Ashoka Fellows Research Articles

Social Ventures from a Resource–Based Perspective: An Exploratory Study Assessing Global Ashoka Fellows

This study aims to discover relationships using a resource–based view of entrepreneurship and the social value creation characteristics of 70 social entrepreneurs. This study builds on existing research that commercial and social entrepreneurs share similar operational processes by providing empirical support for these relationships from a sample of acknowledged successful social entrepreneurs and by applying a resource–based lens to the context of social entrepreneurship. Novel qualitative and quantitative content analysis techniques were applied to the online profiles of Ashoka Fellows. Statistically significant relationships were found among measures of partnerships, financial capital, innovativeness, organizational structure, and knowledge transferability. These findings suggest that social entrepreneurs, when viewed through a resource–based lens, demonstrate similar internal operational processes in utilizing resource bundles as commercial entrepreneurs.

India on Less Than $30 a Year

Research Article| June 01 2010 India on Less Than $30 a Year Sandhya Srinivasan Sandhya Srinivasan 1Sandhya Srinivasan is a journalist based in Mumbai. She was a Panos Reproductive Health Media Fellow in 1998 and an Ashoka Fellow in 2002. She serves as consulting editor in public health for www.infochangeindia.org, editing its information gateway on HIV/AIDS, and is executive editor of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google World Policy Journal (2010) 27 (2): 19–22. https://doi.org/10.1162/wopj.2010.27.2.19 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Sandhya Srinivasan; India on Less Than $30 a Year. World Policy Journal 1 June 2010; 27 (2): 19–22. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/wopj.2010.27.2.19 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsWorld Policy Journal Search Advanced Search You do not currently have access to this content.

Social entrepreneurs and constructive change: The wisdom of circumventing conflict.

Ashoka Fellows—social entrepreneurs—often operate in a context of conflict as they challenge critical social problems that are seemingly hopeless and unsolvable. This article presents the strategies they employ, such as building new positive attractors (i.e., social capital) outside the field of influence of the conflict attractors; as a next step, they build a feedback loop between the success of their initiatives and reinforcement of social capital. Through subsequent positive experiences, they introduce constructive change outside of the field of conflict in a manner that modifies the societal balance based on higher levels of trust and tendencies to cooperate. Through this strategy, they make conflict less relevant and less salient. Several case studies are presented as illustrations of this approach, and general principles are identified.

Social Venture Strategy from a Global Perspective: An Exploratory Study Assessing Ashoka Fellows

This study is one of the first that utilizes the online profiles of the Fellows in the global social venture network, Ashoka, in order to build a database of 70 social entrepreneurs. The resource-based view serves as the theoretical base by which the preliminary results are evaluated. The findings, which indicate that social entrepreneurs demonstrate similar patterns to commercial entrepreneurs, are assessed through two different lenses of analyses - alliances and knowledge management. Statistically significant relationships were found between alliances, funding sources, innovation, and ease of replication.

Open Sourcing Social Solutions (Building Communities of Change)

70 countries. These Fellows are leading social entrepreneurs who have pioneered innovative solutions to societal challenges. As agents of change, these individuals have been as inspiring as they have been effective. However, as Ashoka has grown, it has faced a new challenge: to leverage the collective knowledge of Ashoka Fellows and galvanize members of the broader community in order to identify, envision, and realize the many untapped possibilities to effect positive social change through social entrepreneurship. Innovators often struggle to communicate their mission and describe their successes to potential investors who, in turn, struggle to assess the prospects of nascent ventures. Bridging this gap between innovation and investment is a crucial step in this leveraging and galvanizing process. Ashoka’s approach to addressing this gap has been to develop networks of contacts guided by well-defined protocols in order to assess the entrepreneurial potential of social enterprises. The increasing number and diversity of entrepreneurial ventures worldwide specifically directed toward addressing social problems is a welcome trend that nonetheless creates its own set of challenges. While Ashoka has continued to identify and assess social entrepreneurs using tried and true methods, the organization has also begun to experiment with new approaches to leverage the knowledge of these social entrepreneurs to attract other innovators. Changemakers is an important initiative of this sort, drawing on open source models to join innovators around the world into communities of change with peers, experts, investors, and interested members of the public. Our experience leads us to distinguish between different types of “open” models, including open innovation, open sourcing, and crowd sourcing. Changemakers has established a blend of these, which we call “crowd collaboration,” creating spaces where a wide range of voices can come together to propose, refine, reorient, reuse and reinvigorate innovative social solutions. This paper reviews Ashoka’s experience with Changemakers as a mechanism for accelerating innovation in order to take social change from a prospect for a few Charlie Brown

Defending the Unquiet Mind

Medical sciences have created a system of beliefs about the threat posed to society by people with psychosocial disabilities. With a heavy reliance on drugs and electroshock therapy, incarceration in institutions, and with no rights as individuals, these groups of people have become social pariahs. The legal system reinforces their exclusion through provisions to institutionalize them. In attempting to secure and safeguard the human rights of persons with psychosocial disabilities, Ashoka fellow Bhargavi Davar is working towards legal and policy change in the mental health sector. To show that a more humane and approach can work, and that there are alternatives to a bio medical perspective, Bhargavi is also designing and studying alternative spaces for healing.

Peace-Building - A Powerful Deterrent to Conflict

Notions of democracy, human rights, justice and peace have lost its identity and Nepal is facing ever-increasing violence, unrest and conflict. The Maoist insurgency, the royal family massacre, political instability, and the gradual collapse of the economy have been the major setbacks Nepal has faced in the last decade. Failures to contain a nearly decade old insurgency have destroyed infrastructure and resulted in the loss of thousands of lives. In the present situation of aggression and violence reigning in the country, there was a pressing need to make the civil society aware of the urgency in ensuring peace and working towards it. It provided an opportunity to Ashoka Fellow Rita Thapa to initiate citizen-based activities. The year was 2001, when Nagarik Aawaz was born. Earlier, Rita Thapa had conceptualized and spearheaded TEWA, the first indigenous fund raising organization in Nepal. Nagarik Aawaz or 'voice of the citizen', started as an attempt to garner support amongst concerned citizens to combat the dramatic effect the Maoist insurgency was having on the everyday lives of people of Nepal. Nagarik Aawaz started with 5 members who facilitated informal interactions and brain storming between individuals, in borrowed premises on possible ways of conflict resolution and peace building within the country. Today it is a formal registered NGO, having an executive board of 11 people, with programs designed to sensitize and create awareness in conflict resolution and peace-building efforts through networking and advocacy.

Campaigning for the 'Protection Rights' of Children in Sri Lanka

For more than a decade, the cause of children who are exploited and abused has been championed by Senior Ashoka Fellow Prof. Harendra de Silva whose term as the Chairman of the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) has just ended. His success in pursuing the perpetrators of these heinous crimes has resulted in widespread awareness among the public on child abuse resulting in the prompt reporting of abuse cases. The perpetrators range from foreign paedophiles, School Teachers/ School Principles, Clergy, to the uncle next door or the parents. Child abuse and exploitation cover a range of crimes that violate the basic human rights of children, which include child labour, torture and cruel treatment, rape, incest, domestic violence, trafficking, abduction and sale of children, slavery, child prostitution, child pornography and other unlawful sexual practices.

The Right to Information Act: Turning it into an Effective Tool to Combat Corruption in Governance

Following the recent global trend towards recognition of the right to information, the Delhi government passed the Right to Information Act (RTIA) in 2001, which was subsequently followed by eight other Indian states. It is poised to become a national Act in November 2005. Under this Act, any citizen can approach the competent authority in a state department and seek any information on the activities of that department and take copies of documents. If refused, the official concerned is liable to be penalised. Despite this, the real picture continues to be different. Corrupt government departments refuse to part with information, taking full advantage of the common citizenry's lack of awareness regarding the Act. Delhi-based Ashoka Fellow Arvind Kejriwal is using the RTIA to tilt the balance in favour of the people. His idea is simple: create awareness among the people and the state departments about the Act and then use it as a powerful tool to ensure transparency and accountability in state machinery, which in turn will check corruption. How does he do it? He uses three basic tools: public awareness, Delhi's Right to Information Act and a unique platform called the Jan Sunwai (public hearing).

Forest Land and Forest Produce - A Perspective from Experiences at Palni Hills, Western Ghats, Tamil Nadu

A public presence ensures public participation and public participation assures forest conservation. This equation was the theme of the case shared by Ashoka Fellow R.Kannan working in the Palni Hills, a part of the Western Ghats in Tamil Nadu. Kannan is showing the villagers and farmers how to hold the forest, grow crops, diversify the rural economy, protect the region's dwindling water supply and attract interest of forest officials and conservationists.

Everyone a Changemaker: Social Entrepreneurship's Ultimate Goal

narily tall, thin man with a hugely wide smile, he became a computer consultant. However, from early on, he was one of the few in his generation who noticed—with concern—that the young people growing up in the favelas on the hills overlooking his middle-class neighborhood had no access to this digital world. Because he has the great entrepreneur’s tenacity of observation and thought as well as action, he decided he had to take on the digital divide—well before the phrase came into currency—and he has been pursuing this vision relentlessly ever since. While beginning to work toward this dream as a teenager, he learned just how motivated and capable of learning the young people in the favelas were. And also how competent the favela community was in organizing. This respect underlies the central insight that has allowed Rodrigo to have a growing multi-continental impact. Rodrigo provides only what the community cannot: typically computers, software, and training. The community does the organizing, finding space, recruiting the students and faculty, and providing ongoing administration. The result is a uniquely economical model, and also one where, because the investment strengthens the broader community, it is self-sustaining and a foundation for other initiatives long into the future. Rodrigo’s chain of hundreds of community-based computer training schools now serves hundreds of slums across Latin America and Asia. These schools now have 700,000 graduates. I got a sense of Rodrigo’s power when he came to Washington shortly after being elected an Ashoka Fellow. Somehow he convinced the Inter-American Development Bank to give him its used (but highly valuable) computers. Somehow he convinced the Brazilian Air Force first to warehouse and then to fly these computers home. And then he somehow managed to persuade the Brazilian customs authority to allow all these computers in at a time when Brazil was trying to block computer imports. William Drayton

The Citizen Sector: Becoming as Entrepreneurial and Competitive as Business

William Drayton founded Ashoka in 1980 to use a venture capital model to support social entrepreneurs, namely, practical visionaries who are committed to social change. The primary objective of Ashoka is to identify social entrepreneurs around the globe, who then receive Ashoka Fellowships that provide both financial and professional support. To be chosen, each prospective fellow goes through a rigorous search and selection process. Fellows receive a living stipend (typically for three years) and they join the Global Fellowship—a worldwide network of social entrepreneurs. Since 1982 over 1,100 Ashoka Fellows have been selected in 41 countries. Ashoka Fellows work in six areas: learning/education, environment, health, human rights, civic participation, and economic development.