Going Global: Ashoka Globalizer Fellows are Off to Vienna from Nov. 5 to 7

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Sorgente: Ashoka

A man who created a mass movement for recycling tons of waste material in India; a woman whose organization is committed to transforming global health through genetics; two former classmates who are growing a social entrepreneurship education movement in colleges and universities across the United States: What do these people have in common?  

All are Ashoka Globalizer Fellows, and they’re meeting together this weekend in Vienna, Austria for the Globalizer Summit.  

Great business ideas go global to serve customers around the world. By contrast, no such market forces are at work in the social sector. Social innovation too often remains local or national. Although many of the ideas and the entrepreneurs behind them have the potential for global spread, the social sector still lacks a process that focuses specifically on the global scope of change and the resources and mechanisms necessary for globalizing an idea successfully.

In 2010, Ashoka’s Globalizer program set out to create that process and find the Fellows within the Ashoka network whose ideas have the greatest potential to catalyze global systems change. These social entrepreneurs are challenged, through an intense process, to refine their scaling strategies with support from the Globalizer team, and advisors from McKinsey & Company and Ashoka's Support Network of business leaders who are committed to social change.

The Ashoka Globalizer Summit in Vienna is a place where great minds, great energy, and great ideas come together. To let you in on the action, we will be sharing stories from participating Fellows about the inspiration behind their ideas, and what drives them to keep working despite the obstacles in their way.  

To begin, we have launched the What Inspires You campaign on Twitter, where we are featuring Ashoka Fellows and the “fuel” that keeps them going. 

These tweets, however, are only the beginning. During the Globalizer Summit, we will interview participating Fellows and Panelists to share their thoughts through blogging and short video posts on Ashoka’s Change InSight blog. We will also be tweeting live from the event, using the #globalizer2011 hashtag.