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.

In 2003, Ashoka launched the Full Economic Citizenship (FEC) initiative in collaboration with its community of social and business entrepreneurs to drive large-scale change through business-social models for low-income communities worldwide. Ashoka’s FEC initiative is promoting a new way of thinking about housing, healthcare and small producers, one that seeks to enable business-social alliances or Hybrid Value Chains™ (HVC) to develop products, distribution channels and financing solutions to better serve these undeserved markets.  Beyond business-social partnerships, Ashoka aims to transform entire sectors by demonstrating the HVC model and foster its replication. 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. 

FEC’s Core Sector Initiatives
• Low-Income Housing
• Health Care (insurance, diagnostic tools & pharmaceuticals)
• Small Farmers

Some of our Past and Active partners

Corporations:

McKinsey & Company  •  Amanco  •  Danone  •  Lafarge  •  Cemex

Banco Ve Por Más  •  Gamesa-Quaker  •  Colceramica

Foundations:

Hilti  •  Gamesa  •  Naandi  •  Walmart

"Through its groundbreaking Hybrid Value Chain work, Ashoka is bringing down the walls that have historically separated social entrepreneurs and the business sector.  Combining the power of these two forces will radically accelerate progress against many of the toughest social issues of our time." 

-  Todd Park, Co-Founder, athenahealth