Ashoka funding for innovators in the developing world
'Ashoka Innovators for the Public' is an unusual American grant-making programme which since 1981 has funded individuals in the developing world rather than projects. It has funded 'indigenous people who are public service entrepreneurs'. At present these are some 250 'Ashoka Fellows' working in Thailand, Brazil, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, and receiving about $200 per month of support for a one to four year period. They are selected for their creativity, entrepreneurial skills, ethical fibre and likely social impact; and they in turn help suggest other possible 'Fellows' and give each other help and collaboration.
'Indigenous people who are public service entrepreneurs are selected for their creativity, entrepreneurial skills, ethical fibre and likely social impact'
The Ashoka organisation writes: 'We far prefer to have one exceptional person with an important idea than a thousand hard-working, genuinely altruistic workers. We do not want to help start a new school or clinic; we want to do everything possible to help someone who's launching a better way of teaching, ie an idea that can spread way beyond the school where it is first demonstrated.' Ashoka prefers to give its support when the person is ready to launch his or her vision, but before it is a demonstrated success. So for instance, Mary Allegretti in Brazil was supported to follow through her proposal for creating 'extractive reserves' in the Amazon (where instead of giving one person extensive ownership, a legal form more appropriate for agriculture, users would be given long-term geographically overlapping rights - subject to environmental safeguards - for such uses as rubber tapping and fishing).
'We far prefer to have one exceptional person with an important idea than a thousand hard-working workers'
Bill Drayton, Ashoka's founder, says that his purpose was to help create an association that would give moral and financial help to social innovators with a practical vision for social change and the stamina to carry it out. 'There's very little support for these visionaries in society ... those people who spot the opportunities for positive social change and can't rest until it's happened.'
'Moral and financial help to social innovators with a practical vision for social change and the stamina to carry it out'
Damon Valentino, Communications Coordinator, Ashoka Innovators for the Public, 1200 North Nash Street, Arlington, Virginia 22209, USA (tel 202 628 0370; fax 202 628 0376).
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