Is Business the Place where Social Impact Happens Most? Ashoka Fellow Ben Powell Thinks So
My interest in entrepreneurship as a tool for development began after I started a miniature golf business in Puebla Mexico. I learned a lot about business by launching that venture, but what surprised me most about the experience was how much I learned about the impact of business—about how it can...
Get the Scoop on Peace through Prevention Next Week
Peace will be the flavor of the next week. The United Nation's International Day of Peace is next Friday, September 21, but things will get a little sweeter thanks to Ben & Jerry's, one of our partners (and a community favorite). They partnered with the Peace Alliance to hold a free ice cream...
Q&A with Ashoka Fellow Juan David Aristizábal Ospina: Insights into Colombia's Culture of Social Entrepreneurship
Ashoka has recently elected Juan David Aristizábal Ospina of Colombia as a new Fellow. Aristizábal is the founder and president of Buena Nota, a organization that informs, engages and connects Colombians around social problems and their solutions. Aristizábal has just released a book, "Llenando...
Introducing Ashoka's Inaugural Class of Changemaker Schools
Cultivating empathy and empowering children to become effective changemakers in their communities isn’t an add-on, or a brand-new concept: it starts with simply articulating, and then amplifying, how great teachers build empathy in students. Ashoka has set out to do just that, beginning with five...
Ashoka Fellow Juan David Aristizábal Ospina: 'If You Are Using Your Talents, You Are Changing the World'
Ashoka Fellow Juan David is a 23-year-old social entrepreneur who founded the organization Buena Nota in Colombia. Juan David recently visited Ashoka's global headquarters in Rosslyn, VA where he spoke about his new book, "Llenando Espacios" (Filling the Void) and about his experiences as a social...
Announcing the Three Big Winners of the Activating Empathy Competition
It's official: we've got our winners! After careful deliberation from our expert panel of judges and your votes on Changemakers.com, three solutions have been chosen from a pool of 14 finalists as the top winners in the “Activating Empathy: Transforming Schools to Teach What Matters” competition...
A Winning Idea: TV For And By The People
This past week, Ashoka Fellow Felipe Heusser and Jeff Warren were named winners of The Knight Foundations News Challenge for a TV network built for the people, by the people. The two call it, PeepolTV. The new idea PeepolTV is a social network for live-streamed content. According to Heusser, a lot...
6 Insights Into Creating a School Culture of Empathy
A convening of five schools in 2012 yielded these tips on cultivating empathy in your school. The StartEmpathy team gathered together educators from Mission Hill School,Lake Forest Park School, the Center for Inspired Teaching Demonstration School, Georgetown Day School, and Prospect Sierra School -...
Activate Empathy and Join the Movement to Teach What Matters
Empathy: em·pa·thy [em-puh-thee] It’s a beautiful word, derived from the suffix -em (meaning “to make into, to put into, to get into”) and -pathy (meaning “suffering”). What I consider especially beautiful about this word is that, unlike “sympathy” (which translates literally to “with” + “suffering”...