Ashoka launched the Full Economic Citizenship (FEC) initiative to support the development of new solutions for the two-thirds of the world living in poverty. Ashoka’s goal is for every individual to have the ability and choice to play a role in local and global economies, as consumers, producers and creators of wealth.

Today over 2 billion citizens in the world don’t have access to any type of financial services, one billion still live in inadequate housing, 2 billion lack electrical power, and 100 million school-age children do not attend primary school. To them and their families, reaching full economic citizenship would mean having access to improved products and services that meet their basic needs, increasing the value of their local production, and being able to leverage their often illiquid assets to gain new opportunities.

Many Fellows in Ashoka’s community of over 2000 leading social entrepreneurs are developing solutions for low-income citizens around the world. Together Ashoka and Fellows distill and spread insights, building pathways to economic development for low-income communities.

In order to spread full economic citizenship globally, FEC is harnessing the innovations of Ashoka Fellows in three ways: creating new Hybrid Value Chain™ business models to serve low income communities, transforming small producers’ economies through the Classes of Small Producers program, and leveraging assets of the poor through the Wealth of the Poor program.

Presently, Ashoka is focusing on enabling Hybrid Value Chains- commercial partnerships between businesses and citizen sector organizations that leverage the critical strengths of each actor to transform markets and deliver essential products and services to low-income consumers.