading about this...
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How many interviews does it take to make an Ashoka...
Lunch break is around the corner as the fourth round of today’s interviews comes to a close. This morning 6 candidates working in a smorgasbord of fields—from remaking manufactured housing to reinventing primary care in the US, to creating schools that work with rather than against new immigrants—have sat in hour-long conversations about their big ideas. Leading those...
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