Ashoka

With the guiding principle of “everyone a change maker,” Ashoka invests in entrepreneurial individuals with deep ties to their communities, visionary ideas, and the passion to create social value.

Based on a venture capital model, Ashoka provides “Ashoka Fellows” with broad-reaching support, enabling them to focus full-time on their ideas for leading social change in education and youth development, healthcare, the environment, human rights, access to technology and economic development. As the only worldwide network of social entrepreneurs, Ashoka fosters their collaboration globally, providing valuable contacts, information and opportunities to spread their innovation and build their long-term sustainability.

One Fellow, Patricia Nava, created a network of educators in her hometown of Puebla, Mexico to provide sex education and AIDS prevention training to residents of overcrowded slums. As part of Ashoka’s belief that businesses must use social networks to reach new markets and that the citizen sector needs the marketplace to gain financial sustainability, Ashoka introduced Patricia to Cemex, the Mexican cement producer. Cemex invented a plan that encourages families in urban slums to save for cement to build home additions, which could alleviate family abuse sparked by overcrowding. Cemex is now using Patricia’s existing distribution system, paying commissions to safe-sex educators when they refer cement customers. By combining public and private interests, Ashoka Fellows help communities move toward sustainable change.

Since 1981, Ashoka has invested in more than 1,600 Ashoka Fellows in 60 countries, who have transformed the lives of millions of people in thousands of communities worldwide.