Ashoka
What will it take for things to actually change?
This is the question that Ashoka has been asking for 40 years. Our search for social entrepreneurs has been, at its heart, a quest to find the individuals among us who see what’s underneath social challenges and work to change the systems that are at the root of these problems.
Below are stories from this year’s Emerging Insights 2019 report. Each one showcases how our newly elected Ashoka Fellows work in collaborative and holistic ways. We look at both the urgency of issues the Fellows are working on and at the tangible and replicable solutions they have developed.
Unlonely Planet Impact Report: 2018 Global Study Finds Ashoka Fellows Change Policy, Market Dynamics, and How People Think
In 2018, Ashoka led one of the largest and most diverse studies of system changing social entrepreneurs ever conducted. And we found that Ashoka Fellows are having systems-level impact — 74 percent have achieved change in public policy or legislation, others are changing market systems, and mindsets. All are working towards an Everyone a Changemaker world by engaging countless others in their efforts to realize change for the good of all.
We also found that Ashoka is clearly accelerating Fellows' ability to create their systems change impact. Overall, 84 percent of Fellows reported that Ashoka has helped increase their impact. Learn more about the study results and Fellows' systems changing strategies in the 2018 Impact Report by Diana Wells, Alessandro Valera, and Sara Wilf.
Embracing Complexity. Towards a Shared Understanding of Funding Systems Change
As we stand on the threshold of an epochal decade, we are confronted with an urgent need to find, fund, and support transformative solutions at a far greater pace than ever.
Creative Solutions for Changing Times: The approaches of social entrepreneurs to Europe's most pressing challenges
Europe faces increasingly complex social challenges. They require continuous reassessment of underlying causes, potential approaches and emerging stakeholders that can effectively solve them. Social entrepreneurs all over Europe are the innovative pioneers from civil society that address these challenges. For the past 38 years, Ashoka has been committed to identifying the most innovative ideas and dedicated social entrepreneurs and organizations that address social problems. Ashoka Fellows go beyond tackling symptoms and aim at underlying systemic causes of social challenges. In the last five years, Ashoka has elected 194 Fellows that are active in Europe. This study features Europe’s most crucial social challenges and it reflects the ways in which the Ashoka social entrepreneurs approach them. It also details the patterns of innovation that these different approaches highlight and their relevance for the broader European public agenda.
