Leading social entrepreneurs ashoka fellows 2012 2013 by Media AshokaArabWorld

hat makes Ashoka unique is its willingness to step in when the risks are greatest. They seek to help individuals before they have succeeded— when no one else is ready to help and when a little help makes an enormous difference.

LEADING SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS

UNICEF

oogle is a company that believes deeply in entrepreneurship. And this is a company that believes deeply in the power of information. We don’t think there’s another organization that combines these two things in a more compelling way than Ashoka. GOOGLE

WWW.GOOGLE.COM

hanges (for the wider good of humanity)… are less likely to be brought about by political leaders than by social entrepreneurs: individuals who can marshal human and material resources to tackle large and seemingly intractable problems… The father of social entrepreneurship is Bill Drayton, who began Ashoka 30 years ago. Drayton merits the new Nobel leadership award. HOWARD GARDNER

LEADING AUTHORITY ON LEADERSHIP HARVARD UNIVERSITY

LEADING SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS

ACTION FOR CHILDREN

here is nothing more powerful than the profession of social entrepreneurship in finding creative solutions to society’s ills. Ashoka defines social entrepreneurship. SUSAN MCCAW

FORMER USA AMBASSADOR TO AUSTRIA

CRAIG MCCAW

CELLULAR AND SATELLITE PIONEER

e believe one measurement of an effective community is exhibiting durable communication channels, networks, and collaborative alliances. Ashoka provides us with a great model for best practices. The engaged global community of social entrepreneurs that Ashoka has fostered helps each one of them to have more impact than would have been possible individually. PIERRE OMIDYAR

CO-FOUNDER AND FOUNDING PARTNER OF THE OMIDYAR NETWORK FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, EBAY

2012 LSE Cover.indd 1

1700 North Moore Street | Suite 2000 | Arlington,VA 22209 USA Tel: (703) 527-8300 | Fax (703) 527-8383 | www.ashoka.org

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LE AD I N G SO CIAL E NTR E PR E N E U R S

1700 North Moore Street | Suite 2000 | Arlington, VA 22209 USA Tel: (703) 527-8300 | Fax: (703) 527-8383 | www.ashoka.org

Two Great Entrepreneurs for the Young The world lost two of its best entrepreneurs for the young— and two of its most committed, kind models of how to live— only weeks apart this spring. The Ashoka family deeply mourns their loss—and we all rededicate ourselves. —Bill Drayton, for the Ashoka Community

Gloria de Souza (India)

Abdul Waheed Khan (Pakistan)

Gloria was Ashoka’s first Fellow (elected in 1981) and long served on the Ashoka board. With roots in Goa and home in Bombay, she was a person of faith and irresistible gentle determination. She was able to replace deadening rote education for many millions across India and beyond by making the creativity and initiative-building alternatives attractive to previously fearful students, teachers, and parents.

Elected a Fellow in 2003, Abdul was assassinated after receiving death threats for his work. He was known for his gentle, empathetic, values-driven persistence in finding peaceful ways of making it possible for all children to learn and be prepared for the modern world. Because Pakistan does not have enough schools, poor communities create their own, typically madrassas. Responding to what local communities want, Abdul brought modern approaches to learning and modern subjects like math, science, computers and English. Please help build Abdul’s endowment. There is a 1.5 match now available.

Managing Editor: Kelly Hicks Editors: Rebecca Altman, Raisa Aziz, Claire Fallender, Kulsoom Khan, David Nahmias, Avani Patel, Addie Thompson, Julie Wiscombe, Michael Zakaras Production Artist: Jennifer Geanakos Contributors: Yeleka Barrett, Hanae Baruchel, Flavio Bassi, Sarah Bernstein, Iman Bibars, Sinee Chakthranont, Tina Choi, Eana Chung, Amy Clark, Elena Correas, Chris Cusano, Anne Evans, Chloe Feinberg, Diana Fernholz, Michelle Fidelholc, Lennon Flowers, Maria Fonseca, Erin Fornoff, Ahmed Fouad, Konstanze Frischen, Janelle Gera, Claudia Gulmarães, Laura Havercamp, Binta Houma, Sarah Jefferson, Nassir Katuramu, Ewa Konczal, Mira Kusumarini, Senei Leluata, Sarah Mariotte, Arnaud Mourot, Ohemaa Nyanin, Josephine Nzerem, Anna Obem, Paul O’Hara, Laxmi Pathasarathy, Norma Perez, Eitan Perry, Maria Clara Pinhiero, Marie Ringler, Angelika Roth, Monica de Roure, Ranya Saadawi, Frine Salguero, Supriya Sankaran, Shreen Saroor, Georg Schoen, Claudia de Simone, Olga Sirobokova, Ira Snissar, Sally Stephenson, Simon Stumph, Raquel Thompson, Filip Vagac, Jan Visick, Nana Watanabe, Tally Woolf

Cover Photo In front of the former Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan, two girls read the children’s magazine Parvaz, launched by the NGO Ainaworld, founded by Ashoka Fellow, Reza Deghati. Born in Tabriz, Iran, Reza is a French citizen based in Paris and is known as a world renowned photojournalist. He is also a National Geographic Fellow, photographer and humanitarian. Over the past 13 years, he has developed sustainable, professional media institutions that have helped over 1,000 Afghans. They include a national women’s radio station that reaches over 5 million people daily, a women’s magazine, the children’s magazine Parvaz, over 30 educational films that have been shown across the country as well as photo and video training workshops. In 2012, one of the Afghan photographer’s trained by Aina received the Pulitzer Prize and the first ever documentary by Afghan women, trained by Aina, was nominated for an Emmy Award. Through the gift of knowledge, Reza is freeing millions of previously cut-off Afghans and giving them a voice. He is building powerful institutions and people who will enable everyone to make a change for the future of Afghanistan. Today, through Reza Fund-Photography for Humanity, Reza trains youths in refugee camps and in the suburbs of Europe in the language of images. ISBN‑13: 978‑0‑9815279‑6‑3; ISBN‑10: 0‑9815279‑6-5 Leading Social Entrepreneurs, 2013 Edition. Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. This book has been printed on recycled newsprint.

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PREFACE

Dear Friend, In a young person’s life, what is most likely to give him/her the power and values to become a truly great social entrepreneur? One factor is central and very clear. Today’s entrepreneurs first had a dream, built a team, and left their world (middle or high school or community) changed in their teens. They had their power from that point on. Knowing how to entrepreneur, they seek out the challenges others avoid—and gain more confidence and skill with each initiative. It is no accident that eighty percent of the Ashoka Fellows started something in their teens, usually early teens. Ask those among your friends who are true entrepreneurs when they first built something—and watch their eyes closely. When they think back to this moment when they got their power, you’ll get a glimpse of just what a defining moment this was. Entrepreneurs bring pattern change (e.g., the next step for the environment, a new way of organizing education), a level of impact way beyond direct service (being a forester or teacher). Social entrepreneurs, from deep within and therefore also throughout the fiber of their work, are committed to the good of all. That’s what defines the field, not subject matter. In this they are different from entrepreneurs who pursue self or institutional interest, shareholder value, or religious or ideological ends. This is a very central reason why social entrepreneurship is so critical. The interplay of narrow interests not infrequently pushes the world onto harmful paths. The spiraling loss of privacy today is an all too real example. (We need preventative surveillance; Moore’s law lowers surveillance costs 30 percent per year; and the dominant digital business paradigm is “give something to get information you can sell at a profit”.) It is the social entrepreneurs—playing both offence and defense—who open new ways that serve everyone and who protect against harmful dead ends and quicksand. This volume introduces you to newly elected very leading social entrepreneur Fellows. Over half will change national policy within five years. That’s what years of their predecessors have done. The big problems they identify and their new solutions both will help you see into the future. This edition, after these profiles of individual new ideas and their social entrepreneur creators, also introduces you to Ashoka 3.0—collaborative entrepreneurship. Individual Ashoka Fellows are hugely powerful. Our having learned over the last six to seven

years how to entrepreneur together is a genuinely game-changing, giant step forward to an entirely new level of impact. Just in historical time. The central historical fact, Bill Drayton the force driv ing everything else, of our era is that, since at least 1700, the rate of change has been accelerating exponentially. The old game was “repetition reinforces repetition” and the goal was efficiency in repetition (think assembly line and law firm). The game going forward is not just different, it is the old game’s opposite. Now it is “change begets and accelerates change.” Ten years from now anyone unable to contribute to the constant adjusting required by an everything changing world, anyone who is not a changemaker, will be pushed to the side. In this world the systems we used to take as given are changing—and bumping and causing change in one another—faster and faster. That means that our field needs our new collaborative entrepreneurship ability to think and entrepreneur together urgently. This historical moment of transition also requires that this and all future generations of children and young people need to be changmakers before they are 21. This requires the world to recognize and act on a new paradigm for growing up and education: Every child must master cognitive empathy, and every teen must be practicing changemaking (empathy/teamwork/new leadership/ changemaking). This is today’s equivalent of the radical decision of a century ago that everyone must master written language. Ashoka knows this new paradigm is possible because our own community has repeatedly made it happen in schools and communities across the world. The challenge—one we have taken on—is to change everyone’s mindset so that parents, educators, leaders, and young people all recognize the need and each and together act to make it happen. Everyone needs to be a changemaker. Everyone should grow up in an environment where that is easy and the norm. Ensuring that this is so is critical for any community or country; it can’t succeed in an “everyone a changemaker” world if its people are not changemakers.

Bill Drayton for the Ashoka Community iii

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shoka: Innovators for the Public is the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs—men and women with system‑changing solutions—that address the world’s most urgent social challenges. Since its founding in 1980, Ashoka has helped launch and then provided key long‑term support to roughly 3,000 leading social entrepreneurs in over 80 countries. It provides these “Ashoka Fellows” start‑up stipends, professional services and a powerful global network of top social and business entrepreneurs. It also helps them spread their innovations globally.

Ashoka uses a rigorous, highly refined, five‑step process to identify the most important emerging social‑change ideas and the entrepreneurs behind them who, together, will redefine their field, be it human rights or the environment or any other area of human need. This process focuses sharply on five key criteria: • A big, pattern‑setting New Idea • Creativity in both goal‑setting and problem‑solving • Entrepreneurial Quality • The Social Impact of the New Idea • Ethical Fiber Once Fellows are elected, Ashoka makes sure that they have the supports and full freedom—including the ability to work full‑time—they need to launch their visions and succeed. This includes providing a launch stipend to the degree it is needed for an average of three years, organizing a wide range of high leverage supports, and—most important—engaging them in a local to global collaborating fellowship of their peers.

By structuring, supporting, and routinizing such collaborations, Ashoka is also helping the world’s leading social entrepreneurs come together to cause truly major changes, changes whose impacts far exceed the sum of the impacts of even these individual entrepreneurs. In recent years we have learned how, starting with the Fellows’ innovations, to map the most critical transformations the world needs—and then through collaborative entrepreneurship among hundreds of top social entrapreneurs, in fact, to tip the world time and again. There has never been anything like this before. Ashoka is also helping the emerging profession of social entrepreneurship to find the institutions and patterns that will serve it wisely long into the future. In this volume, you will find profiles introducing the ideas and leading social entrepreneurs recently elected by Ashoka. They are grouped according to six broad fields: civic engagement, economic development, environment, health, human rights, and learning/ education. These sketches introduce entrepreneurs and their ideas very early in their careers, years before the scale of their impacts will be obvious. However, annual Ashoka evaluations show that five years after their election and start‑up launch, 90 percent of the Ashoka Fellows have seen independent institutions copy their idea and over half have changed national policy. Moreover, they encourage many, many, others to stand up and become changemakers. Both as role models and because, to succeed, they must—and do—find champions in community after community that adopt and spread their models. Ashoka also enables the world's leading social entrepreneur Fellows and others in the Ashoka community working on a common problem to unite globally to identify and entrepreneur the needed changes.

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Letter from the Ashoka President

Dear Friends, Ashoka Fellows are at the origins and the core of Ashoka’s belief in a world in which every single person has the skills and support to drive change, a world where solutions outpace problems. A decade into our work finding and supporting Ashoka Fellows, we began to see a clear pattern: nearly all leading social entrepreneurs had early experiences entrepreneuring their own idea. This experience (whether successful or not) gave them the opportunity to learn and confidence to try to solve the next problem that arose. It helped them practice their skills for changemaking grow into the powerful systems changing social entrepreneurs like those we feature in the following pages. We realized at Ashoka that if it wanted to increase the density of changemakers in the world, we would need to ensure that all young people developed skills and had experienced like those of our Fellows to be successful changemakers. Through the patterns across our Fellows, we have identified those key skills needed for each person to be a changemaker: empathy, team work, leadership and changemaking. The vision for Everyone a Changemaker therefore stems directly from the leading social entrepreneurs and their innovative ideas in aggregate. Realizing this vision will stem from the power generated by our Fellow network and the ecosystem supporting their work for the following key reasons:

Diana Wells

• To the skeptics they demonstrate change is possible

• To those who see change is possible, they are role models

• In this world of rapid change, often propelled by selfish gains, they are the ones who keep us on track. By definition they work for the good of all • They engineer the new patterns for society

• Their solutions empower others to be changemakers

• Their ideas in aggregate demonstrate patterns of solutions and point to future trends

Clair Fallender

Ashoka’s more than thirty years of identifying and supporting leading social entrepreneurs with truly systems changing ideas have demonstrated that these extraordinary individuals are very rare: nearly one in 10 million. Nevertheless, because of the critical roles that leading social entrepreneurs play in fostering an ecosystem for changemaking to flourish, Ashoka has established an ambitious goal to elect and engage 80% of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs to Ashoka’s network by 2018. Ashoka is the association of leading social entrepreneurs in the world. We will continue to aggressively expand and deepen the reach of this association so that we can build the foundation for inspiring and cultivating change-making around the world. Social entrepreneurs are found across all cultures and geographic contexts and their critical insights point to future trends for innovation and paradigm shifts in society. Expanding our network across all geographies ensures that those shifts are important and rele-vant truly for the good of all without bias to particular regions. We hope you enjoy reading about the lives and ideas of some of our newest Ashoka Fellows in this booklet. Like us, we hope that you too begin to see the power of Ashoka’s growing network of leading social entrepreneurs and the world of changemakers they are helping to create. We thank you for your continued support as we support more and more Ashoka Fellows around the world.

Warm regards,

Diana Wells, Phd President, Ashoka Innovators for the Public

Claire Fallender Director, Global Venture and Fellowship v

LE AD I N G SO CIAL E NTR E PR E N E U R S A REPRESENTIVE SAMPLE OF NEW ASHOK A FELLOWS AND IDEAS

2012-2013 EDITION The Social Entrepreneurs and Their Ideas Civic Engagement................................................................................................................ 1 Environment.........................................................................................................................15 Full Economic Citizenship...............................................................................................31 Health.....................................................................................................................................43 Human Rights......................................................................................................................59 Learning and Power..........................................................................................................73 Senior Fellows & Members ............................................................................................87

Collaborative Entrepreneurship Growing Up: The New Paradigm............................................................................... 103 Changemaker Schools.................................................................................................. 107 Ashoka's Youth Venturers and Their Ideas............................................................ 108

Organizing the Movement World Council................................................................................................................... 112 Board, North American Council ................................................................................ 113 Offices Worldwide........................................................................................................... 114 Ensuring the Future: The Endowments.................................................................. 116 Opportunities................................................................................................................... 122

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A Sample of Newly Elected Ashoka Fellows 2012â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2013 EDITION

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

FULL ECONOMIC CITIZENSHIP

HUMAN RIGHTS

SENIORS

Chaves, Roberto Brazil, 3

Abu Turky, Fida Palestine, 33

Chanoff, Sasha United States, 61

Huet, Yvonnick France, 89

Lubell, David United States, 6

Haselmayer, Sascha Denmark, 36

Emasu, Alice Uganda, 64

Meira, Silvio Brazil, 92

Mayberry, Jessica India, 8

Vieth, Christian Germany, 38

Lambe, Shauneen United Kingdom, 67

Zahorcova, Viera Slovakia, 94

Sanner, Marit Norway, 11

Weru, Jane Kenya, 40

Ohki , Junto Japan, 71

Ziv, Amitai Israel, 98

ENVIRONMENT

HEALTH

LEARNING/POWER

Bhogle, Svati India, 17

Boonpakdee, Nattaya Thailand, 45

Bodnarova, Martina Slovakia, 75

Bianchini, Flaviano Nicaragua,19

Hasan, Asher Pakistan, (Global), 48

Meegammana, Niranjan Sri Lanka, 78

Foresburg, Kirsten Peru, 21

McDonald, Shona South Africa, 50

Rohde , Katrin Burkina Faso, 81

Lewis, Dale Zambia, 25

Richmond, Kristin United States, 53

Whelton, James Ireland, 84

Redwan, Zaher Lebanon, 28

Tobey, Kirsten United States, 53 Zaazoue , Mohamed Egypt, 56 ix

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THE PROBLEM

R oberto C haves BRAZIL

Citizen/Community Participation Conflict Resolution Youth Development

Roberto “Beto” Chaves, a member of Rio de Janeiro’s police force, is rebuilding trust between Rio’s police and its favela communities. Through loosely structured “chats” in the community between police, ex-convicts and youth, Beto is breaking down the stereotypes and misconceptions that each group holds about the others, and has opened new lines of communication between the police and the community.

Rio de Janeiro’s devastating and intractable favela community problems are widely known and reported worldwide, especially now that Rio will host the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016. The city is the third largest in Latin America, its citywide GDP is number two in Brazil and thirty in the world; it is the most visited city in South America. Poverty, lawlessness, and drug lords controlling many of the 1,020 favelas in Rio have been allowed to continue for years, as the government tacitly admitted its inability to govern the favelas; crime has been rampant with murder rates among the highest in the world, and alleged deaths at the hands of police from 2005 to 2007 (1,200 per year) were nearly four times higher than all alleged murders by police in the U.S. High numbers of police were also killed during this same period. Youth are both the greatest victims and perpetrators of urban violence in Brazil. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography, in 2010 youth between the ages of 15 and 24 made up 36.6 percent of the country’s victims of violent deaths.

Through a series of Chat Projects (Projeto Papo de Responsa) held in schools with a police person, an ex-convict, and youth from the community, old stereotypes are gradually broken down and new concepts enter the discussion, such as interdependence and coexistence. This process leads to growing respect and mutual understanding among the youth and the Civil Police Department. Beto’s idea does not end with breaking down these stereotypes, humanizing the police department, changing attitudes and even changing behaviors. He institutionalizes these changed attitudes within the police department and the affected communities. In the police department, he plans to create a new, autonomous Prevention and Community Outreach Department to coordinate and carry-out the Chats Projects and programs to guarantee its continuance and independence by creating a new charter to be signed by police and governmental leaders, and incorporating independent funders. To institutionalize his approach and build a broad societal consensus around this police-community relationship, he is reaching out to citizen organizations (COs) that operate effectively in these communities and with the private sector. The program has achieved so much initial success, reaching more than 100,000 youth in a few years that it has attracted partners from all sectors, greater visibility, and respect within the police force. Beto’s initiative has been recognized as a model to replicate by the Ministry of Justice and National Human Rights Secretariat and the methodology is also being used in the states of Ceará, Mato Gross do Sul, and Espírito Santo.

THE NEW IDEA

Beto talks with high school students from a private school in the state of Rio de Janeiro about Internet crime, bullying, and drugs.

Over the years, the police have come to see the communities as lawless territories filled with criminals not to be trusted, while the community, especially youth, view the police as invaders who use and abuse their authority with impunity; making few distinctions between community citizens and criminals. But behind these stereotypes of mistrust and intolerance there is a more complex reality. Favela communities have problems with poor schools, high drop out rates, terrible healthcare, and a shocking lack of basic infrastructure and housing—all problems the state has failed to address. But, when all other public support has failed, and the police are called, they are expected to make these problems go away. The Rio Police Department has a long and proud tradition, it was created 202 years ago with two responsibilities—preventing and

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investigating crimes. But with the striking levels of lawlessness, the police department has focused primarily on investigating crimes to determine how they were committed, and who is responsible. Prevention and community outreach were deemphasized for decades, and the few new programs piloted did not succeed. “Community Policing,” which was widely perceived as successful in flagship cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo and replicated to many cities around the world, were brought to Rio but failed. The only community outreach programs in place today are Units for Police Pacification (UPPs), which are police base stations located inside some key favelas, but UPPs are viewed more as fortresses against the enemy, rather than outreach to the community.

T H E S T R AT E G Y Beto’s strategy to break down misconceptions between the police and favela communities and to humanize the police includes three basic steps. First, Beto creates open forms of dialogue, which over three months of Chats, gradually allow police, ex-convicts, and youth to see each other in ways that build mutual understanding, change attitudes, and then, change behaviors. After perfecting this process for four years, he formalized it into Chats in which one police person and an ex-convict go to schools together, and talk about their stereotypes of each other. Thanks to careful mediation by the police and ex-convict, every followup Chat deepens the dialogue and encourages youth to bring their own stories to the table, thus helping to instill a sense of responsibility for their own choices. The Chats quickly engaged and impacted the youth. Beto then formed a multidisciplinary group of teachers, psychologists, and social workers to broaden and deepen their effectiveness and also to reach out to youth not attending school. Next, Beto focuses on institutionalizing these programs and changing attitudes within the police department. As a police officer, Beto knew that change could not be sustained by an informal program, no matter how exciting and effective; these efforts must be institutionalized and embedded within the police department. He also knew it had to be a separate department with operating autonomy, seperate funding, reporting directly to the police chief. Since the chief is a senior police professional appointed by the governor, the new department also had to be formally approved and supported by political authorities. Beto’s first step toward a new department was to persuade the chief to invite 400 senior officers to a Chat seminar. This seminar was unprecedented in the police department—a fourth level police person asking the chief to request the attendance of all of his department heads and inspectors throughout Rio. These

hardened police leaders were shocked to see police colleagues in a spontaneous dialogue with ex-convicts which led to understanding and breaking down of prejudices. Symbolically, Beto’s greatest achievement from these seminars was to win over the head of the elite anti-kidnapping unit. Widely acclaimed for its incredible success at building such competence in investigation, the anti-kidnapping unit told victims’ families not to pay a ransom and promised they would rescue the victims, which they did with astonishing success. The unit’s chief told Beto that his Chat program was ten times more effective than everything his department had accomplished and the chief became one of the ten most active police participants in the Chat program. Beto’s strategy also includes humanizing the police and building trust in the favela communities by establishing a series of partnerships with COs, the private sector and the state government—recognizing that the problem must involve a broad group of actors to succeed. Beto and the police department signed a series of unprecedented agreements with the Secretaries of Education, Social Action and Human Rights, Natura, a respected private sector company, the governor, and the police chief. The police officers involved in this initiative volunteer their services and Beto has the full support of his department to dedicate the time needed to implement his vision. The resources needed to implement the program, such as books, institutional materials, and an interactive website, are funded through a partnership with Natura.

The unit’s chief told Beto that his Chat program was ten times more effective than everything his department had accomplished and the chief became one of the ten most active police participants in the Chat program. Beto’s Chat program currently operates in 100 schools and has reached 20,000 young people per year since 2008. Over the years, he has worked with many more schools. Beto has been invited to form Chat programs in four other states in Brazil, and the Chat program was recently highlighted at a Latin America Conference on Police and Society. While this recognition has given Beto visibility and credibility inside and outside the police department, he knows he will not succeed until he has institutionalized his prevention and community outreach approaches within the police department, in the communities, and with the broad support of the public, private, and citizen sectors. Beto is well on his way to creating Brazil’s first autonomous Prevention and Community

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Outreach Department within the police department. And to replacing a social disfunction that has poisoned Brazilian society for generations with the effective, publically supported policy essential to democratic fair societies.

THE PERSON Beto was born and raised in Rio as the youngest child in a working-class family. He went to a technical school, married and worked in his father-in-law’s construction materials store, located at the edge of some of the largest favelas in Rio. Beto worked there for ten years and transformed the business from a small five-person store selling mainly over the counter, to a well computerized, twenty-eight person business which sold wholesale to small stores throughout the favelas. Beto developed customers, delivered materials, gave credit, and participated deeply in the life of the favelas. But his family always encouraged him to seek more education and he wanted to become part of something bigger than himself, so he studied law at night at the university, while continuing to work during the day. One day, Beto heard that the police department would be holding entrance exams, and wanted candidates with college degrees. He was one of 80,000 applicants for 3,000 openings. Beto finished at 1,700 but the government only had money for 1,500 officers and would hold another entrance exam for the 1,500 spots. Beto became one of the leaders of the group of cadets who hadn’t been admitted, holding marches, meeting with government officials, and meeting the police chief on various occasions. This obstacle convinced Beto that being a member of the police department was where he wanted to be, as it embodied being part of something bigger. Beto and the other 1,500 were finally admitted, just as he finished his law degree. These 3,000 new police, of a 10,000 member police force, had a different profile than most, with more education, more experience before joining, and it was clear that the department wanted to shake things up and go in different directions. In an unusual step, the chief called Beto and invited him to be part of a high profile group that would be trained by rotating through various key administrative departments, and reported directly to the chief. Beto wanted to work in one of the elite operational divisions and had been offered an operational role, but the chief offered him the opportunity to rotate through those groups as well. Beto didn’t realize it at the time but the chief had identified him as a high potential change agent within the department.

ended with the deaths of 19, 18 and 16 year-old youths. Beto was devastated and felt he had to do something, but he noticed the indifference with which most of the SWAT team treated their deaths. Beto knew he had to reach out to the community youth, and so he convinced a colleague to go with him to the school where he had studied many years before. He did this on his own time, didn’t have a clear idea of what to talk about but knew he had to listen and start a dialogue, rather than merely telling them that crime and drugs don’t pay.

Beto discusses violence, responsibilities, rights and drugs with elementary students at a public school in a popular community in peace process (removal of the drug trade) in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

Soon the teachers at Beto’s school opened the doors for him at other schools and the program grew. A colleague suggested the name “Chat” for the program. The chief who supported Beto was replaced by another chief, and then another, but they allowed the program to continue. Beto’s first chief was arrested for corruption and Beto, along with many others, were investigated, given excellent reviews and declared innocent of any illicit involvement. This investigation gave Beto and his program more credibility and in 2008, the new chief allowed ten officers to participate along with ex-convicts from AfroReggae. Beto has gained a mass of support within the police department and within the community that was the “something bigger than himself ” he sought for ten years. He will not rest until he sees his approach to humanize the police embedded in new institutions within the police department and favela communities. 

Beto’s rotations included being part of the elite SWAT team, which was called into a favela to respond to reports of shooting involving police. He was once part of a major gun battle that

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David L ubell

to work with corporations who have a vested business interest in making their communities more welcoming.

Communities

David and his team are thus establishing new norms for organizations working on immigrant integration across the country. Most importantly, they are introducing strategic, new voices to the conversation in an effort to build an increasingly empathetic society that will lead to a more stable socioeconomic and political environment in the U.S.

Immigration

THE PROBLEM

U N I T E D S TAT E S

Business Entrepreneurs

Intercultural Relations/ Race Relations David Lubell is unlocking the full potential of communities by addressing the fears of U.S. born residents regarding the country’s fastest immigration growth rates since the early 1900s. David is helping them understand how and why the U.S. can find pride in upholding traditions of being welcoming, at community and individual levels.

THE NEW IDEA David’s work is guided by a simple and powerful insight—that immigrant integration will never succeed if the focus is put solely on immigrants. David set up Welcoming America in 2009 to build a robust good receiving communities movement and create an enabling environment for more people and institutions to recognize the role everyone must play in furthering the integration of recent immigrants in the fabric of the U.S.

Over the past twenty years, immigration rates to the U.S. have reached levels unmatched since the early 1900s. While in 1990 one in twelve Americans was an immigrant, by 2005 that proportion rose to one in eight, and by 2050 it is expected to leap to one in five. These demographic shifts have led to increased anxiety among native-born U.S. residents, particularly in new immigrant destinations such as Nashville, Boise, and Omaha, which have received a larger percentage of new immigrant arrivals than ever before. This anxiety has in turn led to mistrust and fragmentation within communities, a record increase in hate crimes targeting foreign-born residents, the multiplication of anti-immigrant policies, and reluctance among immigrants to interact with long-time residents. As a result, the integration of immigrants into mainstream American society is now faltering.

Despite high levels of anti-immigrant sentiment in the political sphere, David estimates that of the 273 million non-immigrants in the U.S. about 60 percent are “unsure” about how they feel about immigration (i.e. not dead-set against it, but concerned by it) and another 20 percent (the “untapped”) would be more welcoming if only they knew how. David and his team engage members from both groups to participate in and lead good welcoming events: Spaces where they can openly discuss their fears and build trust-based relationships with foreign-born U.S. residents. These carefully crafted interventions lead to significant shifts in the attitudes and actions of these two population groups. David has identified a number of critical levers that, with low activation energy, can spark deep, scalable change. He is drawing in natural allies such as other organizations working on immigrant integration across the country and building a network of “welcoming” affiliates as implementing partners. This network already reaches twenty states and has a particularly strong presence in new immigrant gateway communities. In addition, he is working with municipal officials and influencing several federal government bodies to require that grantees working with immigrants engage receiving communities as part of their strategies. Understanding that media and advertising play a critical role in informing public opinion, he is also targeting these industries. Among other critical actors, David is beginning

Welcoming America’s Receiving Communities use the media to shape public discourse around immigration using billboards and bus benches to send a pro-welcoming message.

These changing demographics have of course captured the attention of immigrant advocacy and integration groups throughout the country. However, the practitioners charged with helping immigrants integrate successfully into their new hometowns have focused almost exclusively on immigrants themselves. Although focusing on developing key skills—i.e. English language proficiency and job training—of the arriving immigrant is important, these strategies have had limited success because they ignore the receiving communities: the other half

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of the immigrant integration equation. In addition, the tactics used by conventional immigrant advocacy groups are generally effective to mobilize like-minded people, but ignore the unsure and untapped, and most significantly, further alienate those who disagree with them. A small number of organizations and individuals throughout the U.S. have long thought that it is critical to engage nativeborn residents in immigrant integration efforts. However, until Welcoming America came along, they had no broader movement to tap into and therefore were left reinventing the wheel with each intervention. In addition, governments have been slow to recognize the importance of an approach that focuses on receiving communities. This has meant, for example, that refugee settlement agencies in the U.S. have not historically been incentivized to work with native-born residents.

T H E S T R AT E G Y In order to transform small towns and cities into welcoming places, Welcoming America works with local communities to help them set up Welcoming Committees. These committees develop local leadership to reach out to the unsure and untapped in their communities. The Welcoming Committees organize public engagement opportunities where fears can be addressed openly and where dialogue is facilitated between immigrants and nativeborn Americans. These gatherings have been proven to cause a positive shift in the perceptions of residents toward immigrants.

to spread the methodology throughout the affiliate network and beyond. At the operational level, they also tee up affiliates with resources to increase their local fundraising efforts by an average of $25,000. Currently, the 20 affiliates span all five regions of the country and together have reached more than two million people. At the end of 2012, with a $1.2 million budget, David grew the Welcoming network to an estimated 28 affiliates—and to 50 affiliates by 2017. David has been particularly adept at identifying new people, opportunities and institutions that can join Welcoming America to grow the impact of the receiving communities’ movement. Recognizing the power of media to shape the public discourse— often perpetuating xenophobia—Welcoming America and its affiliates spearhead strategic public communications campaigns in the media, and through paid ads such as billboards and bus benches. The strategy is to utilize the billboards to promote the pro-welcoming message, help journalists understand different points of view, and recruit thousands of people into the coalition.

“Between 1990 and 2000, Bedford County—of which Shelbyville, Tennessee is the county seat—saw a 1500% increase in its Hispanic population. Then, starting in 2002, it saw a large influx of Somali refugees. By 2010, almost 20% of Shelbyville’s population was born in another country.”

In addition, they work with local elected leaders to pass welcoming resolutions—formal proclamations that articulate openness to immigrants at the city or state level. For example, Welcoming Rhode Island took its first public step toward creating a more welcoming climate by helping pass a welcoming resolution in East Providence in January 2012. In regards to attracting the untapped into its leadership, they have successfully recruited a governor to be the honorary chair of their advisory board. Other members of their leadership include The East Providence Chief of Police, the Providence State Representative, and a Providence local municipal judge. Welcoming Rhode Island plans to pass similar resolutions in cities across the state. They are also exploring whether they might be able to pass similar measures on the state level. The Republican governor of Michigan, who works with members of Welcoming America’s affiliate in Michigan, has already stated that he wants Michigan to be seen as the most welcoming state in the union for immigrants. David sees this as a wonderful opportunity to have a healthy, public competition begin between Michigan and Rhode Island for that title!

Similarly, David saw that many organizations working with immigrants lack the financial incentives to work with receiving communities. Recognizing that most of these citizen organizations draw their funding from the federal government, he started sharing his approach with federal agencies. As a result, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Office of Citizenship now require each of its grantees to explain how they engage receiving communities. David has also begun engaging corporations whose workforce is largely made up of foreign-born residents. Unwelcoming environments affect workforce retention and morale, thus making companies such as Walmart natural allies for the receiving communities’ movement. David is working on a certification process through which companies could become “welcoming” companies. He is exploring the revenue-generating potential of this strategy. This is an approach he is also looking to transfer to school environments.

Welcoming America’s team of six is responsible for growing the movement and provides the infrastructure necessary for their affiliates to be successful. First and foremost they provide thought-leadership and best practices on how to apply a receiving communities approach to their work. David worked with the Spring Institute, author Susan Downs-Karkos, and many others to develop the receiving communities toolkit, an important tool

Finally, Welcoming America recently launched an online social network—Friends of Welcoming—designed to reach an even broader number of people to become changemakers. Individuals who are not yet connected to an affiliate are able to learn about welcoming strategies and are then incentivized to connect with others to take further steps, such as hosting a multi-cultural luncheon at their workplace or getting an affiliate group started.

—Open Society Foundations

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David and his team are doing all of this with a close eye to demonstrating the lasting impact of these efforts and learn from them. Welcoming America recently partnered with an independent consultant to develop a set of ten qualitative and quantitative indicators, which affiliates began reporting on at the end of 2011. Among them are measurements relating to the growth of engaged participants in, and supporters of, the welcoming movement, attitudinal shifts of both immigrant and non-immigrant populations, and increased media on positive contributions of immigrant communities.

J essica M ayberry INDIA

Appropriate Technology Employment Media Communications

THE PERSON When asked about what led him to the work he is now pursuing, David points to two early pivotal moments. The first occurred in the 7th grade when his civics teacher invited him to volunteer at a West Philadelphia homeless shelter for families. Having grown up comfortably in the suburbs of Philadelphia, he was shocked to witness such levels of social injustice and became a regular volunteer at the shelter and befriended many young people there. The second turning point came in university when a friend and sociology professor—Rob Rosenthal—challenged David to re-examine his service-based approach to homelessness, and encouraged him to learn more about the policies and systems that helped contribute greatly to the homelessness epidemic in the U.S. A year later, when, Connecticut’s governor tried to cut the state’s rental assistance program, David co-organized “Students for Affordable Housing in Connecticut,” an association of students from across the state working with low-income tenants and housing advocates to fight the repeal. This introduced him to the world of policy and community organizing, and gave him a window into the challenges that Latino low-income renters faced. Moving to Memphis in 1999, David worked on immigrant issues as a community organizer. By 2001, he had identified a gap in the sector: while there were a number of disparate groups across the state working to serve immigrants, there was no statewide coordination, and absolutely no statewide advocacy voice for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants in Tennessee. He left his day job to launch the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition from his apartment in Memphis, which he ran until 2008. At the time it was—and still is—considered the premiere immigrant’s rights organization in the Southeastern United States, and the model for new immigrant’s rights coalitions sprouting up in “new immigrant gateways” across the country. In 2006 David realized that although the immigrant community had grown by over 400 percent in a ten-year period in Tennessee—one of the fastest rates of growth in the country— no one was educating long-time Tennessee residents about the major demographic changes taking place around them. He helped launch Welcoming Tennessee in 2006, which garnered attention from several states and within a few years Welcoming America was born. David currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife and baby son. 

English and Hindi dailies in India do not have the resources and mechanisms to be able to source stories from rural and marginalized areas. As a result, they devote only 2 percent of their total coverage to rural issues. By building a pan-India network of professionally trained citizen video-correspondents drawn from the poorest and marginalized communities, Jessica Mayberry is creating the architecture necessary to ensure that the voices of the poor are heard in mainstream media.

THE NEW IDEA Jessica sees marginalized communities not only as recipients of information, but also as active creators of content. As local people have been the subjects of discrimination and have a firsthand perspective she believes they are uniquely suited to be better correspondents. Serving as a correspondent will also provide a critical livelihood opportunity. By utilizing the skills of empathy, teamwork, leadership and changemaking Jessica is tapping into the unique potential of marginalized citizens and pushing them to go beyond their own stories to become the voices of their communities. To sustain community interest in these stories over a prolonged period, Jessica believes that community producers have to play a role beyond collecting stories. Unlike mainstream media correspondents who come from the outside, community producers are rooted to the communities and have to ensure that community members see value in sharing their stories. Consequently, it becomes imperative for community producers to play a catalytic role in translating stories into action. This form of media that is created both for and by communities becomes a powerful way to accelerate changemaking and community-led development. Jessica is now actively distributing the videos, online and through partnerships with mainstream media and development agencies. For the first time in India, videos produced by communities on issues they have determined important, have been aired on mainstream television media. This is not only bringing urban citizens closer to the realities of rural India but is influencing mainstream media on the issues and perspectives of marginalized communities.

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THE PROBLEM Recently, there has been a major effort to increase access to information to rural and marginalized people, however, the framework to include the voices of poor and marginalized communities in mainstream media is missing. Most mainstream media companies have a limited number of stringers, most of whom are situated in urban areas. For instance, Press Trust of India, India’s premier news agency, has only 500 stringers across the country. While there is a latent demand for content from rural areas, mainstream media is limited in its capacity to identify and maintain correspondents in remote areas. Although citizen journalism results in media being able to stream some content from marginalized communities, the content is not professionally structured or articulated. Stories that are narrated through cell phones/videos are often distorted and do not form a reliable pipeline of stories for the media. A study published in September 2011 by the Economic and Political Weekly stated that India’s highest circulated English and Hindi dailies devote only about 2 percent of their total coverage to rural India’s issues, crises, and anxieties. Even when they source stories from rural areas, the perspective is that of an outsider. This typically results in only populist or sensational stories being covered. Important issues that marginalized communities want to speak about such as corruption, hunger and discrimination remain without representation in the community. In a 2002 study, “Voices of the Poor,” the World Bank asked 20,000 people living on less than $2 a day to identify the single greatest hurdle to their advancement. Respondents placed lack of “voice” over food, water, shelter and education. For instance, most people within a village are unable to discuss issues that affect them: they lack a space to dialogue among each other to make their voices heard. This limits their ability to recognize that problems are shared among other community members or to make their needs known to authorities and the world at-large in concrete ways. Voices of communities are also largely absent even from the national and international development forums that determine how to assist them, with the result that their own knowledge or needs do not get to inform the decision-making that affects their lives.

T H E S T R AT E G Y Jessica is nurturing professional community producers with the goal of placing someone in every district in India who has the capability of bringing out the stories that media should communicate. Recognizing the power of videos to overcome language and literacy barriers, Jessica created Video Volunteers (VV), which recruits and trains people from remote areas and marginalized communities to become community producers. VV partners with local citizen organizations (COs) to identify community members who are entrepreneurial and committed to social

change. In particular, VV seeks out women, dalits, sexual minorities, and people below the poverty line to become community producers. The producers undergo a rigorous twoweek residential training program where they learn the basics of video journalism, including how to frame and articulate issues, be accurate, and ethical. Producers are pushed to draw from their personal experiences and articulate their opinions on their own surroundings. VV emphasizes the need to make personal connections to their stories and reflect on what their community means to them. During training, they are also taught to shoot short, three-minute videos.

“[Video Volunteers] is also breaking down taboos. A young community producer from the so-called ‘untouchable’ caste was permitted to enter his village temple for the first time in his life simply because he held a camera in his hand. Talk about progress and innovation.” —Lydia Dishman, Fast Company Once trained, the producers return to their villages with a basic camera and begin shooting stories that they believe need to be told. Every community producer has a mentor in VV, who guides him/her through the whole process. They produce between one and four videos a month, depending on whether this is their only source of income. After they shoot the video, the producers mail the footage to VV’s central office and receive a payment of Rs. 1,500 per video made. VV edits the video, inserts sub-titles and facilitates its distribution by posting them on its website and selling them to mainstream media. For instance, VV partnered with one of India’s leading news channels NewsX who produced a 30 minute, 13-part series, “Speak Out India,” that was comprised entirely of content produced by the community producers, and strung together with their own anchor pieces. VV has also begun to transcribe each video into an article so that it can be distributed in print form. As a way to spread the idea of community media and bring greater exposure to the issues, Jessica plans to launch VV “Feature Service” where VV will distribute articles under the heading, IndiaUnheard to news agencies free of cost. Each video is also distributed through social media, YouTube and other online journalism sites to bridge the digital divide between the urban and rural population. While most content is created through the “pull-mechanism” where producers determine what they want to speak about, VV also employs the “push–mechanism” from time to time, where

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producers are commissioned to create videos around a theme. Leveraging its “live access to communities,” VV partners with national and international development agencies to help them understand how communities perceive particular issues. For instance, VV partnered with the Red Cross on the “Hunger Project,” in which producers shot videos on what hunger meant to them. These videos were not only screened by the Red Cross, but also helped the Red Cross obtain a bottom-up perspective on the issue. VV also sends the video back to the producer who is encouraged to screen it in villages by showing it on projectors or DVDs. Sometimes producers innovate by uploading the videos into pirated music CDs or cell phones. Recognizing that communities will lose interest in narrating their stories if they do not see any value in the media, VV saw it essential for community producers to go beyond merely “informing” to actively “engaging.” It therefore mandates that every producer create at least three impact videos a year; videos that capture how a previous video catalyzed changemaking.

More importantly, the camera and the process of articulating issues, pushes producers to ref lect on issues faced by them and their communities, and triggers a personal transformative experience. As a result of this process, the community producers transform into leaders and become beacons for the village. VV continues to have annual training programs that develop the critical thinking skills of community producers. Jessica’s goal is to recruit and train one Community Producer in each of India’s 645 districts. To scale, she plans to partner with journalism schools to introduce community media classes. Jessica intends to incentivize students to train communities, by bringing in media partners who will air content. Jessica also intends to actively sell content to Press Trust of India and other news agencies to become a rural version of the Associated Press.

THE PERSON Jessica grew up in New York and went to a progressive school that opened her eyes to feminism and other social movements at a young age. Always curious about the history and culture of other countries, she completed her undergraduate degree in France and graduate degree in arts and history at Oxford University, United Kingdom. Jessica’s first experience in media was at the age of 18 during her summer internship with a local 24-hour news channel in New York City. Working as an assistant to a 5 a.m. reporter, she witnessed a mother of a victim of a drug shooting narrate how her son was killed for $50 of cocaine. Although the site of this murder was just 20 minutes from her house, Jessica had never before seen anything like this. From that day on, working with media was always more than a career for Jessica; it became a tool to get a clearer picture of the world she lived in and about being an informed citizen.

Jessica realized it was more powerful to turn the camera around and have producers rooted in the communities share their stories.

Community producers screen videos and rally people around issues raised. Depending on the issue, they also engage village leaders and appropriate local authorities. VV has recorded more than 17,000 people taking action after seeing their videos bringing direct benefit to more than 650,000 people. The videos have catalyzed toilets to be built, ration cards to be issued, demoted teachers who collected bribes, and supported homosexuals organizing themselves, among other issues. VV also incentivizes impact by paying producers Rs. 5,000 (US$81) for each “impact video” produced compared to Rs. 1,500 for a regular video. Such impact maintains the communities continued faith in the power of media and enables producers to source stories continuously from the community.

Upon graduation, she joined news channels CNN and Fox News, however, she found herself opposed to the polarizing nature of the content they aired. Rooted in the belief that media must provide the space for people to disagree and find common ground, she transitioned to making documentaries at a crime and justice channel called Court TV. For one and a half years, she covered stories of potentially innocent people on Death Row and of the brutal environment within prisons. Here, Jessica became passionately connected to her work and the issues she covered. Soon after 9/11, she felt that the focus of the channel became essentially about celebrating police and armed forces that protected the American border. Jessica was shocked that America saw the world from only its own perspective. Although the world was becoming more interconnected, the media in the most powerful country in the world was making its citizens totally uninformed about realities abroad.

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Disillusioned by mainstream media, Jessica began asking what could correct this problem. It was at this time that videojournalism was becoming popular. Inexpensive cameras and editing systems were allowing just one person to put together a whole program. Ironically, until this point in her career as a media person, Jessica had not held a camera. She learned the camera techniques and felt deeply empowered by the control she had to create videos and communicate her views. To inform herself of realities outside America, Jessica travelled to India in 2002 as a Fellow of the American India Foundation for a nine-month volunteering experience with the Self Employed Women’s Association. At SEWA, she trained women to create videos and was deeply inspired by their spirit and collective power. While trying to organize an interview, Jessica heard women emphasizing that since they live within the communities they would be best to tell the story. This forced Jessica to reflect on how stories could be different if they were narrated by a varied group of people. She saw the limitations on outsiders’ ability to tell a story completely, and felt it would be far more powerful to enable people to tell their own stories. Realizing that communities could go well beyond developing only technical skills to produce videos and communicating the script provided by the organization, Jessica was determined to develop critical thinking skills among communities to craft their perspectives and narrate their stories. Seeing the opportunity to bring diversity in media by helping the underrepresented make their own media, she launched Video Volunteers together with Stalin K., a filmmaker and media activist. They began by helping COs set up community video units where trained producers would shoot, edit, and produce documentaries to be screened within their communities. However, Jessica and Stalin soon realized that the model had its limitations; it was expensive and relied extensively on the COs to make it a success. Also, the format of the videos would not allow them to be used outside the communities. Learning from this experience, they redesigned the initiative as a systems-changing network of rural stringers who create videos that can be distributed to the world at-large. 

M arit Sanner N O R W AY

Child Protection Criminal Justice Youth Development

Despite the image of wealth and renowned social protections in Norway, the voices of young people are not well heard or considered. State-run institutions are staffed by shift workers and young people often can feel they are treated like objects. Prisons mix youth and adult inmates. Many young people in Norway feel they have little voice in their own lives. Marit Sanner is asking kids and young people to find system-changing new ideas and then facilitating their involvement in the policymaking that affects them.

THE NEW IDEA Marit understands that the people who know the most about problematic systems are those that are victimized by the rigid walls of the very system, and the system-changing solutions come from the people within them. Marit has crafted a methodology to get young people to identify these system-changing ideas, build youth consensus on what they are, and open direct communication between service users and implementing agencies to create real change. Marit is taking a chance to create a new system that allows effective engagement between civil society, especially youth, and the state. By getting influential adults to listen to children, she is placing young people as the experts on the policies that concern them, and gathering and inserting their voice, experience, and advice, into policy that guides the system. With The ChangeFactory (Forandsringfabrikken), Marit gathers insight from youth under state care—from foster children and the chronically ill to those in the juvenile justice system or on welfare—and packages it. She has designed a methodology that approaches kids as professionals, using participatory styles of visuals, projects, and engaging tools to allow kids to voice their opinions. From their perspectives, they choose the “change keys”—the most efficient and common critiques and ideas, and they present them in small magazines to policymakers in dialogues as a collective answer. Following the methodology, compiling, and presenting, Marit creates a corps of “lobbyists” to help push for the shifts they suggest; with success. She is working broadly in Norway and getting a lot of interest internationally. The Ministry of Children and Youth in Norway has asked children to design changes on several levels as a result of Marit’s work, and

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the Justice Minister has worked with participating kids to design alternatives to jail. Marit’s goal is to teach nations a proven way to genuinely listen to children in a respectful manner.

THE PROBLEM

Young people are often patronized. In circumstances where young people are at the whim of the state—whether as residents in institutions or juvenile delinquent centers, hospital patients, under state stewardship with welfare, or as students—there is little to no opportunity for young people’s voice to be heard on/ in the important matters. Programs working with young people are almost entirely adult-led, and traditional participatory methodologies have been tried over and over, but have little focus on actually getting adults to listen, and lack follow-up. Common in the youth arena, activists demand change and their confrontational approach provides few solutions and makes institutions recoil.

Many young people we meet today tell us that they are under great pressure. Everything is all about appearance—clothes, skin, hair, and how thin you are. There are websites all about how to look good. But there is also a lot of pressure on young people today to be clever, and cool—and not to stand out from the others. Many young people tell us, “Parents and other adults often contribute to the pressure by the way they talk to us, and not least by the way they themselves behave.”

Norway, among all countries, has an extremely strong arm of the state, and as such can have a paternalistic attitude to citizens and “service users.” Norway also has a strong national identity tied to the idea of being a “perfect society,” so addressing to reform traditional approaches to bring systemic change can be difficult. Young people, or any recipients of care, are insightful about their needs and the changes that would best suit them, yet their voices are not incorporated and listened to. A recent report from UNDP sent a clear message that Norway lags behind on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Marit’s innovative approach could help create opportunities for young people to have an outlet to articulate their needs in a positive way, monitor progress, and participate in an ongoing manner to yield significant impact in society.

T H E S T R AT E G Y With a lengthy background working with young people in the care of the state, Marit became obsessed by the alienation and 12

prejudice they suffered; underneath the veneer of a “perfect society.” She began asking young people to describe the realities of youth in Norway, and saw patterns among the answers from around the country. Young people felt disenfranchised from their own lives, and most emphatically so among those who were in the care of the state in some capacity, from foster children to residents of staterun institutions to those in juvenile delinquent centers—all too frequently victims of institutional prejudice. Marit was struck by a contradiction: Simple practical suggestions young people offered to improve their own care coupled with a complete lack of user voice and empowerment. Her revelation: “I knew that I was with some very smart people ” Marit realized there was a great wealth of expertise untapped in young people, and insights that could dramatically change their standard of care and independence, as well as an opportunity to respect and empower them at their most powerless. She is driving a strategy that includes youth in making system-changing decisions, which affirms problem-solving processes. Marit began to adapt participatory methodologies to make engaging and attractive for young people to tell the truth about their situation. With Marit’s methods, they learned that people would listen to them without punishing them for their honesty. Working with a national cross-section of young people in state care (e.g. children in a juvenile delinquent center, hospital, or foster care) Marit employs visual tools such as film, art projects, and photography and assigned young people tasks such as “take pictures of the best and worst parts about where you live.” From this methodology, she and her team work with young people from the ages of eight to twenty, to build consensus on central themes and recurring points about how systems can help them best. These main points of policy shift are honed and compiled in small easily digestible magazine formats, which are then presented by the children through an apolitical, facilitated dialogue with ministers and high-level officials. Children are placed as the “professionals,” the experts about their own lives and needs. Marit is quick to emphasize that they are “not creating manuals—these kids have told us enough about manuals,” but a presentation of the most efficient and effective “collective answers” explained through user experience. She is careful not to select “the best” or most well-behaved and articulate children to present this part of the process, and hosts the meetings without media presence to allow for open dialogue. Marit has found the steepest learning curve to be among adults, accustomed to a surface relationship with young people, or a joking type approach that precludes actual listening. It is often the greatest challenge in her work to train adults—to listen to children in a genuine way. In tandem, Marit trains children in how to work with adults. The process Marit has designed has revealed some simple yet shocking changes suggested by the young people. For example, her first project focused on young people in institutions, who commented that staff schedules should be designed to make young lives as normal as possible, rather than for staff convenience. The high turnover and switch left the kids feeling disjointed and separate. Young people in hospitals noted that “doctors say medical

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Following the dialogue process with leaders, Marit engages kids in a lobbying role after their facilitated presentations, following up to secure passage of their suggested changes and advocating for their opinions to be heard in the halls of power. The continued monitoring and presence from the children has a powerful effect on their own self-belief, and has greatly spurred the adoption of their proposed changes. Marit is focusing on genuine policy shift in other areas as well. She is working with various areas of government to institute her participatory practices into government systems that work with children, and has her eye on the fields of psychiatry and schools as a next step. As a result of Marit’s work, the Norwegian Minister of Children has asked young people to design changes to programs, and the Minister of Justice is working with young people to create alternatives to jail. Marit’s work is poised for significant expansion—she has trained the Swedish Ombudsman and her staffs in her methods, and they have executed her work across Sweden over the past year.

“From the start of creative pilot projects on inclusion, by allowing children and young people to express the truth about their own reality and by documenting the visual and exciting ways ... Always with the goal of greater dignity for more.” —ForandringsFabrikken THE PERSON As an oldest child, Marit helped raise many of her younger siblings. Her mother, a politician, taught her to never be afraid of authority. As a young person, Marit had a revelation that “adults are not as smart as they intend to be,” pointing to that moment as one where she felt her limits fall away. Always drawn to young people, she started children’s clubs and distinguished herself as an athlete and a highly acclaimed coach, only a few years older than her players. In her late teens, Marit was one of ten young people chosen from across Norway for a prestigious software development program, but felt continually called to children. Marit’s life was rocked by tragedy when her treasured younger brother died in a freak accident. This was very important in reminding her that life is short—too short not to work hard for change.

things and nurses say human things,” adding that doctors rarely explain what they’re doing and why. Young people within the justice system explained to the Minister of Justice that it creates more problems to mix all crimes together within delinquent centers. One important policy shift thus far has been in regard to the practice of holding down out of control children, used by professionals within institutions. It was considered best practice to hold down or otherwise restrain children who were acting out as a calming tool. Marit’s work revealed that this practice terrifies and traumatizes young people. Thus, the practice has been reduced on a nationwide basis in Norway.

The ChangeFactory calls the youth they work with ”Proffs.” They present experiences and advice directly to ministers. Here youth with experiences from different help systems have given great advice to Kristin Halvorsen, the Norwegian Minister of Education.

Trained as an anthropologist, Marit was fascinated by “letting others describe their own reality.” She understood the failures of participatory learning, and began the apprenticeship that would lead her to found Forandsringfabrikken. Inspired by Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, she worked in institutions with young people, creating a string of kids clubs that allowed young people to have a voice, and a strong apprenticeship period. Working with Save the Children, Marit began implementing some of her ideas that would eventually become Forandsringfabrikken. In working on their efforts around the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, she realized that little of the work addressed Article 12, the clause that concerned listening to children. Adopting a confrontational attitude, which she later left behind, Marit challenged Save the Children on the strength of their values-thinking and genuine focus. Hired by the Norwegian Ombudsman to do a UN report on children, Marit crafted a strategy that reported entirely from the child perspective, drawing insights from young people and a year later to follow-up on the progress of proposed changes. She brought together officials and children, without media presence. She was shocked to find departments closed to her, the report censored, and the plan crushed—the officials who hired her seemed “ scared of children.” Realizing the power of her idea, the inf luential tool of a non-confrontational, inspiring approach, Marit left her job and started The ChangeFactory (www.changefactory.no). 

ENVIRONMENT

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Svati B hogle INDIA

Business Entrepreneurs Conservation/Preservation Energy

Svati Bhogle has created a distribution system to counter the inefficient use of cooking stoves by street food vendors in India; enabling them to easily own fuel efficient stoves, save money on fuel, and earn a better profit. Built on ecological considerations, these improved stoves not only increase their income, but ensure better health conditions for vendors and their consumers.

THE NEW IDEA Svati has built her model based on her belief that technology alone is not enough to improve livelihoods. She realized that in order to ensure improved technologies reach scale, there have to be systems that incentivize each stakeholder in the value chain to build an effective distribution network. Svati encourages a financial outlook among the street vendors; envisioning a substantially reduced fuel bill and a fumeless environment. On the other hand, for banks it becomes a viable business proposition to extend credit to an otherwise un-bankable group of informal street vendors. A 40 percent savings on fuel bills enables them to repay their bank loans in fifteen months while their earnings dramatically increase. Svati replaces hazardous and unsafe traditional stoves with safe, smokeless and environment-friendly ones, while ensuring vendors sustainability and profit. In 2009 Svati founded Sustaintech Private Limited to promote the rapid adoption of fuel-efficient and environment-friendly cooking stoves across rural and semiurban regions in India.

THE PROBLEM In India, close to 70 percent of the population relies on solid fuels to meet various energy needs (World Energy Outlook 2007-IEA “China and India Insights”). Close to 30 percent of this comes from biomass (India’s Integrated Energy Policy, 2005). Though India is a fast growing economy with a serious energy crisis, access to thermal energy has not gotten the attention of policymakers (with electricity generation taking most of their time and resources). Thus, there is an obvious void in the enabling mechanisms for ensuring sustainability of rural livelihoods. Small street food establishments that provide services from forty to one hundred individuals in rural and semi-rural areas face the three-pronged problem of not having access, both financially and in terms of availability, to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and having to incur the costs of large amounts of biomass required

to run their relatively inefficient stoves while dealing with the associated health impacts that inefficient, outdated stoves generate. Traditionally, street food stove manufacturing is unorganized and done in small shops without quality or safety standards. These stoves use open fire and do not have smoke ventilation systems, contributing to India’s high incidence of respiratory ailments, especially for the vendors and their customers. A survey limited to the states of Karnataka and Kerala in 2000 showed that there are nearly 50,000 small businesses using biomass as their thermal energy source. A survey carried out for Sustaintech in 2009 shows that there are about 200,000 street food vendors and roadside kitchens in Tamil Nadu alone that require energy reform. They typically use between 5 to 100 kg of biomass per hour and operate for 150 to 330 days a year, for nearly ten hours a day. The rising cost of firewood is eroding the profitability of the rural processing operations: The street food vendors were shown to be spending up to Rs. 30,000 (US$590.00) annually on firewood with a monthly take-home income of around Rs. 7,000 (US$ 138.00).

“Moving to a biomass stove would reduce the stress associated with procurement of kerosene, improve profitability of the business and show that it is possible to replace a fossil fuel with a renewable energy source.” —The Better India Burning wood in street kitchens creates CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Establishments, based on size, generate between 20 to 80 tons of CO2 a year. This considerably small amount multiplied by the street vendors at a national or global scale, significantly contributes to climate change. Producing such large carbon emissions, street vendors have no financial incentives to bring emissions down and have no access to carbon credit markets. A survey conducted by Sustaintech also shows that 38 percent of street food vendors and tea shops use kerosene for their cooking needs. Very limited kerosene is available in fair-price shops but is inadequate. Often the sector uses unfair means to procure kerosene, which creates stress and tension besides eroding profitability. Moving to a biomass stove would reduce the stress associated with the procurement of kerosene, improve business profitability, and show that it is possible to replace a fossil fuel with a renewable energy source.

T H E S T R AT E G Y Based on the premise that “Clean energy is possible for the poor,” Svati has designed stoves that warrant a shift from fossil fuel and firewood to biomass. The biomass cooking stove is an application-specific high efficiency stove specifically designed for a range of street food vendors cooking needs, operating on push carts or railway platforms, roadside shops, and small restaurants. It 17

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saves fuel costs by 40 percent through high combustion and heat transfer efficiency; it is smokeless with an attached chimney that vents fumes away from the breathing zone. Thus, it provides a safer, cooler and healthier working environment and, importantly, prevents burns while offering a fume-free eating environment to customers.

Sustaintech plans to sell 65,000 fuel-efficient stoves over their first five years. The environmental implication is enormous; with a projected stove-life of five years that offers a safer, cooler and healthier working environment to at least 65,000 vendors and 6.5 million people who are eating around them in one state. The carbon abatement potential of the venture through a five year period would be 3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide (1 kg of firewood is equal to 1.5 kg of CO2). Meanwhile, Sustaintech has been able to attract venture funding from a European consortium of clean-tech investors worth US$260,000. Its preliminary funds came in mid 2008 when Svati received US$64,000, as part of the prestigious Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy innovations. Sustaintech also received an interest-free loan from Villgro, a social venture company founded by Ashoka Fellow Paul Basil. With this initial success, Svati plans to expand her work to other states in India after some minor design changes to adapt for local needs. The pilot has already started in Kerala. Once sufficient scale is achieved, Svati is considering connecting her venture with the global carbon market to enable her to distribute the stoves free-of-cost to street vendors since carbon credits will cover each stove’s production costs, including Sustaintech’s overhead.

THE PERSON A cook and street vendor uses Svati’s more safe and fuel-efficient cooking stove to serve his customers.

Sustaintech is involved from the early stages of this work. It outsources the fabrication of the stoves to a central manufacturer while a rural entrepreneur assembles them locally before the units arrive in the vendor’s kitchen. On both stages of manufacturing, Sustaintech ensures that strict quality controls and standards are followed. Sustaintech starts its marketing in the area by identifying leading street food vendors and installing demo stoves for them followed by promotional activities by the Sustaintech sales team. The bank pays Sustaintech directly and the local sales officer delivers the stove to the street vendor without a down payment. The vendor begins repaying from the saved cost on fuel on a monthly basis; in the process vendors learn about savings and banking, and book-keeping for their business. The Sustaintech team assists vendors to open bank accounts. As the vendors start saving 40 percent on the fuel, half is repaid to the bank. After repayment of the first loan and financial credibility is established, vendors may apply for a second loan to improve their shop. In this way, the purchase of the stove becomes a first step to building a sustainable business supported by the banking system. As the initial investment into the energy efficient stove is a huge burden for a small vendor, the economic benefits of saving fuel and easy ownership makes it an attractive proposition for informal sector vendors to increase their earnings. Each year a vendor saves an average of Rs. 20,000 to 30,000 (US$393 to $590) in fuel. For resource-scarce communities this translates into Rs. 4000 million. As a result, the idea is catching on fast.

After completing her master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from IIT Bombay in 1981, Svati joined Hindustan Lever Research Center as part of the team that conducted research on personal care products. She realized that to make a difference for the rural poor she needed to be in the technology research domain. Eventually her interest shifted to designing and developing appropriate technologies. Inspired by her grandmother to be independent, during her childhood Svati worked toward increasing other people’s independence. While at IIT, she brought the nearby sex-workers to operate the hostel, as an initiative to rehabilitate them into mainstream society. Svati also campaigned for gender equality and against a no-entry rule for boys into girls’ hostels. To this day, IIT Bombay is the only IIT in the country where this rule does not exist. In 1996 Svati joined Technology Informatics Design Endeavour (TIDE) established by Ashoka Fellow Dr. S. Rajagopalan in 1993. TIDE was created to promote sustainable development by bringing appropriate technology to the people whose health, economic, and social situations could be improved by it. With TIDE, Svati developed and implemented over a hundred projects on efficient energy and the environment, and her approach covered different aspects of the innovation process, from idea generation and technology development, to participatory rural processes for innovation acceptance. In 2000 Svati became a director at TIDE. After bringing TIDE to significant scale, Svati expanded her work through her own organization, Sustaintech, to directly address the needs and demands of millions of stove users in India. 

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THE PROBLEM

Flaviano B ianchini NICARAGUA

Capacity Building Conservation/Preservation Indigenous Populations Pubilc Policy Flaviano Bianchini equips communities and grassroots citizen organizations (COs) with the ability to measure the harmful consequences of natural resource extraction and bring lawsuits against their perpetrators.

In Latin America, the natural resource extraction projects of oil and mining companies cause severe harm to the environment and health of nearby communities. Their adverse effects include the contamination of water, soil, and air with heavy metals and other chemical elements like selenium, nickel, lead, cyanide, or arsenic. These elements have been found in concentrations from 100 to 1,000 times the legally permitted amount. As a result, approximately 80 percent of the people that live in nearby communities possess one or more of the previously mentioned chemical elements in their blood, which causes a high rate of cancer and skin ailments, an increase of infant mortality and cases of congenital malformation. Besides direct scientific harm, the presence of extractive industries in rural areas can also yield severe trauma to the social fabric of these communities. Some sociological studies have shown that the rapid influx of male employees that typically accompany extractive projects may cause increases in alcoholism, violence, and prostitution in the local community.

THE NEW IDEA

The COs that collaborate with Flaviano become active leaders in mobilizing their communities with clear scientific proof against the degradation wrought by oil and mining companies. Flaviano first obtains scientific evidence to demonstrate the degree of contamination and document the adverse health effects that these industries generate. He performs environmental contamination studies and lab analyses of the affected population, normally costly technical procedures inaccessible to such communities. Then, the communities join forces with Flaviano to carry out their own monitoring and acquire the necessary evidence of damages to community health. Flaviano’s model helps train community members to take basic measurements that are later used in scientific studies. With this technical knowledge they helped produce, the citizens are better prepared to deal with emergencies or disasters and take on the corporations themselves. Providing this type of evidence has empowered COs to garner significant changes in public policy to regulate the processes of the extractive industries. They have also prompted recommendations from international organizations to reposition mines and relocate adversely affected communities. To date, Flaviano has implemented his methodology in Guatemala, Peru, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Argentina. He hopes to reproduce it in communities around the world that are exposed to harm caused by a mining, oil extraction or dam construction project, particularly in Asia and Africa.

Flaviano holds extractive industries accountable for their activities by furnishing communities and environmental and human rights COs with the tools to evaluate the negative effects of mining, oil, and dam construction projects. Armed with this evidence, the COs, with Flaviano’s guidance and partners, engage in lawsuits or negotiations with large resource extraction firms that damage the environment and health of the surrounding community members.

Dozens of families of surrounding communities… had to be temporarily evicted due to the risk of the El Llagal dam collapsing due to the amount of sudden rains in the area. The risk was of water sweeping away houses and farming hills; once the dam is filled with tailings, the risk is toxic waste spilling.

The communities that have lived on this land often for generations are powerless against these industries. They have neither the technical skills to measure negative health effects or environmental contamination nor the capabilities to defend themselves against catastrophes caused by inadequate regulation or careless administration. When emergencies provoked by poor management of resource extraction or dam construction strike, they do not have the means to safeguard their communities and manage the devastation. Although the local civil society has sought to hold oil and mining companies accountable through lobbying, political negotiation and publicity campaigns, they have not been successful. Like the local communities, they tend to lack the necessary expertise, above all in scientific investigation, to prove the damage caused by industrial activities and make a cogent argument to the public.

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“[Flaviano’s] studies on the impact of extractive industries on the environment and health have led to changes in the mining law in Honduras, the adoption of precautionary measures by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights in Guatemala and the adoption of laws on the welfare for the city of Cerro de Pasco in Peru.” —Source International Natural resource extraction projects are likely to grow in size and number over the coming years given the rising demand (and price) of raw materials, to the detriment of environment and community health. Since there is an insufficient amount of evidence to build strong legal cases that could prove the effects of resource extraction and force companies to mitigate their impact, though, the negative environmental and health effects caused by their work are unlikely to decrease.

T H E S T R AT E G Y Rather than just providing the scientific analyses, Flaviano prepares the local citizen sector to be advocates for their communities against the damages of extractive industries. He is a member of the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW), a global network of public interest attorneys and other environmental advocates. With the large demand for scientific support from COs, Flaviano picks the most motivated organizations that have engaged or plan to engage in litigation or negotiation with an extractive industry company. This assures that the scientific evidence provided will be used in court and have an impact on the decision. If the company loses the case, it is obligated to pay damages including the cost of the scientific analysis used in the court case. Once Flaviano has identified a potential project, he secures economic resources to execute it. To date, Flaviano’s projects have been financed by other COs, banks, governments and donors, but he expects to diversify his funding streams as he expands his 20

work. After securing funding, Flaviano creates a map to identify the zones to extract samples to secure evidence of environmental contamination or adverse health effects. The local representatives from the selected CO train alongside him and his team to learn the techniques of scientific analysis. After obtaining results, Flaviano works with a local medical team and the CO to compare the data with national averages to determine the severity of the damages caused to the health of affected individuals. Together with the local CO, Flaviano and his network within the ELAW constructs a lawsuit, replete with the scientific data attained, to file charges against the corporation. The case is tried before the appropriate national or international court to solicit reforms in the extraction process, relocation of the communities, or compensation for damages. Flaviano, together with ELAW and local COs, has achieved fundamental successes in public policy change and access to justice. For example, in Guatemala, as a result of his scientific support, he was able to prove the contamination caused by the Marlin mine. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights introduced precautionary measures to force the national government to demand reforms in the type of extraction. Because of his studies in Honduras, the Supreme Court required the government to amend 13 articles of mining-related law that allowed extraction projects to cause harm to public health. After several projects, Flaviano realized the importance of communities performing their own environmental monitoring, not only to reduce the costs of the project but also to provide a means for long-term monitoring. Now, the communities learn the process to follow and which authorities to contact in case of emergency or environmental disaster caused by the extractive industries. Such was the case in the indigenous communities of Canaán de Cachiyacu and Nuevo Sucre in the Peruvian Amazon. After repeated oil spills, the community completed their own monitoring, detected contamination in the river, recorded the case, and deemed Maple Gas as the culpable party. As a result, the community was able to engage in a negotiation process with Maple Gas and with the National Environmental Ministry.

By way of example, of the eighty COs from Latin America that attended the World Alliance for Environmental Rights in Costa Rica in December 2010, none had scientific support to monitor extraction projects. COs cannot conduct the scientif ic studies proving environmental contamination or adverse health consequences, the latter through analysis of blood, fingernail and hair samples, because of the high fee to perform such tests and the requisite specialized training for their execution and analysis. Even if they could afford these samples, they can rarely access them: there is a dearth of scientists working in the area, as they have few opportunities for academic funding to support a scientific career there.

Jesusa Ixtecoc Juarez pleads for her home as it is taken apart.

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To expand his model, Flaviano is planning to launch an autonomous CO organized as a decentralized network of experts who will be selected for particular projects based on each individual’s geographic and professional expertise. This flexible structure will enable the organization to expand to Africa and Asia. In addition, he plans to have his own laboratory in order to reduce the cost of analysis by 90 percent. In five years, he expects the CO to complete 15 to 20 projects per year as well as follow up with past projects. In ten years, the CO will also have anthropologists and sociologists on staff to investigate social problems caused by the natural resource extraction projects. Flaviano plans to receive small online donations, long-term funding from EuropeAid and funding from the natural resource extraction companies in their efforts to be more transparent and accountable. In addition, he will sign a more formal agreement with ELAW to include his scientific studies in the budget of the legal strategy of ELAW clients.

THE PERSON Flaviano grew up in a rural Italian town in a traditional family with modest resources. However, unlike his more traditional peers, he felt a strong connection to the outdoors and was curious about global problems. This propelled him to explore the world outside of his town. When he was 19 when he saw news of the Prestige oil spill on television and, against the wishes of his parents, traveled to Spain to clean the beaches and restore wildlife as a volunteer. In Spain, he witnessed first-hand the negative effects of environmental disasters and contamination on communities. Moved by the experience, he dedicated himself to solving the environmental problems that affect people’s lives around the world. While studying environmental human rights, Flaviano heard a Guatemalan woman speak about the environmental damage caused by a large mine affecting a community in Peru. However, the woman had no data to substantiate her claims. Recognizing the need, Flaviano raised his own funds and traveled to Guatemala to complete the scientific study on her behalf. Flaviano’s actions provoked a reform of the extraction processes in favor of the local community. Through working with indigenous leaders in Guatemala, he realized the severity of the problem. Since then, Flaviano has been identif ying similarly affected communities, mobilizing the necessary financial and human capital, and spearheading teams to defend their environmental and human rights. 

K irsten F orsberg PERU

Citizen/Community Participation Conservation Preservation Ecosystems

Through Ocean Planet, Kirsten Forsberg is educating and empowering coastal communities to sustainably manage their marine environment while also becoming primary players in developing comprehensive and mutually beneficial collaboration with other organizations, businesses, and governments that operate in the ocean ecosystem.

THE NEW IDEA The Pacific Ocean is one of Peru’s most valuable resources and has supported its major fishing industry for decades, but in recent years industrial exploitation combined with a general cultural disregard for the sea has left major strains on the ecosystem, threatening its income from f ishing and endangering the sustainability and viability of its marine ecosystem. With Ocean Planet, Kirsten has developed a comprehensive community-based strategy to conserve, protect, and better take advantage of the marine and coastal environment for the benefit of all. Kirsten fundamentally seeks to sensitize and mobilize the community to become agents of change in their local marine and coastal environments. This inclusive, grassroots component is innovative and nurtures a sense of belonging and ownership over the marine area and the actual and potential resources that the ocean can offer. Kirsten teaches the community to study and produce the materials they need to create their own tactics in dealing with their environment, helping to enable the citizens themselves to be the guardians of the marine habitat and benefit from a less polluted and productive ocean. Conscious of the numerous stakeholders and competing interests involved in the coastal regions, such as communities, private industry, public institutions, and the civil society, Kirsten forges “smart networks” among the actors. Through meetings, forums, and alliances, Kirsten creates consensus and dialogue between the partners that will benefit the interest of each one while also preserving the sustainability of their habitat. Schools and universities especially cooperate with Ocean Planet to promote the environmental curricula in local areas and to also contribute volunteers to the project. Kirsten is committed to treating each actor as a potential ally, rather than as the enemy: Many environmental COs have failed in their efforts by alienating the 21

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business sector, a crucial and influential stakeholder in the region. The community members take part in all of the collaborative initiatives that Kirsten convenes to share their ideas and also learn strategies to participate actively at the stakeholder table, as they are the ultimate beneficiaries of the program. Ultimately, Kirsten has created a model that pursues sustainable and integral development of the coastal region. Currently she is piloting Ocean Planet in Tumbes, a small coastal municipality in northern Peru that is located in one of the five major oceanic biodiversity hotspots in the world. Through her association of the local, private, government, and citizen sectors, which work on commonly identified problems and build from one small success toward bigger success, Kirsten is creating unique methods to sustainably manage the marine resources. Because she empowers the communities to carry out their efforts by themselves rather than accompanying them step-by-step, she will be able to expand rapidly without over-committing herself. Furthermore, the physical nature of the ocean demands a nationwide and even regional strategy to address the various primary and secondary environmental challenges. Kirsten plans to use this prototype as an example of the positive cooperation that can emerge and then find other communities along the Peruvian coast that would benefit from the integral development model. Her existing contacts in Tumbes will also help multiply her network of partners that can work together in these locales until Kirsten has reached national impact. Eventually, she dreams of an Ocean Planet that can span the entire oceanic hotspot, including Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, and the globe.

itself up to face the catastrophic consequences of overexploitation and pollution. As Peru has grown and its economy diversified, the mining, fishing, petroleum, and tourism industries have multiplied to the detriment of the ocean. Mining and petroleum industries have been booming for twenty years, and have already caused major environmental degradation by ejecting pollutants in the rivers and oceans and disrupting natural cycles. The fishing industry itself has declined over recent years due a reduced supply of fish in the ocean—a consequence of past overfishing. Tourism as well can be a major source of damage to coastal communities, but since it generates revenue for the local economy, governments are reluctant to enact environmental protections that might inhibit further growth. The unintended consequences to the marine life can be devastating. Tumbes, the community where Kirsten has piloted Ocean Planet, is situated in a world-renowned ecological “hotspot” featuring over 545 marine and coastal species and the largest diversity of marine resources in the region. Meanwhile, artisan fishermen account for 8.5 percent of the region’s GDP, and some 39,000 tourists visit the area, causing potentially negative health consequences to over 200,000 people in terms of the toxic agents released into the water. These implications are not isolated to Tumbes alone, as the ocean can distribute the pollutants throughout the region.

THE PROBLEM More than 29 million people, over half the population of Peru, live along the coast and depend directly on marine resources in their normal life, ranging from the significant fishing industry to their daily diet. Despite this close proximity with the sea the general population has kept its “back to the ocean,” focusing more on terra firma than the bountiful yet fragile marine ecosystem. Initiatives to preserve the environment are concentrated almost exclusively on land resources, such as the mountains and Amazon rainforests that cover the eastern portion of the country, while neglecting the most important resource of all; the sea. Such reduced sensitivity to the ocean gives ample leverage to large extractive industries that generate pollution and endanger the health and livelihood of the citizenry. Kirsten attributes this neglect to an overwhelming lack of consciousness of the sea’s resources, even up through an educational curriculum that highlights terrestrial ecosystems. For example, basic material on protecting the environment only makes recommendations on conserving trees in the forest without mentioning the ocean. Partly as a result of this landcentric predisposition, Peruvians in general do not realize that the sea has a finite supply: A survey performed by Kirsten found that 50 percent of the population believed that fishing was an inexhaustible resource. By not understanding the value of the marine ecosystem and its endangerment, Peru is setting

Community members learn by doing research activities with Kirsten, part of Ocean Planet’s marine-focused curriculum.

No concerted and productive effort exists to prevent these environmental problems and promote sustainable marine management, even though they negatively affect all actors involved. The fishing industry especially is a major contributor of the Peruvian economy. However, overfishing and degradation of coastal water places the largest corporations at risk of losing

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its supply, causing a “Tragedy of the Commons” to occur in the Peruvian oceans by fiercely competitive businesses. The fishing companies do not coordinate among themselves to commit to sustainable long-term fishing methods that would allow all parties, including and especially the private sector, to benefit and continue earning profit. At the same time, together the businesses do wield extensive power and disenfranchise the local coastal communities, who do not have a role or means to voice their significant stake in the health of their sea. An absent or feckless government either legitimizes or even enables the fishing industry to continue to exploit the marine resources while not perceiving any advantage in defending these frequently poor municipalities. Public environmental agencies also suffer from a terrestrial bias, and they place minimal effort on maintaining the ocean habitats. Finally, the environmental citizen organizations (COs) in Peru are often shortsighted and confrontational in their advocacy toward the government and the private sector, finding little common ground and meaningful compromise. Otherwise, these COs can be overly focused on technical research and activism on an isolated local level. The lack of an integrated and holistic marine policy keeps the local populations out of the dialogue, treating them as passive subjects rather than essential participants in determining the future of their own ecosystem.

T H E S T R AT E G Y Rather than apply a public policy-based or technical solution to address the environmental degradation of Peru’s ocean habitats, Kirsten has developed a bottoms-up approach focused on sensitizing the communities that live there and engaging them in productive and meaningful alliances with the other organizations, institutions, and businesses that are all present in the environment. Constituted in 2009 as a non-profit organization, Ocean Planet uses education and research, carried out by the community members themselves, to help the coastal populations begin to value the ocean and become capable of making informed and comprehensive decisions about the sustainable use and management of the environmental resources. Kirsten directs the strategy and project planning while overseeing a small, modestly paid staff of four people and a team of volunteers from Lima and Tumbes. Without basic knowledge or understanding of the ocean, Kirsten says, the coastal communities will not be able to take an active role in determining the future of their environment. She works with educational institutions in the area, ranging from primary schools to universities, to adopt new curricula and pedagogical techniques that integrate marine biology and ecology into daily learning. Her Network of Marine and Coastal Educators consists of teachers and administrators in public and private schools that design a context-specific curriculum, produce didactic materials and organize meetings, forums and activities for students and other faculty members. Rather than providing the schools with a prepared curriculum, Kirsten’s team collaborates with the network to design and adopt the tools themselves, which entitles

the community members to more responsibility and authority over the education. Ocean Planet accompanies the schools and communities as they gradually introduce marine themes into their plans of study, with the eventual hope that the initiative can influence the federal education curriculum. Kirsten’s network currently includes more than thirty committed schools whose projects have benefited a few thousand students.

“We have spread awareness to thousands of children, trained hundreds of teachers, integrated young professionals and involved multiple people in conservation initiatives and investigation of diverse species such as manta rays, sea turtles and sea birds, among others.” —Kirsten Forsberg, Sparked

Ocean Planet backs up its education model with applied scientific research into the ocean habitats. Unlike other technical COs however, Kirsten equips the communities themselves with the research skills rather than handing them a prepared report. Volunteers, students, and local organizations participate in research trips to observe the coastal ecosystems, prepare hydrological tests to evaluate levels of contamination, and study the wildlife in detail. They also interview local community members and representatives of businesses operating in the area to assess the environmental consequences of the commercial activities. The research is used to develop a local strategy for the community sustainable management of the marine resources. At the same time, the local populations “learn by doing,” performing the research and thus complementing through hands-on activities the new marine-focused curriculum that Ocean Planet has created. The second key element of Kirsten’s strategy involves forging partnerships and consensus that Ocean Planet facilitates between various actors. Kirsten fuses collaborations among public institutions, private businesses, civil society associations, volunteers, and individuals living in the affected areas. These partnerships seek to create sustainable mechanisms and enterprises that generate economic alternatives for the community and the poor fishermen in the region, while also contributing directly to the preservation of the marine habitat, and that are also not counter-productive to the operating businesses. In Tumbes, for instance, Ocean Planet works with the transportation company Oltursa and with large associations of commercial lobster fishermen. Ocean Planet helps strategize effective yet feasible small-scale initiatives to begin the collaborations. Modest successes of collaboration between the community and

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the businesses are key, as they make evident to both parties that such win-win partnerships are possible, and they serve as building blocks for later projects. For example, Ocean Planet helped lead a coalition composed of community representatives and the commercial fishermen in Tumbes to strengthen local government regulations on the use of nets, which can endanger the lives of sea turtles. The coalition relied on applied research on the turtle mortality rates in the Tumbes area carried out by the residents. This small but significant victory has opened doors for Kirsten and raised the community’s confidence in its ability to achieve such successes. Kirsten has begun to construct relationships with oil companies as well, perceiving a major inflection point in her work and in her capacity to forge more partnerships. She has also started to work with the first large fishing company, Pesquera Diamante, using their nascent corporate social responsibility program as the point of contact and leverage for Ocean Planet. On the public policy level, Kirsten helps connect the communities with government agencies and public education institutions. In Tumbes, Ocean Planet works with the regional administrations for education, publication, and national resources to manage the local educational projects. Agency representatives further participate in the events, forums, and workshops the organization hosts for the general public. Kirsten expects that such achievements as the fishing net reform will become prototypes for larger initiatives that affect provincial and later national policy. She has also been recognized with awards from the Environmental Ministry and the international Kinship Foundation, lending legitimacy to her work before other government officials. In the future as she begins her nationwide expansion, Kirsten foresees collaborating with the equivalent agencies in Tumbes as in the other coastal communities, in addition to the federal ministries. In the long-term, Kirsten plans on converting the cross-sector alliances she has forged into Smart Networks, underscoring sustainable ocean initiatives as common practices. The corporate social responsibility tactic will give Ocean Planet significant access into larger industrial companies and enable the local communities to keep a voice and presence in the businesses’ strategies. Kirsten has also begun to pilot new methods of generating revenue for her organization, such as marketing its expertise in community empowerment, pedagogical methods relating to the environment, and establishing alliances among the private, public, and citizen sectors. She also has developed a merchandising scheme that will help publicize the work of Ocean Planet and provide a source of revenue to supplement the foundation grants and corporate support which she has begun to receive. The organization will leverage its impact by transforming into a catalyst of large-scale environmental change as the capable facilitator of its collaborations. Although currently the project is in a very early stage, its successes in Tumbes have given Kirsten credibility that she expects to use as she expands to other coastal communities. 24

THE PERSON Kirsten grew up with an intimate relationship with the coastal environment. Her great-grandfather, a merchant marine, immigrated to Peru with his wife. There he launched an artisanal fishing business that quickly turned into a large industrial exporter. Kirsten’s grandfather consolidated the corporation, which developed the first use of fish flour, a byproduct of the preparation of the resource for commercial food. Spending time with him and her father, who worked in the communications industry, inspired Kirsten with the values of entrepreneurship. Due to the violence in Peru during the 1980s, her family relocated to Canada, where Kirsten spent most of her childhood. She especially loved spending time in the outdoors in the natural reserves and parks near her home in British Columbia. Returning to Peru at age 8, Kirsten began to study biology while at the same time founding clubs dedicated to environmental conservation. At her private primary school, she established an organization to protect the animals living in the school’s small on-site zoo. Always involved in multidisciplinary extracurricular activities, Kirsten became devoted to her studies of biology through her time at the Molina National Agrarian University. Having attended privileged schools, the interactions Kirsten had with students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and experiences influenced her desire to also become involved in social subjects. Kirsten felt a strong urgency to protect the ocean, a natural habitat that she had early on fallen in love with, and to lead major social change together with the communities that lived along the coasts. In 2007 Kirsten moved to Brazil to volunteer with the Tamar Project, a center dedicated to the conservation of sea turtles. Witnessing firsthand the injury and death of turtles captured in industrial fishing nets, she felt motivated to return to Peru, observe the native species of her country, and help find a solution to environmental degradation. As part of her undergraduate thesis, Kirsten studied firsthand the coastal devastation in Tumbes, where her direct contact with the residents in the local community helped her understand the importance of employing inclusive, participative, and multidisciplinary techniques to achieve sustainable conservation of the ocean. Her thesis also laid the groundwork for many of the successful initiatives she has led since founding Ocean Planet in 2009, such as coalescing her network of local educators. Although she is still young and her organization is still in an early stage, Kirsten has found her vocation in Ocean Planet; bringing together her passion for the ocean ecosystem and for positive social change through dialogue and collaboration. She is already a nationally recognized leader in marine conservation, thanks to her awards from the Peruvian Ministry of Environment and her International Youth Foundation award. Kirsten envisions herself promoting a program that educates and prepares local communities to become the paramount stakeholders in sustainably managing their local ocean resources. 

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Dale L ewis ZAMBIA

Agriculture Conservation/Preservation Farmers/Sharecroppers

Dale Lewis has introduced market-based conservation that recognizes the interconnectedness between a broad range of wildlife species and livelihoods, with humans playing a central role as protectors of the ecological system. As a result, poaching around the valley has been reduced by about 50 percent. Dale is currently working in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley, home to nearly 20 percent of the human population and significant wildlife.

THE NEW IDEA Dale believes food shortages are the driving force behind poaching and therefore the top hindrance to successful conservation programs. Changing this situation demands more than stronger punishment for destroying the environment, it requires new social, economic, and environmental architecture, with a redefining of roles for communities living in and around wildlife conservation areas. Dale has introduced sustainable farming practices that promote the co-existence of humans and wildlife, while increasing food stocks all year round for families that face food shortages. Connected to this is the first community-based decentralized food processing infrastructure in Zambia which guarantees new incomes for households. Dale has successfully created new roles for former poachers, by using his farming and economic program to mobilize them as the drivers of this new social and economic architecture. They have become ambassadors of the market-based conservation idea to others in the valley, teaching them about responsible farming and becoming enforcers of new rules that require farmers benefiting from Dale’s program to meet environmental protection standards to protect the environment. For example, a group of top performing farmers—many being former poachers—are tasked with monitoring the compliance of farmers to use responsible farming practices that protect water catchment areas and wildlife. Compliance with the new wnvironmental standards is rewarded with premium prices for their farm produce. Sustaining the interest of the communities requires the creation of a sustainable economic model that is competitive and profitable at the local and international level. Dale has successfully created such a system with “It’s Wild”—the top selling brand among rice, soy meal, and honey sectors in the Zambian market. His brands have attracted interest from ShopRite and Spar, leading

supermarket chains across southern Africa, compelled the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) to adopt market-based conservation, and attracted global commercial brands such as Walmart and the Government of Zambia to work with him to spread his work across Zambia and southern Africa.

THE PROBLEM Historically, conservation practices have advocated for a clear distinction between human and wildlife settlements. These traditional conservation practices are grounded in drawing artificial boundaries between animal and human populations and are animal rather than people-centered. These policies, which set the benchmark for other actors in the field, plan for wildlife and then seek to find ways to fit in the existing human population. So far, this approach has been unsuccessful.

“By using a successful conservation and agriculture intervention, COMACO saves thousands of wild animals every year. With the enthusiastic support of the Zambian wildlife authority, COMACO is extending the program to new parks and wildlife zones and perhaps into the Congo.” —Rainer Arnhold Fellows Chronic poverty often forces farmers to choose growing cash crops at the expense of food crops. The result in the Luangwa Valley, like most farming areas in Zambia, has been acute food insecurity. Further, farmers actually receive less than a fair price for their produce with the majority of the financial benefit taken by middlemen and dealers in the cities—deepening their poverty. Because traditional conservation programs neglect human populations in these ecologically sensitive areas, communities exploit the environment to make up for food shortages and to raise additional income to cover basic needs. They resort to poaching and logging, over fishing. For instance, many Zambians began to hunt and kill rhinos (especially black rhinos) and elephants for their ivory horns and tusks, which were sold on the domestic and international markets. In the 1970s, Zambia had an elephant population of about 35,000, yet by the early 1990s only about 6,000 elephants remained. The story is very similar in the east, central, and southern areas of Africa; where the black rhino was dominant, fewer than 4,000 remain from a population of 65,000 in 1970. Faced with the extinction of the black rhino and the decimation of the elephant, the Zambian government initiated several wildlife conservation policies, including reduced human access to land in wildlife zones, aimed to reduce poaching. Dale believes the failure of traditional conservation approaches is largely due to a limited view of wildlife protection areas, 25

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perceived as areas that need to be protected from humans rather than recognizing humans, animals, and the environment as part of the same interdependent ecosystem. Instead, human populations need to be recognized as stakeholders and therefore protectors of the ecosystem. Accomplishing this requires creating new structures, tearing down artificial boundaries created by traditional conservationists, redefining roles, changing behavior, and incentivizing and empowering communities to drive these new structures.

T H E S T R AT E G Y In 2003 Dale founded Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO), a membership organization of farming households to implement three key initiatives: First to lift households from food insecurity to self-sufficiency. Second, to improve household incomes from agriculture through community-based value addition and access to markets and finally, a compliance program that ensures continued adherence to new sets of behavior that protect the environment. Dale begins by organizing farmers into producer groups around a community trading center (CTC) where farmers buy and sell their farm produce. Each farmer group has an average of 2,000 farmers. COMACO works with farmers at six CTCs across the Luangwa Valley. To join a group each farmer must commit to three tenets: (i) take up training on sustainable land tillage that protects rather than drains the environment (ii) commit to produce their own food, and (iii) hand over the snares and guns they used for poaching and be custodians of the environment, including wildlife. Each group elects a leader who represents the group in COMACO meetings. Once organized, each group is taken through training and receives guidance on new farming techniques until they grow enough food to sustain them through a year. Only when they begin to harvest surplus produce does COMACO begin to purchase from a farmer. The importance of waiting for a household to become food secure, is that in the past, farmers opted to sell all their food for money. In other instances, farmers abandoned growing food crops in favor of cash crops that commanded a higher price on the international market. This created food shortages across the Luangwa Valley and yet there was no guaranteed market for their cash crops, leading to widespread poverty and pushing families into poaching and other practices damaging to the environment. COMACO thus emphasizes growing food crops first for food security then guarantees markets for surplus farm produce. Dale has created one of the top selling local food brands known as “It’s Wild” in Zambia and it will soon be Zambia’s first locally manufactured breakfast cereal. “It’s Wild” is symbolic of poor, hungry and environmentally irresponsible farming communities that have reformed and are now feeding the nation of Zambia. Dale creatively engages community leaders in the structure of COMACO. He has recruited and trained the community chiefs all across the Luangwa Valley as Area Extension Managers who serve as the link between the farmer groups and

COMACO. Once local leaders are integrated into the structure, trust is created between the farmers and COMACO. Each community has a number of farmer groups and the chiefs play a very important role recruiting new farmers into existing groups or forming new farmer groups within their area. The chiefs also monitor the democratic process of electing Lead Farmers for each group. Lead farmers are selected for their outstanding commitment to the three tenets of COMACO. Once selected, Lead Farmers mentor farmers in their respective groups. Dale is looking into providing information on health, sanitation, and other important social services to his network of farmer groups. He created the Better Life Book, a compilation of important information on farming, wildlife, health, and other lessons that are delivered by Lead Farmers. Each day a Lead Farmer visits at least one farmer in their group. Lead Farmers also implement the compliance program that monitors farmers’ observance of the three key tenets of COMACO. Once a farmer is found to be compliant they qualify for a premium pricing of 4 percent markup above market prices for their produce. Behavior that is contrarian to the three tenets attracts a penalty, for example, six farmers in one group were involved in snaring and the community still had in its possession 100 snares. COMACO stopped buying produce from that community on condition that all the snares and guns were turned in. After several months, the community turned in the snares and guns and COMACO resumed working with them. To date, COMACO has reached 53,000 farming families representing over 1 million people in the Luangwa Valley. The government has noticed his impact and is engaging Dale to explore ways of replicating his market-based conservation model across Zambia. Both local and international retail businesses such as ShopRite, Game, General Mills, and Walmart have been inspired by Dale’s work and have pledged their support—providing him with pro bono expertise in research and manufacturing, machinery and equipment, and distributing his “It’s Wild” products nationally and internationally. COMACO products also includes Zambia’s number one selling rice brand, honey, and health food mixes. They are on the verge of launching Zambia’s first locally manufactured breakfast cereal. The inspiring story of former poachers now turned farmers feeding the country has resonated not only with Zambian consumers but also with businesses and government. It is already evident how the success of COMACO has begun to inf luence behavior change in all these spheres. Looking ahead, Dale will double his impact by recruiting another 40,000 families from South Central Zambia over the next four to five years. He also hopes to launch a community radio station called “COMACO Farm Talk” to provide extension services to farmers more efficiently and to further spread his model. The President of Zambia has pledged his support to Dale and has urged him to take his program to scale on a national level: A plan Dale is eager to see through.

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THE PERSON

©COMACO

Dale was brought up in conservative and secure family. He enjoyed a close relationship with his parents and grandfather, who in different ways, all influenced Dale and made him the man he is today. Dale’s grandfather and father took him on hunting and fishing trips quite often, and as a result, he developed early on a fascination for nature and its history. He collected snakes and kept a collection of aquariums, birds, insects, and plants all around his parent’s home. Another childhood passion was golf, and he spent a lot of time on a nearby golf course with close friends and earned money on the weekends working as a caddie. A people person, Dale was also involved in school councils and different societies throughout his early schooling.

Having become wildly popular in Zambia, Dale’s “Its’s Wild” brand continues to create new products with demand.

Although his parents wanted him to go to medical school, Dale knew he wanted to become a zoologist and went on to study evolutionary biology at university. While there, he left the campus dormitory and the fast life that came with it, to instead live a quiet life with a farming family a few kilometers outside of town, bicycling to and from school for a couple of years. Dale also took a part-time job at the college museum, where he spent a lot of time with the curator, who later asked him to take a trip to Africa to do his research on the dispersal behavior of the indigo-bird.

Dale jumped at the opportunity and took two years off school to go to Africa to study in the Lochinvar National Park in Zambia. He describes this experience as profound and life-changing. During this time, Dale was introduced to the Luangwa Valley. He was entrusted to do more research in Costa Rica and following that he applied for a grant from the National Geographic Society to do a film on the Mosquito Indians in Nicaragua—to study how ethnic groups interact with and use their natural resources. Dale recounts this experience as another transformational one as it exposed him to the plight of local communities exploited by opportunistic commercial entities and made to destroy the natural resources that have sustained them for generations. For his doctorate thesis, he went back to the Luangwa Valley to study the relationship between human populations and elephants which were being poached at their highest rate in Zambia’s history. While doing this, he realized he wanted to do something about what he was finding and that he wanted to spend his life in conservation. Dale spent the many years that followed carrying out studies and experimenting with different programs under the WCS based in Zambia. It became clear to him that the conventional way of thinking about conservation didn’t work in the case of Luangwa. Dale tried many mainstream approaches but they simply didn’t yield good results. Poaching was still on the rise and the snare business was booming. He realized that the problem was complex and required a complex approach that is more than simply creating artif icial boundaries between humans and animals. In questioning the industry assumptions that prevailed at the time, Dale realized that wildlife could not be divorced from the ecosystem around it. He saw that the people who shared their habitat with wildlife only encroached on it due to the pressures of poverty and chronic hunger. The connection between conservation, poverty, and hunger started to become apparent to Dale. In 2003 he decided to test his insights and created the “food for work” experimental program with support from USAID who donated 600,000 bags of grain to see whether indeed food security could reduce poaching. The results where staggering, as Dale found that over 60 percent of previously poaching households given food through the program did not engage in poaching activities for the entire period of the program. Despite his breakthrough f indings however, ideological differences between Dale and the WCS—which still believed the best way to protect animals was at the exclusion of humans—led to the end of their working relationship. Dale went on to found COMACO to implement his approach in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley. Dale’s working relationship with WCS later went on to be reinstated when his success became widely recognized and his approach accepted as the new paradigm in conservation. 

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Z aher R edwan LEBANON

Agriculture Citizen/Community Participation Sustainable Tourism

Zaher Redwan is using a three-prong strategy to conserve the biodiversity of medicinal, edible, and aromatic plants in the Levant region. Through his initiative, Green Hand, he is focusing on community groups, including farmers and landowners, the plants themselves, as well as policy reform, to support a collective, grassroots effort to conserve biodiversity of local plants indigenous to the region.

rapid urbanization have left the environment poorly managed or neglected altogether. Lebanon, for example, saw its forest areas dwindle to 7 percent by the late 1990s, and despite the signing of the Convention on Biological Diversity, four of the seven nature reserves were declared by law as lacking any kind of management or upkeep mechanism. The Palestinian Territories’ several non-coordinated conservation laws—with their corresponding weak budgets—are another example of the region’s neglect of the environment. As a result, the Levant has seen thousands of plant species listed as threatened or endangered, including 206 near extinction in Lebanon alone. With the disappearance of such plants, unique genetic material is lost. Indeed, the richer the diversity of life, the greater the opportunity for medical discoveries, economic development, and adaptive responses to sudden disasters and more gradual climate change.

THE NEW IDEA Zaher has launched a nationwide, non-party-affiliated movement to promote the strengthening of Lebanon’s bio-diversity. Through income-generating schemes and interactive initiatives, bringing citizens face-to-face with the country’s vast environmental wealth, Zaher is nurturing a cultural and ecological understanding of biodiversity to underpin new environmental national policy. By providing positive incentives for all stakeholders, Zaher is uniting them behind one unified interest and national strategy to conserve the biodiversity of local species of medicinal, edible, and aromatic (MEA) plants, beginning with Lebanon. Zaher’s strategy targets three main foci, which include community, plants, and policy. To this end, he first works with various target groups in the community to make local plants a profitable proposition, at the same time as he is categorizing and showcasing local plants in creative ways, and thirdly he works with policymakers to see the promotion of these plants as a national resource and as a priority on the country’s agenda. Zaher’s idea raises awareness and re-establishes the value of different varieties of local plants, which can be capitalized on to benefit the region, cover the local demand and generate additional income when exported. He is creating new trends of ecologically friendly practices in everyday life, while the farmers, landowners, and country as a whole reap the monetary benefits. Zaher is also closing the loop by spearheading national policy on biodiversity in Lebanon’s twenty-six districts using the 1,500 person volunteer network working through Green Hand’s nine branch community centers located across the country.

THE PROBLEM Sitting at the crossroads of Eurasia and Africa where plants and animals of three continents were cultivated and spread, the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the Palestinian Territories) has a remarkably diverse and unique ecosystem. Indeed, there are thousands of plant species that are rare and/or endemic to the region or its respective countries. However, war, instability and 28

Zaher teaches children about forestation during a day of planting.

Due to the volatile political situation, a lack of a national conservation strategy, and limited manpower, the few outside funders focusing on the environment in the Levant region have tended to bypass government channels and work directly with citizen organizations (COs). However, COs have largely limited themselves to awareness building and creating seed banks, which Zaher sees as a huge missed opportunity to leverage the manpower embedded in the larger citizenry to drive a comprehensive solution from the bottom-up.

T H E S T R AT E G Y Zaher’s extensive, yet focused three-pronged strategy tackles the conservation of biodiversity of MEA plants in the Levant region while addressing the needs, changing the behaviors, and presenting new practices to different factions of the community. It also documents and preserves the local plants as well as leads policy reform efforts. After eight years of apprenticeship, formal study, and experimentation, Zaher set a dynamic and constantly evolving ten-year-action-plan for the conservation of biodiversity. He uses a bottom-up approach to educating, raising awareness, and changing habits to serve his goal of conserving the biodiversity of local plants of the region. Zaher involves the community and educates them about the uses of plants and their economic

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incentives, lays out multiple ways to conserve and showcase the plants, and then uses his work and community mobilization to push for national policy that upholds international standards for the conservation of biodiversity. The implementing arm of Green Hand is predominantly made up of young university volunteers. Serving as a role model for youth, Zaher’s passion and conviction to his cause drew 1,500 committed university students and others, who act as natural stewards to Green Hand’s mission. They are spread across Green Hand’s head office in Aley and 8 branch offices including cities like Akkar, Tripoli, Nabatiyeh, and Saida (spanning from North to South of the country), split in to 23 groups. Zaher balances leadership and a united mission, while giving students ownership and room to innovate and co-create their own initiatives. They are each responsible for raising additional funds to carry out the activities of their branch and successfully raise money from the community. When locals donate money, they become interested in seeing what happens with the donation and are more likely to participate than if a service or development effort is given for free or by an outsider. Instead of creating the traditional CO branch office, Zaher decided to set up a “community center” model, acting as a haven for each community, involving them in ongoing events and hands-on ways to participate in the conservation of biodiversity. To accommodate the cultural, political, geographic, and religious diversity of Lebanon and specific needs of each region, Zaher’s Green Hand head office acts as an umbrella organization, while preserving the uniqueness of each region.

Through income-generating schemes and interactive initiatives, bringing citizens face-to-face with the country’s vast environmental wealth, Zaher is nurturing a cultural and ecological understanding of biodiversity to underpin new environmental national policy. The first main focus of Zaher’s strategy is the community, where he reaches out to farmers, landowners, beekeepers, herb pickers, craftsmen, and other community members who are integrated in different parts of the process to improve their standard of living. To address the needs of small farmers, who have suffered economically since urbanization and new technologies have replaced traditional farming, Zaher established two training centers in the rural areas of Aley and Akkar to reintroduce lucrative local plants and ways to cultivate them. The distribution of seeds and know-how are given for free to small farmers. An agricultural expert follows up with them and is available for any questions and concerns, as they farm and cultivate their fields. Tobacco farmers, for example, who essentially earn US$1 a day after taking into account all of the year-round family labor involved in the practice, have transitioned to farming native species of herbs like oregano, thyme, and rosemary, and are generating a much higher income while only working a few weeks a year—which is all the time that is needed for these crops. Since opening the training centers in 2009, Zaher has trained over 765 farmers.

The ongoing trend in the region has been characterized by landowners who are selling agricultural land to urban developers. Zaher found success in approaching private landowners of nonfarmland who, once they are also exposed to some key figures, like the fact that there is so much demand for oregano in Lebanon that the country actually imports the herb from Jordan, also sign up to cultivate the crop. In this way, the distribution of seeds and knowhow are cross-subsidized, with existing small farmers receiving the assistance for free, and private landowners paying for a full system plan, including irrigation. In another example, beekeepers have also become enthusiastic supporters of the planting of local herbs after Zaher revealed that the honey produced when bees feed on oregano plants fetches twice the price of regular honey. Given that the Levant region population is a high consumer of MEA plants, supporting herb pickers is important. Zaher replaces bestial harvesting, which threatens the species, by sustainable wild harvesting techniques, including proper timetables that encourage regeneration and by organizing their families into a loose association called Green Home, which can be called upon to make meals based on “authentic food” f lavored with the herbs they gather. To date, over 125 families from across Lebanon have served food at tourist as well as local festivals, conventions, and gatherings. Beyond sustainability techniques, Zaher is also teaching families appropriate marketing techniques. To include more actors, Zaher volunteers as the Executive Manager of the Syndicate of Lebanese Craftsmen to involve craftsmen in the process. He has absorbed the syndicate’s 485 members into this initiative, recognizing that craftsmen also often use biological resources without attention to sustainable harvesting techniques. Green Home has recently become an official partner of Lebanon’s annual garden show. With 22,000 average visitors, this is Lebanon’s largest exhibition. Zaher’s second focus is showcasing the plants and preserving the local species to keep what is there and prevent endangered ones from going extinct by engaging the world of academia. Students and professors are developing “green” tourism focused on MEA plants. Zaher is nurturing a new generation to be more knowledgeable about the environment and thus, its natural stewards. He uses this network of students to raise awareness about the richness of the country’s natural resources. The network currently works in 100 schools and has brought interactive educational sessions, including different games to better understand their ecological footprint, to over 100,000 students. Zaher works closely with university students who conduct research for Green Hand, while receiving credits at their university and producing published materials which help both parties. To showcase local plant species and give students from the Lebanese University credit for research they conducted for Green Hand on biodiversity, Zaher jointly published Lebanon’s first book of its kind, Green Hands Endemic Species Guide, which was developed into a course being taught at the Faculty of Agriculture. Zaher uses this type of research and documentation as a foundation to the Green Hand Botanical Garden, which will be finished in 2013 and will act as an interactive resource center for farmers, students, underprivileged families, and the community. 29

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The garden will host 3,600 native and endemic species of MEA plants in addition to an Eco-library and Eco-School, which has already catered to nearly 100,000 students since its inception in 1999. A United Nations Office for Project Services grant has been secured to sustain the completion of the botanical garden.

Zaher speaks about the importance of conserving the biodiversity of local species of medicinal, edible and aromatic plants as part of an environmental national policy.

Zaher’s third focus deals with strengthening national policy to meet Green Hand’s international standards and measures toward the conservation of biodiversity. To further his goal and grow his organization, Zaher positions himself at local, regional, and international events and arenas, forming valuable partnerships. Locally, he has formed formal relationships with government decision-makers in all of Lebanon’s districts. Beyond this, Zaher solidified his partnership with the Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture, which provides agricultural experts to further support farmers who have switched to cultivating local plants. A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed with the Ministries of Tourism and Environment to break ground on Lebanon’s first Botanic Garden. Zaher also works with the coalition of Lebanon’s twenty largest COs, to pass a tobacco control law because doing so would further encourage a move away from the cultivation of that crop. As the President of the Coalition for Tobacco Control in Lebanon, he has access to changing policies to help farmers’ plant MEA crops by providing them with the necessary safety regulations to protect them. Zaher is currently coordinating with the head of the parliamentary health committee to pass these policies. Regionally, Zaher was selected by UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Technology in Arab States to attend the expert group meeting on Promoting Green Economy in Biosphere Reserves of the Arab Region in Tunisia, November 2012. For regional expansion purposes, Zaher positioned himself in Jordan by serving as President of the Jordanian Tobacco Control Alliance and formalizing an agreement with Jordan’s Royal Botanical Garden, owned by H.H. Princess Basma bint Ali. Internationally, Zaher has participated in the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources World Conservation Congress in Korea (Sept. 2012), where he was invited to register Green Hand Botanical 30

Garden in the Botanic Gardens Conservation International. These efforts will help Zaher reach his strategic objectives to place biodiversity at the center of national policy and community life.

THE PERSON Zaher grew up in Aley, a mountain city with a mix of faiths and one of the few cities that completely reconciled after the war in the 1980s. As a young boy, Zaher watched with inquisitive eyes as his father practiced the sport of hunting. One day, as he watched a bird slowly dying, Zaher felt he had to stop what he felt was unethical and wasteful to nature. So, he mustered the courage to talk with his father and convinced him to stop. Zaher’s respect for nature continued through his young adult years. When he reached university, he founded the Environment Protection Club and was a founding member of the Environmental Union, which grouped all environmental clubs from other universities in Lebanon. As an emerging leader, Zaher spotted the importance of forming grassroots coalitions to further a cause. With a long-standing dedication to conservation and university experience in organizing, Zaher formalized his efforts and developed beyond student activities, and at the age of 20, he set up Green Hand in 1999. Zaher did not know how exactly he would tackle such a large issue, so he went to work on the ground right away to try out different activities according to the needs in different areas. While noticing a school where children played in the mud using wooden planks as ping pong pads, Zaher was moved to act and ran a deforestation campaign raising awareness, planting trees, and providing environmentally and child-friendly recreational options at the school. Random groups of youth planting trees along the street caught the attention of local municipality officials and the community who were not accustomed to citizen-action without a top-down program implemented by the government. Zaher coupled his field experience, scanning the community for conservation opportunities and problems, with postgraduate studies at Maastricht University and in the U.S. and Europe. This combination allowed him to gain an enriching understanding of the policy and community development conversation worldwide. By 2007, Zaher was able to create an elaborate network of organizations and supporters to help him implement his dream of a Levant region that capitalizes on its natural resources of over 1,000 species of local MEA plants. Zaher’s mission is improving the lives of many members of the local community, and is well on its way to making major contributions to national income. The initiative is also bringing in tourists to share this beautiful environmental wealth. Green Hand is already internationally recognized as a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. At every step in his work Zaher has steadfastly remained nonpartisan. While this has created obstacles, for example, when he tried to register Green Hand it was delayed several years because he refused to align the organization with either political party. By continuing to invite the Minister to events Zaher was eventually able to convince the Minister to override political objections and register Green Hand. 

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Fida A bu Turky PALESTINE

Capacity Building Business Entrepreneurs Microenterprise Women

Fida Abu Turky is economically empowering women in rural areas of the Levant by implementing a grassroots venture capitalist approach adapted for the cultural context. In doing so, women are becoming active, visible members of society working to raise and improve the socioeconomic development of their country.

THE NEW IDEA Fida is the first entrepreneur in the Arab World to adapt business incubation for the Levantine cultural context in order to create jobs for women, encourage women entrepreneurs, and diversify local community economies. Fida is providing alternative income-generating opportunities for women in rural areas who are marginalized from their society’s labor market, using a grassroots, community-based, and business-adapted approach. Fida’s approach to elevating the economic status of women in the Levant is opening new markets and introducing the concept of business incubation in a region that traditionally relies on charity and loans. Fida is adopting a venture capitalist approach/model in her initiative to economically empower poor, rural women through her business, Irada (meaning Will Project). According to her business model, Fida provides female clients with seed funding to start their enterprises, technical assistance through a pool of experts to ensure the quality of the products, and marketing services to guarantee the sale of the products in local and regional markets. To ensure Irada’s financial sustainability, Fida takes 20 percent of the sale profits. This 20 percent is reinvested into the Irada brand, operations, and other micro-projects. This approach is unique and the first of its kind with social ventures, especially those targeting women in the Arab region. Given the similarities of conditions of rural women in the Levant and other Arab countries, this model is both transferrable and replicable, not only in Palestine and the Levant, but across countries like Egypt and Morocco. In addition to targeting women in rural communities who are economically affected by the Separation Wall (e.g. the wall that divides Palestinian territory in the West Bank), Fida plans to provide 10 percent of her grants to women with special needs to

help incorporate them better into society. Through her existing efforts beginning in 2009 with Irada’s founding, Fida has provided seed funding for over 1,200 projects. Over the next five years, Fida will expand outside Palestine by partnering with local organizations in other Arab countries and providing training and coaching on her business incubation model which local organizations can then adopt. Using this strategy, Irada will continue to keep its operations independent, localized, and able to engage local communities of women on a widespread scale.

THE PROBLEM In comparison to women in other regions of the world, women in the Levant suffer from high pregnancy rates, gender gaps in literacy, less access to job opportunities, and under-representation in the political system. Because of an international focus on the plight of women in the Middle East, there has been a number of initiatives and significant progress made in all the aforementioned areas, except for one—women’s participation in the labor market. According to the UNDP, 90.5 percent of women in Palestine remain outside the formal labor force, working as unpaid family members or in the informal sector, where they do not enjoy the benefits and protections provided by labor law. Neighboring countries in the Levant such as Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon fare slightly better, but their numbers remain high at 85.8 percent, 85.1 percent, and 70 percent respectively.

Supported by OHCHR, these girls are participating in their school parliament elections project in Ramallah.

This exclusion of women from economic opportunities is the result of a number of different factors. For one, prevailing patriarchal society, culture, and values view women as dependent on men for economic welfare and security. As a result, men take priority both in access to work and the enjoyment of its returns. Laws concerning labor and personal status pose further obstacles to women’s participation in formal economic life. Some personal

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status and labor legislation restricts women’s freedom by requiring a father or husband’s permission to work or travel. Combined, these factors prevent women from entering the formal labor market. To overcome these barriers, the World Bank recommends the promotion of solutions centered on microfinance. This is a realistic and practical approach as most of the aforementioned obstacles faced by women make home-based production in the form of micro-enterprises an appealing, and culturally appropriate solution for women in the Arab World. Microfinance appears to be even more attractive since access to traditional sources of capital is equally socially curtailed. The UNDP reports that women in the Arab region generally lack information about loans and borrowing, and may not have access to traditional sources of collateral; they lack knowledge of marketing-related strategies and of supply and demand dynamics; and require training in order to empower them. Consequently, numerous microfinancing schemes have arisen throughout the region; some reaching out to women specifically. Micro-enterprise loans through the Syrian government and UN Relief and Works Agency for example are provided for women at a far lower rate than for men. The Jordan Department of Statistics reports that women represent 70 percent of all beneficiaries of microfinance projects. As for Palestine, the World Bank asserts that microcredit schemes are targeted to help Palestinian communities—and women in particular—alleviate poverty and cope with the crisis by creating employment. While microfinance is a viable employment option for women, a difficult task faced by a number of micocredit agencies working in rural areas is proper follow-up and monitoring of the projects. Additionally, insurances that products of microfinance loans such as crafts or services, may not always reach the right markets, and repaying loans can be a challenge.

T H E S T R AT E G Y Fida has been working on combating poverty and reducing unemployment rates among women by focusing on women in rural areas of Palestine; one of the most vulnerable populations because of their remote location and the difficulties in traveling from their homes, due to the building of Israeli settlements and the Separation Wall. The Palestinian Center for Communication & Development Strategies (PCCDS) was launched in January 2009 from Fida’s organization. It is implementing a three-pronged approach for combating poverty and reducing unemployment rates among women in marginalized, rural communities in Palestine. Fida provides financial assistance, technical and training services to ensure quality products are produced, and supplies market

venues to sell the women’s products abroad. Fida provides grants to women living in rural communities adversely affected by the Separation Wall. She assesses the proposed project’s needs, provides grants to women based on their needs, and then conducts regular follow-up and evaluation to ensure the project is running smoothly. To complement the grant, Fida also provides business support resources and services through a network of thirty-four rural organizations. She has partnered with a local marketing company, which markets and sells the project’s products locally, regionally, and internationally—including in other Palestinian towns, and in the Gulf countries. These products have a seal which reads: Made in Palestine by Small Female-Led Business. Fida’s customers give 20 percent of their revenues to Irada, which in turn is reinvested into her social initiative and used to fund other micro-projects. This approach is unique and previously untapped by more traditional microcredit institutions and charity projects. This strategy ensures the sustainability of Fida’s initiative as well as strengthens and supports the social businesses Irada incubates. In the beginning, Fida solicited local donations and contributions from the community to f inance sixty mini-businesses run by women. Fida incubates the business idea by providing seed funding for the mini-business, which she calls a “grant.” The grant is supplied in-kind through assessing the proposed project’s needs.

“Operating within all the governorates of the West Bank, the Center’s strategies include empowerment of grassroots institutions, capacity building, community development, and defence of human rights.” —Early Childhood Development Along with financing the project, Fida provides practical and theoretical training to women so they can effectively manage their businesses. Common services provided include helping with business basics, offering marketing assistance, and providing trainings on soft and technical skills. Fida’s organization monitors and evaluates the quality of the products and provides consultation when necessary. Fida and her team have also produced manuals with step-by-step instructions on how to manage a certain business (e.g. beekeeping) successfully and produce high-quality products. Furthermore, Fida provides additional loans to women who want to expand their businesses. She has established an agreement with a local lending company to provide small and affordable loans

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to women that are also in line with the Islamic loan principles. The small-scale businesses that Fida initially sponsored were agricultural and rural in nature, such as beekeeping, sheep and cattle herding, and creating home gardens to produce crops and medicinal herbs. As a result of the success of the first phase of the initiative which ended in 2010, Fida received additional funding from the Canadian Agency for International Development, the Representative Office of Japan, the Representative Office of Germany, and the OPEC Fund and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development to incubate 555 women-run minibusinesses in 2011. As of 2011, Fida incubated over 1,200 projects and has managed US$2M in funding. Based on their evaluation of Fida’s initiative, the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development has pledged an additional US$750,000 to expand the business incubation model to Northern Palestine.

Through her personal experiences and those of her family and friends, Fida has been an avid community mobilizer and social activist helping to improve the socioeconomic conditions of women. Fida comes from an uneducated family who encouraged her to excel in her studies. During university (2001 to 2005), she studied primary education and business administration. She played a leading role in a variety of local grassroots organizations, and founded two citizen organizations at university. The first was the PCCDS, which raises awareness in communities and schools on the importance of teenagers finishing their education instead of beginning laborintensive jobs (for boys) or marrying early (for girls).

Fida’s approach is unique in that by incubating the women's businesses and receiving a share of the revenues, she is ensuring self-reliance and sustainability of her own initiative while providing the right support for women’s start-up businesses to succeed. Furthermore, she is providing training and rigid procedures and assessment to ensure that the products are of high-quality. Through a vast network of rural organizations, Fida ensures constant monitoring and evaluation of her benef iciaries’ projects. Furthermore, she relies on local, community-based organizations. This community-based approach adapts the business incubation model into a local cultural and social context. Within the next two to three years, Fida plans to establish Irada as a separate organization to focus purely on business incubation and to expand this model throughout the Arab World— including the Levant, North Africa, and the Gulf countries. By economically empowering different groups of women, Fida aims to empower 5,000 women in the next ten years, and thus contribute to elevating the economic status of women in the Arab World. Her goal is to become the business incubator for femaleled small businesses in the Arab World.

T H E P E R S O N Fida grew up in Hebron, Palestine. Hebron is a city in the West Bank that has been subjected to intense curfews, and tension from an Israeli settlement built in the middle of the city. Life is harsh and inhibited movement around the city has contributed to the extreme poverty. Growing up, Fida experienced harassment and intimidation from settlers on her way to and from school. She was particularly affected by an intense sixty day shutdown of Hebron following the massacre and attack on a popular mosque when she was 11-years-old. For sixty days, the community suffered from lack of access to food, supplies, and money and Fida saw her mother concerned about how to feed the family.

The Women’s Business Incubator teaches beekeeping during a practical training to women in Beit Ola.

In 2003 Fida founded the Network of Rural Development Committees in which she created linkages and synergies among development organizations scattered throughout the rural areas of Palestine, offering trainings, fundraising tips, and connections to donors. In her third year of university, Fida was offered a scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in Social Policy from Birzet University. In 2009 Fida co-founded PCCDS. Currently, Fida is the Financial and Administrative Director of PCCDS, and it is through PCCDS that she implements her business incubator initiative, Irada. Fida is also a finalist for the King Abdullah II Award for Youth Innovation and Achievement, funded by the King Abdullah II Fund for Development. Fida is a strong believer in local, grassroots-based approaches for solving the issue of unemployment and poverty because she believes communities must rely on their own strength and wisdom to bring about change. 

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DENMARK

Businesses

Citizen/Community Participation Rural Development Youth

Sascha Haselmayer is creating mechanisms to spread innovation into cities, improve governance, and radically alter the way cities deliver much-needed services. With the use of new technology application concepts—a city as a lab—he is mobilizing a new community focused on making cities more functional for citizens. Sascha is creating a new space for government, corporations, and public sectors to engage for larger social impact.

THE NEW IDEA Five percent of the world’s economy is tied up in procurements by local city governments. Innovation is growing in cities like San Francisco, although systems-based solutions are not scalable when the market is limited to single cities. Cites are under financial pressure and need to source low-cost systems solutions regardless of where they come from. Founder of Living Labs Global, Sascha has created a concept that promotes cities as tools for new applications of technology, and has built a bridge between these innovations and the decision makers in cities that procure them, creating a network of mavens and accountable officials. In addition to opening major markets to innovative companies, Sascha’s work is also supplying the intelligence and transparency needed by cities to invest less public money to bring about a greater social impact. Sascha provides “Showcase” service via online platforms, matchmaking, and an award program that highlights the newest ideas and helps execute them—providing support for winning pilot projects that allow cities to test new ideas without risk and building a fellowship of smart cities. He is expanding his work through a concept called Citymart.com a social networking, marketplace and online real-time intelligence tool. The platform allows professionals and citizens to tap into relevant solutions in the international market to make more informed decisions, build transparent and service-oriented public spending, provide public access to data, and increase accountability.

THE PROBLEM When advising cities on urban area development, Sascha realized they were excluding their own governance in their plans for transformation. City bodies asked businesses and the citizen sector to transform, but did not include any changes within government operation to improve transparency. Local governments are the most obscure of all government bodies and often the most corrupt. The nature of local politics 36

The marketplace between innovations and the cities that need them is murky. There are few clear channels for learning about new innovations, or clear paths to procure and implement them. Great ideas lay dormant and unimplemented because of lack of political will, or proven examples to encourage adoption. Studies show that only one out of ten cities is willing to innovate. It is typical for a company to pitch a solution to up to 1,000 cities over a ten-year period after inventing a successful solution to secure 130 leads and eleven contracts. This translates into a cost of €7,500,000 (US$10 million) for a small business just to find the best potential customers. For example, an Estonian group designed a mobile parking meter application, accessible on a cell phone. Five cities out of 1,000 bought the initiative, with many more choosing to independently replicate at a much greater cost and longer time to market. It is much easier to adopt an existing model than spend exponentially more to reinvent the wheel, yet designers lack a broad platform and public offering to market and share their work.

Sascha H aselmayer

is inherently risk-averse. Most political agendas are based on survival, rather solving problems. Cities operate on two cyclical election cycles: “Two years of action, two years of campaigning,” which by its nature limits innovation. Often, cities do not organize themselves around what is best for citizens. Improving efficiency in cities is a lofty goal, but in reality it can often cut jobs—and many of the middlemen whose jobs are in question are the same ones who sit on the city councils making such decisions.

Boris, a blind user of e-Adept System explains the life-transforming impact of the solution. It is just incredible that Boris can move freely through the city now. From Left: Peter Jeavons (Oracle), Dr. Juan Rada (Oracle), Sascha Haselmayer (Living Labs Global), Ake Lindstrom (Kista Science City), and Boris.

T H E S T R AT E G Y Sascha’s Living Labs Global is an independent, non-profit global association that is creating new ways to balance government, corporations, and citizen organizations (COs) to work together. Sascha matches cities—such as Barcelona, Stockholm, Cape Town, Lagos, Chicago, Mexico City and San Francisco—with social innovations, and provides a safe procurement and pilot

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process to facilitate implementation. Currently, Sascha is working with 50 global cities in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the U.S., and some 1,000 companies and research centers with new solutions to problems. Sascha has created a protocol that reduces transaction costs in innovation, and has designed a structure where cities can be laboratories for new ideas. He is working to replicate good ideas through a tech start-up based model, moving cities from a risk-averse and opaque strategy to one focused on the values that new technology can bring.

“To win the newly launched Living Lab Global Award, international technology and service solution providers will compete for twenty winning spots that will allow them to pilot their solutions in international cities, putting their effectiveness to the test.” —The Climate Group A value-add for both cities and innovators, Living Labs Global is utilizing Citymart.com, an online platform where innovators can promote their solution into a global tagged database to highlight new innovations. Sascha has also designed an award (which in 2011 received over 700 entries from 50 countries) which works with 30 cities and sponsor companies such as Oracle to find the best solutions for participating cities in their chosen categories. Categories, selected by the cities, include topics such as venture capital for African social entrepreneurs, automation of urban services, sensor networks, or green housing, with winners chosen by jury. Living Labs Global also designs “matchmaking events” to structure dialogue between cities and companies. The winning ideas are channeled into implementation. With Citymart.com, Sascha has created an online platform and process to find the most relevant innovations through a “calls for pilots.” City needs are presented to an international community and evaluated online. The solutions most relevant to the challenge are subsequently piloted in the city. This process allows typically risk-averse local governments to test a new program without political suicide. The pilots are free for the city, which removes the stigma of sending money to external partners and allows for true, unbiased evaluation. The focus is an entirely no pressure pre-procurement. Each pilot lasts three to six months, and many are adopted. An example of a successful pilot facilitated through Living Labs Global is the e-Adept system currently being piloted in Stockholm. The e-Adept system uses mobile technology to allow blind people to navigate cities independently, keeping a comprehensive database of roadwork and city maps, real-time data on traffic, and obstacles. Once an idea has been piloted successfully in one city, it opens the door for quick adoption in many others. The most successful example of this would be the bike rental programs first pioneered in Paris, which have since spread to cities around the world on the power of example in practice.

Citymart.com lies at the core of Sascha’s initiative to grow impact and move from 50 cities to 500 through online networking and market intelligence shared by cities and solution providers. The goal is to allow cities to be informed about relevant international solutions to inform understanding for investment, strategy, or regulatory decisions, and for companies to have real-time information on city needs, creating a “common protocol” to support public decision-making and allow great ideas to reach the market much faster. Citymart.com aims to have 500 subscribing cities and 5,000 subscribing companies (social and otherwise) as part of the network by 2013. Sascha sees this effort serving a similar connecting role as Facebook in the field.

THE PERSON A truly global citizen, raised in Germany, educated in the U.K., and based in Denmark and Barcelona, Sascha grew up traveling extensively and had a particular fascination with cities. At a young age he was encouraged not to accept authority, defy expectations, and “create his own answers to questions.” Bored with traditional school, Sascha learned to get away with challenging frameworks. In search of a path, he studied architecture in the U.K. because he thought it had the potential to change the world. He wanted to “have an impact on the way cities work,” and quickly realized that architecture in its traditional form was ill equipped to make lasting change. Sascha began to think about creating his “own discipline— architecture without the buildings,” managing to complete architecture school without actually designing a single building. Sascha had a particular early focus on extreme urban conflict situations such as Soweto, Caracas, and West Belfast, the “interesting and neglected” areas dominated by “do-gooder organizations” that did not tackle issues from a systemic perspective, “activism packaged around inflexible ideologies.” In each area he saw the issues of the citizens tied up with governance and lack of solutions—becoming a resistance fighter in Soweto also meant resisting education; large percentages of Caracas shantytown dwellers lacked legal rights. In a series of efforts in cities, Sascha proposed various new approaches—from artificially reducing land prices to building community centers in Liverpool to shifting priorities from upgrading buildings to upgrading citizen legal rights. He designed a prototype for reforming community shantytowns in Caracas that was featured at the World Habitat Conference. As a result of this work, Sascha co-founded a company, InterlaceInvent, which offered a consultancy service to cities looking for innovation, focusing on the shared interest of public and private leaders around growth and socioeconomic development. Through that work, Sascha developed strategies for innovation districts in Barcelona, Shanghai, Konstanz, and Bangkok, and advised companies like HP and various universities on investments for innovation campuses. In addition, he guided innovation strategies for the Government of Thailand, the European Union, and the Nordic Council. In this work, Sascha realized that cities lack the tools and skills to implement ideas, and created Living Labs Global.  37

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THE PROBLEM

C hristian Vieth GERMANY

Agriculture

Farmers/Sharecroppers Rural Development

Christian Vieth enables small and medium sized farms in Germany to realize their potential as creators of innovative smallholder agriculture through promoting and supporting extra familial hand-over of farms. Christian engages young agriculture entrepreneurs, established farmers, the academic world, and the wider public to build community impelled to drive this change.

THE NEW IDEA In Germany and beyond, small and midsized farms serve an essential role for biodiversity, organic food production, landscape management, economic stability of rural areas, and social integration of retired farmers. However, 70 percent of Germany’s 300,000 (mostly small) farms do not have a successor within their families. Currently, up to 10,000 small and midsized farms close per year, although many of them could provide decent income for one to two families. This shows that the underlying reasons are not economic but cultural, social, and educational. Christian, a business graduate and agricultural scientist, understands the complex set of issues lying beneath the handover issue and confronts it in a holistic and innovative way: he wants to change the paradigm of how farm succession works. Because he is well connected to institutions educating young people for careers in farming and agriculture, he can shape a future perspective on entrepreneurship in agriculture for an interested young generation. He also consults and educates farmers about the possibilities of succession without a family member involved—a revolutionary thought for many of them. Christian offers an online matchmaking platform, the first in Germany, that connects farmers with young agricultural entrepreneurs interested in taking over the daily work on the farm, while also enabling the predecessors to stay at the farm with a secure pension. Christian then takes these individuals through the process of taking over, educating and training them to understand their financial and legal options in a small farm takeover. Christian scales his model by training farm-take-over-coaches, as well as further deepening his education, networking, and lobbying efforts. Christian’s methodology serves to successfully promote the positive perspectives an entrepreneurial career in agriculture offers; while it also serves as a model to manage agricultural transition in many other European countries. 38

In developed countries, the agriculture sector went through a massive structural transformation throughout the last decades. Even though industrialized agriculture seems to dominate the food supply nowadays, the importance of smallholder agriculture remains. From an ecological point of view, small and midsized farms secure biodiversity, enhance organic farming, and preserve the fertility of soils and natural ground water. In addition to that, these farms are an indispensable part of every community in rural areas, providing local and trustworthy food supply, income for families, and social infrastructure, i.e. as a meeting point for local communities. Economically speaking, small and midsized farms bring economic stability to rural areas by diversifying suppliers with a variety of products, and decreasing dependence on large producers focused on single products. More than that, these farms can produce as cost effectively as industrialized agriculture, considering external costs and achievements in nature. The economic, ecological, and social importance of small and midsized farms is also recognized by the EU as an integral focus of its Common Agricultural Policy.

“…Christian’s goal is to provide 1,200 farms a year and thus keep the agriculture and rural areas alive.” —Jacqueline Kleinhans, HNA.de Even though economically healthy, 70 percent of all farmers above 45-years-old (187,000 in total) do not have a secure succession for their farm. Traditionally, a farm is passed on to the farmer’s children, which still is the most known option but often fails because of different career interests of children or conf licts within the family. In addition, many children who took farms over from their parents did so out of obligation, not passion for the field. Other models, like the extra familial hand over Christian proposes, are almost not recognized today. In most cases, a farm is sold and closed down or bought by an industrial agriculture business (roughly 10,000 per year) when no successor is found. The loss of a farm affects the surrounding communities in many respects—individually as well as systematically— resulting in a decline in quality of life, supply of foods, tradition, and cultural life. On the other hand, students of agriculture sciences (approximately 20,000 in Germany) have a strong interest in starting an agriculture business and/or takeover of a farm; 90 percent of those interested want to farm organically. This is a chance for Germany’s agriculture sector to strengthen innovation and allow the transformation to a competitive, sustainable, cost-effective, and socially responsible agriculture in Germany. The entry into agriculture business is extremely difficult for young entrepreneurs, especially when they do not have a farming family background. Many of them do not have access or the needed capital to takeover an existing farm or start a new one. Also, there are no start-up programs (education, consulting, or process facilitation) for the agricultural sector as there are in other sectors. There is

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great potential for a modern, organic agricultural system that raises awareness for food production and consumption as well as strengthens rural areas economically and socially, but it needs a movement to bring it about.

T H E S T R AT E G Y Christian creates access to small and midsized agriculture for young people with entrepreneurial spirit, which paves the way for innovation and progress in the sector. He promotes a paradigm and structural shift for small and midsized agriculture in academics, politics, and society—following his guiding thought that, “New farmers is what this country needs.” Each year more than 1,200 economically healthy small and midsized farms can be saved from closure through Christian’s activities.

In 2011 Christian established the first training course outside of a university for professional systemic farm-take-over-coaches. More than sixty people showed interest and applied to the first twelve spots offered. The course lasts one year and will create a new profession in Germany. Christian wants to establish systemic farm-take-over-coaches in every main agricultural area in Germany. They provide information for older farmers and young individuals about extrafamilial hand over, including advice throughout the hand over process. In spring 2013, another sixteen spots were offered and Christian plans to expand the offer due to the high demand.

Christian is keeping beautiful old farms from closing by finding young people eager to maintain and farm them while learning from the owners.

To increase the number of extrafamilial farm takeovers, he set up a matchmaking platform which connects farmers who want to hand over their farm with young agriculture entrepreneurs. Offering important information and support, this is more than a search and offer database. Most important in this process is not the missing ability to finance a farm takeover, but to open perspectives about different available possibilities. This is where

information and support come in. When a farm take-over takes place, two models are usually used: (i) the farm is given to extrafamiliar successors as a gift. This is something possible within family and also to a third party. With the gift comes a contract, in which different things are agreed upon: right of abode for the elder farmers, financial support for the elder farmers, sometimes also certain methods of operations, and the commitment of the successors to care for the elder when they are in the need may be included. (Christian calls this “living the intergenerational contract.”) This model is applied in about 50 percent of the takeovers Christian accompanies. The main motivation is a value-based decision and for farmers to be able to stay on their farm, and see it prosper with a new generation. (ii) Different models of selling and leasing the farm and land are worked out— depending on the size of the farm and the situation of both elder farmer and successor. This usually requires an average of $350 to $400k, which is creatively put together by loans, shareholding, and other means. Christian and his team facilitate how to create the best model. Currently, Christian accompanies more than sixty takeover processes. (If he reaches a success rate of 90 percent he is happy.) The intensity varies from small consultations to collaborations over years. With his help in all aspects of a farm hand over (legal, economic, and social) more and more farmers are considering an extrafamilial hand solution. This provides them the opportunity to sustain the role their farm plays in their community, pass on their knowledge, and continue living on their farm even if it is operated by a new owner. This also allows older farmers to gently transition their business to young people outside their family interested in agriculture as a career. Christian also strengthens the education for agriculture entrepreneurs in academics. Together with the two main faculties for agricultural sciences in Germany, he created a hands-on seminar about agricultural start-ups and the takeover of farms for students. Christian wants to expand this seminar, with an additional start-up consultancy covering legal, financial, and social aspects for all agricultural faculties in Germany. Christian also makes his knowledge accessible, i.e. through a guide, Founding and Conserving Farms, which is available online. Christian reaches more than 600 farmers through 25 to 30 seminars and consultations (8,000 to 10,000 visitors a month on Hofgruender.de, 150 to 200 responses from younger farmers to farm adds on the platform, about 15 long [1-1.5h each] and about 100 short (15 to 20 minutes each) consultations a month and about 6 to 8 onsite consultancies a month), as well as 150 to 200 students through his teaching assignments each year. Christian has served as a catalyst for hundreds of successful extrafamilial hand overs and agriculture start-ups throughout the years. Through the set-up of his organization, which Christian is now building, his work will be financially sustainable, ensuring through governance structures that the social mission of his work is upheld. Christian’s next steps are both to professionalize the system he created and build up a solid infrastructure necessary to scale. Realizing the huge potential for innovative and well-functioning 39

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smallholder agriculture through extrafamilial takeover, Christian wants to then tackle structural change on the federal, national, and EU levels in the future, e.g. promoting support for agriculture start-ups as an essential part of development policies and changing the allocation of set-up premiums for young farmers. Christian is also working on a campaign to promote a new and positive reputation of agricultural entrepreneurs in cooperation with one of Germany’s largest retailers to broaden public awareness.

Jane Weru K E N YA

Housing Underserved Communities

THE PERSON Raised in a family of winegrowers, Christian wanted to become a farmer though his parents did not see a future in a farming career and urged him to choose otherwise. For Christian school was “more of a hobby.” He was active on local farms as well as in youth groups, showing his entrepreneurial spirit early on. After a commercial apprenticeship he enrolled at one of the agriculture faculties in Germany. When something did not work out, Christian found a solution. For example, the university decided not to hand out lecture copies anymore; so Christian convinced fellow students to help him type the lectures and invested in a copy machine to distribute them. With the proceeds from these initial sales, he set up a copy shop that earned even more money for the student association. During Christian’s studies he quickly recognized that similar to himself, fellow students had great interest in cultivating their own farms after graduation but had little access to information about taking over a farm or starting their own agriculture business. When the only relevant lecture was cancelled, he asked his professor to let him teach it the next semester. Christian realized his ability to teach and motivate others, to understand and meet the needs of his fellow students, and his passion to open the way to agriculture for young entrepreneurs. Feeling both at home in academics, economics, and agriculture, Christian is a well-known and respected expert. In cooperation with key players in the agriculture sector in Germany, such as the German Federation of Rural Youth and agricultural universities, Christian has published dozens of articles, developed curricula, and initiated seminars which have reached hundreds of students, farmers, and politicians. Christian lectures at the two main faculties for agriculture in Germany which are filled with examples of young agriculture entrepreneurs who made their way with the support of Hofgründer.de. With his analytical skills, Christian understands the political frameworks which need to be changed for a multifunctional, lively, sustainable, and innovative agriculture in Germany and in other European countries. At the same time, he takes the emotional side of handing over a farm and the social aspect of smallholder agriculture for a community into consideration. Christian is one of the first experts in Germany to draw such a holistic picture of agriculture, considering ecological, economic, and social aspects. 

Urban Development

About 71 percent of Kenya’s urban population lives in overcrowded slums on the periphery of major cities. These slum dwellers face poor and unhygienic living conditions and are frequently threatened with forced eviction. Jane Weru is working to organize these slum dwellers and empower them with the technical and financial resources needed to prevent eviction and improve their living conditions.

THE NEW IDEA Jane has become an organizer and spokesperson for Kenya’s slum dwellers—a population that faces a history of negative stereotypes, poor living conditions, and limited opportunities—and has created the organizational infrastructure and tools needed to empower them to break out of an unrelenting cycle of poor living conditions, forced eviction, and poverty. Jane is formalizing the slum dwellers efforts to prevent eviction and upgrade the slum infrastructure and improve living conditions. She has also created a network that supports these efforts by providing technical expertise and assistance with regard to land tenure and eviction negotiations; savings and credit management; construction design and planning; and mapping and enumeration. Some of the tools created by this network have gone on to be used by the government in other projects. Jane is also unlocking creative financial solutions to finance these communityled slum upgrading initiatives and disproving the commonly held belief that slum dwellers are risky debtors. Lastly, she is leveraging commonly held moral and religious beliefs in Kenya to make the challenge of housing for the urban poor a concern for all Kenyan citizens.

THE PROBLEM In spite of rapid urban population growth, the Kenyan government has failed to meet the acute need for land settlement. As a result, the number and size of informal settlements around Kenya’s urban centers have ballooned, with millions living in high-density slums without basic infrastructure, access to financial services or secure land tenure. The origins of these slums can be traced back to Kenyan independence, when travel restrictions on natives to urban areas were lifted. The allure of employment opportunities and the promise of a new and better life in the city drove an

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unprecedented wave of rural-urban migration. The government’s land adjudication efforts to accommodate its landless citizens did not meet the demand for urban settlement. This led to the formation of informal settlements, which have grown into the slums scattered all over Kenya today. The urban population and size of slums continue to grow— Nairobi’s population (a mere 1.2 million in 1948) has risen from three to four million people since 1999. 60 percent of these four million people live in slums that cover only 1.5 percent of Nairobi’s land. Kibera, the largest slum in Kenya, has a household concentration of over 250 per hectare and is home to an estimated population of half a million people (growing rapidly at 6 percent per annum). In addition to increasing size and density, slums lack infrastructure and basic services, such as sanitation, electricity, and water. An estimated 94 percent of all slum dwellers do not have access to toilets or fresh water; and the child mortality rate is 150 out of every 1,000 (15 percent, compared to 0.6 percent for Nairobi as a whole). It is no surprise that the lack of basic infrastructure and services has led to disease, crime, and social unrest—factors that define the negative perception that most people have of slums today.

“Jane’s explicit focus…on the most marginalized community in Kenya—landless slum dwellers—and by the way [she] has developed a philanthropic mechanism to support transformational efforts by that community.” —Alliance magazine

enough. Something had to be done to prevent the evictions from happening in the first place. Although slum dwellers tried to resist evictions by uprooting construction material put in place by contractors (employed by private landowners), their actions were haphazard and mostly ineffective. She realized then, that such actions could gain legitimacy, command respect and deliver better results if slum dwellers where organized into a formal institution. In collaboration with the church and other civil society organizations, she united the slum dwellers into savings groups under one federation. The Federation— which would later grow into a movement of more than 60,000 members from slums in eleven districts around Kenya—was able to retain possession of all slum settlements that were facing eviction and whose court cases Kituo Cha Sheria had lost. Jane has also found a way to access the technical expertise needed to improve the living conditions in slums. It became obvious to Jane that technical support was needed as Federation members began thinking beyond securing land tenure to slum upgrading. In response to this need, Jane created the Pamoja Trust, a nonprofit support agency for the Kenya Slum Dwellers Federation. The Trust is a network of professionals that includes architects, urban planners, engineers, lawyers, advocates, and accountants. Its mandate is to provide technical support and advice to the Federation in relation to negotiations with government and private landowners; mapping and enumeration; slum upgrading; and financial education. For example, the Trust (on behalf of the Federation) negotiated with the government for US$2 million toward the relocation and upgrade of over 20,000 Kibera households that were facing eviction. The trust developed the satellite mapping and enumeration tools that were used in the project. The government has adopted these tools for use in similar exercises in the future.

Despite their size, slums are not recognized as residential areas and are almost universally represented as unoccupied land on maps of urban centers. People cram into these marginal lands with little effort by government to plan or provide services for them. Additionally, without secure and recognized land tenure, slum dwellers are extremely vulnerable to eviction. The increasing number of evictions from informally occupied land, has resulted in increasing poverty, homelessness, and desperation. If left unchecked, this could result in civil unrest of epic proportions. The potentially far-reaching effects of this issue make it— and the need for solutions to it—the responsibility of all Kenyans. The attitudes of financial institutions (that brand slum dwellers as risky) and society (which perceives them as dangerous) must change because slum settlements, according to Jane, are inextricably tied to urbanization and represent one of the most important challenges of modern day society.

T H E S T R AT E G Y Jane established Muungano wa Wanavijiji (meaning, Slum Dwellers Federation) to unify and formalize slum dwellers efforts to prevent eviction. While working as a legal aid officer at Kituo Cha Sheria (a legal aid service for victims of forceful eviction), Jane quickly realized that resolving cases after eviction was not

Jane enjoys some time with women in the community.

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As the work of the Federation and Pamoja Trust continued to grow, so too did the aspirations of the slum dwellers, but without financing beyond their savings, they were not in a position to meaningfully improve their living conditions. Banks, the primary source of financing for real estate development, saw this group as risky and would not touch it. It became increasingly apparent to Jane that a creative solution was needed and in 2010, she started Akiba Mashinani Trust—a non-profit financial facility for the Kenya Slum Dwellers Federation. Akiba Mashinani is committed to strengthening the capacity of slum dwellers’ savings groups toward the attainment of improved housing. It is also the only financial institution in Kenya providing slum dwellers with financing for real estate development. Despite the need for such an organization, Jane faced nearly insurmountable resistance from every bank she approached for a loan to finance Akiba Mashinani. She realized that she would have to find an alternative solution to capitalize her new endeavor. Jane partnered with a leading local development bank to set-up a profit-making real estate project, the profits from which would be ploughed back into Akiba Mashinani. This financing arm is called Makao Mashinani. Jane was soon approached by a group of 2,000 slum dwellers for a construction loan of US$1 million, which they paid back in one year through their group savings. This completely dispels the common belief that slum dwellers are a risky demographic, which is held by traditional financial institutions. Jane continues to seek alternative financing options for Akiba Mashinani and is currently in talks with the government to convince them to create a housing fund for the urban poor. This, she believes will enable her to bring her interest rate down from 10 percent to between 1 and 3 percent (compared to traditional banks and even MFIs which currently charge interest rates of at least 18 percent). Jane prepared a special project to take advantage of the 49th Anniversary of Kenya as an independent nation, which took place on the 12th December 2012. The next seven years hold a biblical significance according to Leviticus 25: 8-13, which says that the 49th year heralds a time where land will be released to the poor. Kenya’s population is predominantly Christian—a fact that Jane is leveraging to make the challenge of urban slums a concern for all Kenyans. She is using the media and the church to run a national campaign targeted at the common citizen, private landowners, businesses, the government, and all Kenyans, appealing to them to act in accordance with these biblical principles (generally accepted by most Kenyans) and release their hold over land occupied by slum dwellers so as to accord them security of land tenure. The focus for this campaign starts in Mukuru Kwa Njenga, a slum that is home to some 200,000 people, just 10 km outside of Nairobi. The focus on Mukuru is part of a bid to save over 50,000 households that face forced eviction by speculative private landowners who are looking to profit from the astronomical returns that this land could generate.

and that everybody had the obligation to ensure that it succeeded. Therefore, between school terms, Jane and her siblings would take turns managing the till and other aspects of the business. When she graduated from the University of Nairobi with a Law degree, Jane started her career in law as an associate in Korogocho a pro bono legal service, during which time, she met a Catholic priest who worked and lived in Korogocho (meaning rubbish) slum during the height of violent demolitions that characterized the 1990s. Jane had never been to a slum and had (like most people) been conditioned to believe that it is a vile and dangerous environment. Against her better judgment, she yielded to repeated requests from the priest that she go to the slum and provide legal aid to members of his church.

Jane’s organization also tries to ensure that all those who are less able within the community are catered for—old people, disabled people, households headed by single mothers or children as a consequence of HIV/AIDS.

THE PERSON

Jane was not prepared for what she found in the slum. People were being forcefully evicted and rendered homeless by ruthless private landowners; and the government was doing nothing to help them. The despair and hopelessness she saw moved her deeply to the point that she started joining slum dwellers on overnight vigils to lend emotional support to victims of forced eviction. She saw the evicted occupants of demolished households try to fight back by uprooting construction poles planted by contractors. Jane became so invested that she left her job to join another legal aid center called Kituo Cha Sheria, which provided legal support to victims of forced evictions. She started as a legal aid officer in 1994, and was appointed Chief Executive in 1995. The years between 1995 and 1998 were characterized by violent and indiscriminate demolitions, forced evictions, petrol bombs being thrown into her office, and numerous court cases filed by Kituo Cha Sheria on behalf of victims. The court system fronted the notion that private land was sacrosanct and that land titles, many of which had been issued irregularly, could not be revoked once issued. Kituo Cha Sheria consequently lost all of its cases.

Jane was born and raised in a small Kenyan town called Karatina as the second born of ten children. Her parents eked out a living by running a wholesale shop, which also served as a training ground for Jane and her siblings. It was drummed into all ten children that the wholesale shop was the responsibility of the entire family

This is when Jane realized that the problem was a lot bigger than what Kituo Cha Sheria alone could handle. There was need for more to be done and thus, Jane embarked on her 17-year journey to transform the face of slums and stand with Kenya’s slum dwellers to restore their dignity and housing. 

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THE PROBLEM

N attaya

B oonpakdee THAILAND

Families Gender Equality Reproductive Health

Nattaya Boonpakdee is prompting mainstream Thai society to talk about sexual health and rethink gender roles in order to create large-scale behavioral change. By eliminating sexual stereotypes and misinformation among at-risk groups, their communities and service providers, she is enabling people to make more informed choices in a supportive environment.

THE NEW IDEA Gender equalit y is recognized in public settings, but heteronormative gender roles dominate Thai culture and remain the root cause of many sexual health problems in Thailand. Recognizing that sexual health problems are inseparable from cultural norms, Nattaya is creating a pervasive cultural shift to change sexual health behavior, as a preventive approach to sexually-transmitted diseases, unplanned pregnancy, and sexual violence. She founded the Women’s Health Advocacy Foundation (WHAF) to identify leaders of behavioral change in strategic cultural settings and augment their impact. In collaboration with these partners, Nattaya is developing a collection of adaptable strategies to push people to think outside “the gender box,” encouraging Thais to think outside traditional aggressive male and submissive female gender roles. Nattaya’s organization provides seed funding, continued mentorship, and networking to accelerate the development of new conversations and behavioral changes. WHAF has established camps for parents and grandparents who raise teenagers, public high school theater clubs focused on peer-to-peer sex education, and house visits to reach stay-at-home wives. Nattaya is working with healthcare providers at public hospitals to integrate existing services and establish a referral system, resulting in a more supportive environment for women and youth at One Stop Crisis Centers, a government program implemented in 2006 at every public hospital in Thailand. As a result of Nattaya’s work, an estimated 10 million people in 40 provinces across Thailand are changing behaviors and receiving accurate information about sexual health, thus able to safeguard their own sexual health and that of others. Nattaya is developing a facilitating environment for these behavioral changes to spread nationally, through national media campaigns, reallocation of local government budgets, and legislative changes.

Sexual health problems in Thailand have been addressed in a disparate manner more focused on cures rather than prevention. Victims of sexual abuse are provided emergency shelters, but no long-term care. People with sexually transmitted diseases receive drugs, but no adequate education. Preventive care for sexual health has had limited success, due to societal definitions of propriety. For instance, sex education does not reach most young Thai people, who are presumed by society to be sexually inactive. As a result, young people have the highest HIV transmission rate of all Thais, and their transmission rates of other sexually transmitted diseases are also on the rise. In Thai society, it is improper for women to discuss issues related to their reproductive health. In contrast, boys are encouraged at a very young age to talk about their reproductive organs and their sexuality. As a result, women receive little or inaccurate information about sexual health and are unconfident in asserting their reproductive and sexual rights. This results in unplanned pregnancy and increased rates of sexual violence against women. Studies show that most Thai women let their male partners decide when to have sexual intercourse and when to have children. A 2006 study of Thai women with unplanned pregnancies found that almost 30 percent of women became pregnant because they lacked information about birth control, while 20 percent of women did not use birth control because they were under the impression they would not get pregnant. A 2012 study by the Institute for Population and Social Research revealed that two-thirds of Thai women are coerced by partners into having sexual intercourse for the first time. This power imbalance is also reflected in widespread social acceptance of sexual violence towards women. It is common in the news, for example, to hear law enforcement officials and reporters blame female rape victims for dressing seductively. Women from poor socio-economic backgrounds are at greater risk of unplanned pregnancies and face serious consequences because of them. Various social institutions further punish women for the power imbalance in sexual relationships. Many government agencies and most private sector employers have internal regulations that ban employing unmarried women who are pregnant, with the penalty of dismissal for those already employed. High schools also scorn pregnant students, and either suspend the student or force her to drop out. Meanwhile, male students are not punished for jointly causing unplanned pregnancies. The Thai legal institution further limits the options for a woman with unplanned pregnancy. Abortion is illegal, except in the case of rape or when the abortion is deemed medically necessary by a health professional because of the mother’s physical or mental health problems. Among Thai healthcare providers, it is common practice to discourage women from having abortions even under circumstances which make the abortion legal. Nurses and therapists at rape crisis centers say they encourage rape victims to continue their pregnancies, because abortion is considered

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more sinful than rape. Moreover, rape victims who apply for legal abortions must endure a lengthy and complex procedure of paperwork and regulations, often to find that their requests are denied. Some hospitals refuse to provide an abortion until the lawsuit against the rapist receives a verdict.

Nattaya’s team creates and refines communication techniques to discuss sexuality within the family and community. Above, village leaders practice their communication skills.

Without suff icient information or proper access to sexual health services, Thai women seldom make important choices about their own sexual health, until it is too late. Most of the estimated 300,000 abortions each year are unsafe and occur outside hospitals, causing some 50,000 women each year to enter hospitals with infections and other health complications as a result. Thailand also has one of the highest death rates in the world from abortion. Thai women continue to suffer from poor sexual health, and continue to be blamed for their suffering.

T H E S T R AT E G Y Understanding that sexual health is difficult to address due to cultural norms, Nattaya has developed a mechanism to generate new conversations and behavioral changes at an unprecedented scale, while maintaining the sensitivity of her programs, which are customized to each target population and cultural setting. In 2002 Nattaya founded the Women’s Health Advocacy Foundation to identify leaders of behavioral change and create a facilitating environment to broaden their impact. Nattaya works closely with community leaders to develop the most effective communication techniques to dispel myths and deliver accurate sexual health information to each target population. For instance, has developed a series of conversation starters for families that help parents discuss the qualities their children look for in relationships. Nattaya has supported these parents to organize the Network of Families who Talk about Sex and provides

communication techniques and technical information, enabling these parents to encourage other parents to do the same. Nattaya’s team has created and refined these communication techniques in close collaboration with her various constituencies and with the support of cultural institutions and education experts. When working with teenagers, Nattaya asks young men and women to draw their faces, then to draw their reproductive organs. This exercise is meant to illustrate the lack of information regarding their sexual health. Nattaya’s organization tackles this issue by providing seed funding and mentorship for youth to invent new communication programs. For example, WHAF contributes 1,000 baht (about US$33) for each high school student group that wants to set up a “Healthy Sexuality Club,” which produces skits and provides peer-to-peer counseling about sexual health. WHAF holds training workshops for club leaders and supervising teachers, while introducing them to similar efforts in other schools. In working to create behavioral changes among adult women, Nattaya works with government community health volunteers and informal communication agents, such as owners of barber shops and general stores. She is giving these local leaders the tools to dispel discriminatory beliefs that lead women to endanger their own sexual health. Nattaya is helping them combat misconceptions about women’s own sexual organs, dispel the beliefs that a good woman lets her husband make decisions about sexual intercourse and abolish the notion that sexual and domestic abuse is a normal occurrence between partners. Nattaya targets lower-income communities in rural and peri-urban areas, where sexual health problems are more visible. She engages community health volunteers, who help spread Nattaya’s message to the household level. These partnerships allow her to leverage existing community health resources including health facilities and equipment at village health centers and public health databases. As a result of her successful collaboration with community health volunteers, some local governments are beginning to allocate annual municipality health budgets to support Nattaya’s programs, such as informal community education programs at the household level to prevent sexually-transmitted diseases, unplanned pregnancy, and sexual violence. In addition to enabling at-risk groups to make more informed decisions about their sexual health, Nattaya works with health service providers to change strategies and create a more supportive environment. In 2010, Nattaya supported leaders at the Health Ministry to begin a pilot program with the One Stop Crisis Center. They identified five pilot hospitals and all relevant staff—doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, and social workers of nearby emergency shelters—and is now training them to offer options counseling, which provides choices and support for women with unplanned pregnancies, often the result of unprotected intercourse or rape. Most importantly, Nattaya is changing the way Crisis Center staff converse with their clients. Nurses now say they understand that these women are not “bad women.” Psychiatrists say they listen more and judge less. Social workers say they are

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more willing to provide comprehensive support for these women. Doctors are more willing to perform abortions, in cases where they are legal. As a result of Nattaya’s efforts, 86 percent of women who enter the One Stop Crisis Center receive follow-up care and counseling. Of the women who choose to continue their unplanned pregnancy, 79 percent register for prenatal care and of the women who choose and qualify for abortion, as many as 38 percent have abortions at the same hospitals. This is a marked success, as most public hospitals are reluctant to perform legal abortions, even for women who are victims of rape. The remaining 62 percent of women who seek an abortion are referred by hospital staff to other services providing safe abortions by qualified health professionals. To prevent unsafe abortion, Nattaya has linked Crisis Center staff with other services and informal community networks, which helps identify women with unplanned pregnancies. She has helped to establish lines of communication between the gynecology, antenatal care, and psychiatry departments of these pilot hospitals with local emergency shelters, village health centers, pharmacies and guidance counselors at local schools. Even though Nattaya’s work with the Crisis Centers has had profound impact on the women who enter the Crisis Center (on average 37 every day), she sees room for incredible growth. In the near future, Nattaya plans to replicate this model of service improvement at all 253 Crisis Centers in every province in Thailand.

“Nattaya is prompting mainstream Thai society to talk about sexual health and rethink gender roles in order to create large-scale behavioral change.” —Health and Fitness World Report To accelerate the spread of her work, Nattaya has developed a facilitating environment on the national level. She is working with an advertisement agency to design national media campaigns. The first campaign, which began in 2011, encourages parents to talk to their children about sexual health and has appeared on national television as well as on banners in community markets. In addition, she has pushed for a new law on sexual and reproductive health, to guarantee basic rights and access to services such as allowing pregnant youth to attend school during pregnancy and after delivery, allowing unmarried pregnant women to remain in their jobs, providing birth control information for unmarried women, options counseling for women with unplanned pregnancy, and temporary shelters for women with unplanned pregnancy to carry to term without family and societal pressure. The Ministry of Health has offered to host the draft legislation, which is now being reviewed by the National Judicial Council. Nattaya is also collaborating with health professionals, academics, and legal experts to advocate changes to the existing law on abortion— namely to provide clearer criteria to distinguish legal and illegal

abortion and to encourage all public hospitals to provide safe abortion services.

THE PERSON Nattaya was brought up in an extended family, where she witnessed gender inequality spanning across three generations. Her grandmother dropped out of school in grade 4 in order to work and send her older brother through military school. Despite her grandmother’s complaints about the unequal value placed on sons over daughters, she continued to treat her own daughter differently from her sons. Nattaya’s mother perpetuated the cycle and applied the same unequal standards to Nattaya and her brother, by setting different expectations about proper manners, careers, and overall definitions of success.

Youth participate in a workshop to learn about how a woman’s body works.

Nattaya resisted her mother’s urging to pursue a nursing career which her mother deemed a steady and reliable career path for women, and instead studied anthropology and worked as a researcher on human trafficking of Thai women. Nattaya chose this path over nursing because she wanted to focus on solving structural social problems. She assisted women in preparing court testimony against their traffickers. Reading field notes and witnessing first-hand hundreds of cases in which women were continually abused, Nattaya resolved to find a more systemic approach to addressing these problems. She believes that sexual violence is not rooted in individual cruelty, but stems from a society that permits such cruelty. In founding the Women’s Health Advocacy Foundation, Nattaya is determined to improve the health of all sexes, while instilling respect for humanity beyond the limitations of gender roles. 

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A sher H asan GLOBAL

Communities Health Care Delivery Underserved Communities

Starting in Pakistan, Asher Hasan is providing quality, private health insurance to low-income workers in the emerging economies through an approach that distributes cost and social responsibility among several stakeholders affiliated with lowincome beneficiaries.

The health insurance industry is experiencing a period of double-digit growth, but currently health insurance products are commercially designed for more affluent corporate beneficiaries. No private health insurance company is catering to the low-income segment, which represents 96 percent of the insurable market. In Pakistan, Naya Javeen’s first market, private healthcare is exclusively available to the corporate elite and employees of large multinationals—approximately 700,000 people have affordable access by being employed by these institutions. However, at least one-third of the country’s 170 million people earn less than $3/ day and have little or no access to quality healthcare. Moreover, more than 99 percent of health expenses for the working poor are incurred out of pocket, and poor families spend anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of their total income on healthcare. Healthcare expenditures drive many to borrow from predatory loan sharks who charge exorbitant interest, and some low-income families ultimately fall into a vicious cycle of indebtedness.

THE NEW IDEA In South Asia, where quality health insurance is available only to the wealthy, Asher is leveraging corporate, academic, large citizen organizations (COs), and small medium enterprise resources to finance low-cost, private health insurance for the working poor. His flagship plan, one of several he is currently testing, reaches domestic staff and shares costs across three payers: The well-to-do employer of the corporation, the well-to-do corporate executive and the informal domestic worker of the corporate executive who is the end beneficiary of the health plan—a maid, driver, cook, or guard. At present, the low-income beneficiaries are predominantly located in the large metropolises of Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad but there are now almost 4,000 children from a rural, interior part of Sindh Province that are also covered. Asher’s Karachi-based team negotiates exclusive pooled-risk agreements with insurance underwriters and leverages the underwriters’ existing nationwide networks of quality, inpatient/ER-trauma healthcare delivery systems. With over 10,000 people now enrolled, he aims to extend affordable access to quality catastrophic healthcare to at least 320,000 people in India and Pakistan by 2015, achieving at least a 70 percent retention rate among plan participants as the effort advances.

THE PROBLEM Medical catastrophes often precipitate generational poverty among millions of vulnerable people across much of the developing world. Despite South Asia’s rapidly growing economies, public expenditure on healthcare remains an abysmal 2 to 3 percent of total GDP spending. Direct access to quality healthcare is too expensive for low-income people, and there is not an expectation, culture or familiarity among this group to be insured. Low-income families in urban centers are particularly at-risk of being trapped in poverty and indebtedness at the behest of healthcare expenses or catastrophic medical events as the cost of living and urban pollution/sanitation problems are much greater. If the primary breadwinner experiences medical trauma or loss of life, the whole family is left with no income, often leading to the children leaving school in order to work. 48

Naya Javeen visited SOS Children's Village, an NGO-run school in Malir, to complete the enrollment of about 250 of the school's students and 100 resident mothers and staff into the Naya Javeen Health Plan.

Informal domestic workers are often confronted with significant complications—linked to culture, power, class—around asking employers for financial help when crisis strikes. Nevertheless, domestic workers will often ask their employers for a loan when faced with a financial emergency, and employers of domestic workers often ultimately bear the f inancial burden of their employee’s health crises. It makes more sense, Asher believes, for an employer to restructure this ad hoc unpredictable expenditure into a streamlined, pre-defined investment into their employee’s health. Low-income workers cannot rely on the public health system which is free in principle, but in reality is accessible only through bribes and is dilapidated, corrupt, under-resourced, and overwhelmed.

T H E S T R AT E G Y To extend quality care to low-income clients, Asher is scaling demand for private healthcare services through several approaches that share costs across a few payers affiliated with the low-income plan beneficiary. While he is testing out several approaches, his model focuses on domestic workers affiliated with the only segment of the population that is currently insured: Employees of corporations and large multinational agencies. These domestic

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employees number about 14 million in Pakistan and represent a promising initial market for Asher’s micro-health insurance model and approach. Because they are closely affiliated with the country’s wealthy and powerful, Asher also sees opportunities to guide a larger system change by shifting the mindset of the wealthy who also formulate policy change in the country.

“Naya Javeen, which means ‘new life’ in Urdu and Hindi, offers a financial safety net in Pakistan, where approximately 30 million people—one-sixth of the population—work in the urban labor market and live on the edge of poverty. They are one health emergency away from losing their homes or requiring their children to work instead of attending school.” —Forbes Asher’s organization, Naya Javeen, distributes responsibility and cost across three payers: The wealthy employer of domestic staff, the company that is the parent employer, and the domestic worker who is the plan beneficiary. Naya Javeen’s underwriters have developed a matrix which computes the cost based on three considerations: (i) group size (ii) risk classification/profile of members, and (iii) annual coverage limits/benefit design. They typically have a single market price (the price Naya Javeen charges its customers) with discounting in rare circumstances. To give one example: Unilever has 800 officers/managers in Pakistan, with 15,000 workers associated with these officers as maids, cooks, drivers, and the dependents of these informal workers. The plan is structured so that Unilever employees pay 80 percent of the insurance premium for coverage ($1.20/month ideally through auto-payroll deductions); Unilever pays 15 cents per month and also cascades the health plan to its officers/managers; and the domestic workers themselves pay 15 cents per month. By leveraging these centralized distribution systems, Asher has reduced marketing costs as well as minimized the cost of distribution/collection that has been a barrier to sustainability in the micro-insurance industry. Asher is creating new business development opportunities for its partner underwriters not merely by introducing them to a new market of low-income insurance seekers but also by introducing them to a new market of middle- and high-income insurance seekers. For each client Naya Javeen’s underwriting partners target in the corporate, academic, CO and SME sector, a proportion of their workforce and management are middle- and high-income. This middle and high-income population buys insurance plans for themselves and their families at commercial rates. Consequently, Naya Javeen’s under writing partners—Allianz-EFU, IGI Insurance, Pak-Qatar Takaful and AsiaCare—tap into a business opportunity by working with the model. Currently 72 percent of the client pool, many of them recently enrolled, is in the citizen sector (low-income staff/families and CO-run school kids); 10 percent of the pool is small and medium enterprise clients, 13 percent is multinational corporations (MNC) and domestic corporations; and 5 percent is academic. Asher expects that over time this will equilibrate to the following: CO: 20 percent; corporate/MNC: 30 percent; SME: 30 percent; academic:

20 percent. At present they have an 80 percent renewal rate but this is still a relatively small sample size. To date, Asher has used his national media partners in radio and TV only sparingly to raise awareness of micro-health insurance. However, he plans to pursue a national-scale media campaign that will help raise awareness of the need to provide lowincome employees and their families with affordable access to quality healthcare. Asher wants to run this as a revenue-sharing arrangement with media partners that will require no financial investment from Naya Javeen. Naya Javeen has expanded to twenty-four team members, tending to four main functional areas: Business development (enrolling beneficiaries), member services (that serve the needs of their lowincome members—the MS team includes four full-time in-house doctors and one dentist), corporate development (media/PR/ communications, organizational learning and development and community mobilization) and Business Solutions (IT, business analytics, logistics, and administration) The team has marshaled and sustained significant pro bono support in accounting/auditing (U.S. accountants are KPMG and PK auditors are E&Y) and legal (Weil, Gotshal & Manges). In ten years, Asher wants to have established two to three additional markets: Potentially Mexico, South Africa and one other country in Africa, and additional markets in India, UAE, Philippines, and Indonesia. He also is looking at the inclusion of a dental and vision plan to augment the core health plan.

THE PERSON Asher was born and raised in England until the age of eleven. At that time, his father’s untimely death prompted his family to return to Pakistan. However, his mother suffered a nervous breakdown and had to be institutionalized in England for over three and a half years, an event that pushed the family over the brink into a significant financial crisis. His father’s former bank employer kept the children in school on scholarship, but as Asher notes, they were outsiders looking into a world of affluence and socioeconomic apartheid: They attended private school yet understood that the family’s means were limited and growing more so by the day. This experience, more than any other, equipped him with insights and empathy that continue to influence him to this day. As an adult, Asher trained toward being a surgeon in the United States. After spending the first part of his surgical training helping a few patients deeply, he realized he wanted to address problems at the systemic level within a dysfunctional healthcare system that often worked against the interests and welfare of patients. He transitioned initially into industry, and worked with a Frenchowned pharmaceutical company interested in extending its reach to new developing markets and addressing global disparity through tiered pricing of life-saving drugs. Asher later joined a biotech company and led a medical team focused on developing tools for obesity prevention, an issue that resonated with him personally, as his mother was obese and suffered chronic illness as a result. During his tenure in the pharma-biotech industry, he obtained an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business and began to pursue the idea that would become Naya Javeen in 2008.  49

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S hona M c D onald SOUTH AFRICA

Disabilities Employment Underserved Communities

Shona McDonald is addressing the challenges of children with mobile disabilities who live in peri-urban and rural areas of South Africa with an approach that puts postural education on the agenda of community-based clinical services, along with a range of tailor-made mobility products that can be assembled and maintained even in conditions with limited resources.

(a citizen organization (CO) that also drives policy change and advocates for a more inclusive society). To date, Shona’s organization has provided over 69,000 wheelchairs and seating support devices. For every child with a disability an average of another five to seven people are affected. Shona’s work has impacted more than 450,000 people including the seating and caregiver training programs, Shona plans to scale up production in order to double her impact over the next five years. She has also developed special toolkits and training sessions for people who cannot afford new wheelchairs (or do not have access to free wheelchairs) so that they can refurbish and adjust their old devices to meet their needs. Shona is working with the World Health Organization (WHO), to change their policies related to wheelchair and mobility equipment provision to populations in need all over the world.

THE NEW IDEA Without the right type of wheelchair, children with disabilities can develop serious secondary health complications, and are at risk of becoming socially isolated. Shona realized early on that existing wheelchairs were not adaptable to the evolving needs of disabled children, and could lead to problems in physical development. This is especially true for those children in rural and peri-urban areas with limited access to quality wheelchairs appropriate for rugged terrain. Additionally, the likelihood of improved mobility over time is significantly reduced when mobility devices and clinical services for disabled children are designed without postural education in mind. In order to address these challenges, Shona designs, manufactures, and distributes mobility and body support devices that improve the posture and mobility of children with disabilities. Shona sees these new wheelchairs as more than just a means of locomotion but as an opportunity to foster postural education for disabled children. Shona’s products are tailored to each child’s postural needs, can be easily maintained, and are modifiable for rural environments. These devices specifically consider the Southern African environment; for if they cannot be used to travel on the harsh and abrasive terrain, they are ineffective to the user and deny disabled children their independence. In this way, Shona’s designs are more progressive than most standard fold-up models that are donated by international organizations and commonly found in the region. Shona also uses existing health structures in rural areas to educate caregivers, the community, parents and the disabled in postural education techniques and mobility device usage and maintenance. The devices are manufactured and sold through Shonaquip (a for-profit organization) and distributed free of charge to communities in need through Uhambo Foundation

While Shona’s organization produces on a large scale, she is dedicated to ensuring that people are still assessed and evaluated to meet their individual needs.

THE PROBLEM Based on WHO calculations, South Africa is home to more than one million people in need of wheelchairs. More than two-thirds of these people will need some adaptation and postural support products and services in order to prevent the development of further secondary health complications. More than 80 percent of those who need a wheelchair do not have one and the majority of these people cannot use the standard European model of a folding frame wheelchair. Donor organizations from developed countries have provided services and support to the disabled based on a charitable giving model for decades. Most donated chairs are modeled on the cheapest possible “one size fits all” design of U.S. or British hospital folding wheelchairs. Often, they are makeshift designs made of inappropriate materials such as plastic, wood, and bamboo. The problem with these well-intentioned donations is that they are not built and fitted for the individual patient and, thus, will only perpetuate serious medical issues and cause secondary health complications.

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poor rural families have an even smaller chance of improving their socioeconomic circumstances. If these issues are not addressed, disabled children will continue to be undervalued, and perceived as a source of shame and a burden to their families.

T H E S T R AT E G Y

Shona expects to increase job creation for wheelchair users with additional wheelchair seating service hubs in neighboring countries over the next five years.

Children with mobile disabilities suffer from an unstable pelvis and trunk, which restricts the movement of their upper limbs and inhabits the development of fine motor skills. Without rectification, this accelerates the development of abnormal muscle tone and reflexes in the body, thereby decreasing the possibility of the child ever having normal movements. Thus, the child never gains functional independence and cannot participate in activities of daily living, school and leisure. Deformities can be limited, if not avoided altogether, with the use of good postural seating. Without good postural seating, however, tissue trauma (sores) develops from the unevenly distributed pressure of the body’s weight and results in increased fatigue for the child. More distressingly, the child has no control over the movements of his/ her head, which is essential for orientation, socialization, and for the child to develop cognitive and communication skills. Without postural support, the child’s mental performance decreases and this gradually isolates him/her from his/her surroundings. Eventually, the body’s increasing deformity will have adverse effects on the child’s ability to eat and drink, as well as his/her respiratory and digestive functions. The inhospitable terrain of peri-urban and rural communities makes the use of standard wheelchairs difficult. Without wellfitting and safe assistive devices that can be pushed on the unpaved and sandy ground in rural areas, people with disabilities are limited in their ability to access distant support services, education, employment, and even social contact. The shortage of appropriate wheelchairs has unnecessary, costly, and devastating social outcomes for the wheelchair users and their families. Thus, it is broadly acknowledged that having a mobility disability leads to worsening social and economic well-being and poverty, and that a child with a disability has fewer opportunities and adversely affects the family’s future. Without access to the appropriate mobility and assistive devices, disabled children are less likely to attend school, engage in social interaction, or find employment later. Those that are born into

Shona’s work is carried out through two connected organizations: Shonaquip and Uhambo, the Shonaquip Foundation. Shonaquip is a for-profit venture that develops and manufactures these devices, and provides accompanying training on their use and other postural education techniques. This for-profit structure reduces the dependence on philanthropic and government funds, and frees Shona to invest in research and development so that she can rapidly increase her range of products as she designs new devices to meet the different needs of disabled children. Uhambo is a CO that produces and distributes these devices to those in need, and advocates for a more inclusive society. Profits from Shonaquip are reinvested in research and development of new devices and help fund Uhambo’s activities. Together these organizations work toward improving the quality of life of people with severe disabilities, especially for those in impoverished communities.

“A more inclusive society is McDonald’s driving passion. She has been instrumental in shaping public policy on disability and helped write the World Health Guidelines on Wheelchair Distribution in Remote Areas.” —Juliet Pitman, Entrepreneur Magazine The primary focus of Shona’s work is to design, produce and distribute well-built wheelchairs and body support devices that are suitable for the Southern African terrain and that reduce the development of secondary health complications in disabled children. She does this by providing appropriate assistive devices, together with training on how to use them, to provide a 24-hour postural management solution for people with limited resources. All devices are made in close collaboration with users and are motivated by the needs of both the wheelchair user and the parents that care for them. The design is often developed for one specific user and then, once proven to be successful, is reproduced for more people. Feedback and physical trials of devices are a primary activity and ongoing evaluation is of significant importance. Shona invests in ongoing research and development of solutions for specific medical conditions, disability issues, mobility products and services—with the aim of having a positive impact on access to appropriate assistive devices and on national and global policies for people with mobility disabilities.

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looking to create 300 jobs over the next five years. Shona is also expanding geographically and is setting up full assembly and wheelchair seating service hubs in four neighboring countries, starting in Zimbabwe. The work of Shonaquip and Uhambo is monitored and evaluated for impact, and to publish data that supports clinical work, advocacy, education, and outreach training programs across Southern Africa. Shona will continue to develop training and support services in line with WHO guidelines and to seek change for children with disabilities at a global level.

THE PERSON

When Shona needed a solution for her daughter’s care, she invented it; her work now benefits thousands of disabled children and adults across Africa.

Another core component of Shonaquip and Uhambo’s work is the empowerment of wheelchair users, their families, and their service providers with the clinical skills, services, information, and training they need. As a part of this work, communities are offered support, training, and repair services in conjunction with the assistive devices. Shona is also working on the provision of clinical services to government agencies, COs, and the private sector, with particularly strong collaboration with government (through public-private partnerships) at the local and national level. Shona understands that close communication with local health education departments (about how to support and build their service capacity) is the most cost-effective way to build a delivery network. Through this collaboration, she has been able to build sustainable support structures; and has boosted the government’s efforts to incorporate the needs of disabled children into policy and implement these policies on the ground. In addition, her partnership with South Africa’s Department of Health has covered her production costs and subsidized community outreach clinic services; and, thus, contributed to her organization’s sustainability for many years. Private medical insurance and community projects funded by local businesses have provided additional income. With this strategy in place, the functional abilities of wheelchair users in Southern Africa has not only stabilized, but also dramatically improved. This has had significant positive impact on the user’s quality of life. The additional advantages of improving access to these devices and removing barriers to services have resulted in a reduction in the long-term costs to national health budgets. To date, Shonaquip and Uhambo have provided over 69,000 wheelchairs and seating support devices, impacting over 450,000 (users and families), not including the seating and caregiving training programs. Shona is working to reach 25 percent of the potential need in Southern Africa (250,000 people) and is focusing on job creation and improved quality of life for people with disabilities. She is

As a young mother interested in sculpture and engaged in community service work, Shona’s life path took a dramatic turn with the birth of her second daughter, Shelly. Born with cerebral palsy, disabled, unable to speak and almost totally deaf, doctors and therapists advised Shona to put her daughter in a home and have another baby. Shocked and dismayed, Shona was determined to start building a positive future for Shelly. Shona was living in South Africa at the height of the anti-apartheid movement, which had resulted in extensive boycotts and trade sanctions that froze the country’s access to imported goods, including devices and parts of devices for people with disabilities. The upside of this situation was that Shona was forced to think of innovative ways to solve Shelly’s mobility challenges. When Shelly was 18-months-old and getting too heavy to carry, Shona saw pictures in a Swedish magazine of an electric wheelchair with seating that can be tailored to an individual and made contact with the biomedical engineering department at the University of Cape Town to help her build a similar wheelchair. This led to the first South African battery-powered buggy, and provided the foundation for establishing Shonaquip in 1992. The buggy gave Shelly great freedom and enabled her to attend a local preschool, where, with all the stimulation she received, she progressed rapidly on to primary and then high school. Through her continued work with the disabled in her community, Shona met many other parents of children with disabilities, who together with their therapists persuaded her to design and manufacture special devices for them. Unsustainable in the long-run, Shona turned Shonaquip into a social business, operating with sales of services and products. She also founded Uhambo Foundation, which operates on 100 percent of the profits from Shonaquip. Shona has won recognition for her work from several organizations, including a Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship and the World Economic Forum Social Entrepreneur Award. It is now Shona’s dream to see her devices used by children across Africa, and in countries such as Turkey, Chile, and the Philippines. 

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K ristin R ichmond U N I T E D S TAT E S

Communities Nutrition/Wellness Youth

Kirsten and Kristin are creating demand, particularly in lowincome charter schools, through an approach that supplies lowcost, healthy food. Their effort moves beyond meeting a need or exploiting a market niche. Instead, their teams engage with schools as partners and supply food only as school leadership agrees to advance the discussion of health and transform the nutritional offerings available in schools. Innovations in the supply chain mean that their lunches are nearly f lush with reimbursements allowable to low-income schools through the free and reduced lunch program. The effort currently reaches school communities and about 50,000 students daily in the San Francisco/Bay Area, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Denver. They are pursuing a high-growth trajectory and expect to double their reach and impact in the next two to three years.

THE PROBLEM

K irsten Tobey U N I T E D S TAT E S

Communities Nutrition/Wellness Youth

Kristin Richmond and Kirsten Tobey are transforming nutrition in low-income communities by providing healthy, portioned school lunches, and changing attitudes of principals, teachers, and parents about what’s expected and possible with regard to nutrition standards in low-income schools.

THE NEW IDEA Kirsten and Kristin, both former teachers, understand that the food that schools serve significantly impacts school performance, and lays the foundation for behavioral patterns around eating that extend both to the home and into adulthood. Poor quality school food services, then, can significantly contribute to a multitude of problems, including escalating obesity rates and the occurrence of type II diabetes, particularly among low-income Americans. Traditional school lunch suppliers—Sysco, Chartwell Compass, Preferred Meals, and others—are contract management companies operating with a commitment to profit, not a focus on the health of children. On the other end of the spectrum, farmto-school programs may be the ideal in terms of engendering an awareness of local, healthy foods and a connection to food sources, but these efforts are challenging to organize and sustain, as such efforts may require a facilities and staffing overhaul that schools simply cannot muster.

The incidence of childhood obesity in America has more than tripled in the past thirty years—this is a recent and dramatically worsening crisis, particularly affecting poorer Americans. 27 percent of Americans ages 17 to 24 are too overweight to serve in the military. Obesity-related costs are at 10 percent of national health expenditures now, and estimated to jump to 25 percent in the near future. Soon, almost half of children of color in America will develop type II diabetes. These are just a few of the many worrying markers of this trend. Many see that school cafeterias are ground zero for the crisis. Over the course of grade school, a child will consume about 4,000 meals at school, fueling much of their daily caloric and nutritional intake, and shaping their sense of what tastes good. The majority of America’s students—60 percent—participate in the National School Lunch Program, which serves 5.5 billion lunches and about 2 billion breakfasts each year. (This program was created in 1946 when 150,000 young men were found to be too malnourished to serve in World War II.) Paradoxically, federal and state dollars earmarked to support the nutrition of low-income students are instead fueling the crisis.

“Partnering with Whole Foods, Revolution now delivers unprocessed, balanced meals—free of hormones, high-fructose corn syrup, and artificial flavorings—to 600 schools, nearly twice as many as two years ago, and projects $50 million in revenue for 2011-2012.” —Fast Company Improved food preservation technologies, the industrialization and automation of kitchens, and the significant power of the commodities industry has meant that processed foods are substantially cheaper, more readily available, and easier to work with than fresh healthy choices. Add to this the management and facilities challenges faced by many schools. Principals juggle many responsibilities, and healthy food is often a low priority.

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Food prep from scratch requires about twice as much kitchen and storage space as heat-and-serve options, and significantly more staff time and expertise. And then there’s cost, the main driver: The federal reimbursement rate of $2.77 per lunch (and less for breakfast) leaves little room for school food managers to stray from the cheapest, most resource-efficient options. The problem disproportionately affects students from low-income families. If children do not have access to nutritious food at home, unhealthy school food compounds an already significant problem.

T H E S T R AT E G Y

Kirsten and Kristin saw a huge opportunity to contribute to school efficacy and student health by improving the food offerings that schools made available to their students, particularly in lowincome neighborhoods. Initially intended as a non-profit effort, they found that the non-profit structure did not allow start-up or growth capital to address the problem at a greater-than-boutique scale. They set up a company in 2006, Revolution Foods, to drive the impact they wanted to realize.

Revolution Foods makes locally-grown, healthy food affordable and accessible to thousands of children in several regions of the United States.

First, Revolution Foods designs and supplies healthy meals— breakfast, lunch, and after school snacks, depending on the contract—to partner schools, 70 percent of which are charters serving largely low-income students. Meals are home-style, portioned, and balanced nutritionally and arrive to schools once daily from a central “regional” kitchen. All meals qualify for the federal school lunch program’s reimbursement of $2.77 per lunch. Though innovations in the supply chain and partnerships with retailers like Whole Foods, Revolution Foods mealscost schools $2.85 to $4.00, which means in some locations (DC and CA, for example), they are almost fully reimbursable with federal subsidies and the reimbursements available in some states and cities. 54

At present, Revolution Foods operates in 375 schools and educational programs, supplying about 50,000 meals per day. As it grows, Kirsten and Kristin believe that it will affect supply chain dynamics for fresh and sustainably-grown foods and other products. For example, in the first year, they had to purchase turkey packaged for the retail market, but now they are operating at a volume that enables them to require that their seller package high-quality meat for wholesale trade. The aim is to pressure other school suppliers to make such changes, as more and more of the educational community recognizes—and begins to demand—viable, healthier options. As they introduce new products into the market—another example is biodegradable packaging they commissioned from Be Green—those products are available widely. They also pursue as many partnerships with local farmer groups as possible—for example, family farmer associations in Northern California. They have about thirty major suppliers and many more minor ones. About 60 percent are national food suppliers and 40 percent are local. The proposition to schools is important: It’s not just about the food supplied. Schools are buying into a more systemic shift in practice to focus on wellness, and foster healthier eating and self-esteem of students, as reflected by the choices they make about what they put in their bodies. This is obviously not a shift that happens overnight, but a longer-term proposition of education and effective social marketing. Revolution Foods has developed a nutrition education toolkit and deploys it within schools, with modules that teachers may include in their classes. The educational offerings of Revolution Foods are not one-size-fits-all but are tailored to the school partner, so that the offerings most closely address the needs of the community. Cooking demonstrations, family nights, and wellness fairs are among the programs Revolution Foods offers. Each school is serviced by the School Partnerships team, which includes school partnership managers who visit the school at least 2 to 3 times a month to check up, update things, and gather feedback from students and teachers. Because Kirsten and Kirstin want to introduce a transformation in the school community’s approach to food, they require that partners jettison vending machines that sell unhealthy snacks that run counter to the aim and taste they introduce at mealtimes. If a school has an open campus that allows students to buy lunches off-site, Revolution Foods will not partner unless the school closes down this option. It also requires exclusive relationships with school partners, because they are trying to shape—systematically—taste and children’s meal preferences. This requires repeated exposure to certain flavors. When Kirsten and Kristin’s team moves into a community, the company brings employment opportunities for parents as well. The City of Oakland granted them low-interest loans in recognition of the company’s power as an engine for job creation among lowincome workers. The chefs and food preparers are often the parents of students, contributing to the effort’s aim to transform the entire community’s eating habits in favor of healthier meals. Kirsten and Kristin give significant attention to making sure the company’s values are baked into the company. So, for example, line workers who prepare food are helped to see the logic in portioning: Too big doesn’t work for reasons of cost and health, too small doesn’t

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work, as it leaves a student hungry. Hourly employees have health benefits and ownership options in the company—as well as, for many of them, children benefiting from the program very directly. While not highly active in advocacy at present—they see their highest role is as a proof point for policymakers—they are invited into policy discussions, and play a critical role in moving the conversation to what’s actually possible in terms of addressing this problem at scale. Kristin has been invited to a recently-formed committee on community solutions, convened by President Barack Obama.

a huge culture shock. Following college, she spent a few years on Wall Street, during which time she volunteered at an urban school and developed a real passion for teaching. At 25, she pursued an opportunity in Kenya to help start a school for students with learning and developmental disabilities, and during the two years she was there, helped to fully operationalize a vision. There, in a stratified environment, Kristin and her team committed themselves to extending special education opportunities to all Kenyans, beyond the wealthy elite and rarified ex-pat community. While there, she saw the nutritional needs of low-income students, and developed a hot meals program that fully integrated with the school.

When she arrived back in the States, she grappled with the question of whether to return to the world of finance. In the end, she opted for a path of greater alignment with her values, and joined with Ashoka Fellow Temp Keller just as he was starting his effort to address teacher retention through his nascent organization RISE. This exposure required her to master fundraising and she worked intensively with charter networks that later became Revolution Foods’ early adopter partners. Seeing that she would need skills beyond those she had learned organically, she enrolled at UC-Berkeley’s business school in 2004.

Kristin and Kirsten, the founders of Revolution Foods, receive a warm welcome from students.

Kristin and Kirsten have set up the institution with great attention to governance and financing, to ensure that they are able to steer the effort to the highest social transformation. They aim to add two regions per year over the next three years (example of “region”: the DC team serves DC, MD, Philly, and Newark). They would like to double in size over the next two to three years. The main barrier to scale is the capital required to establish new culinary centers/kitchens. This is an important moment for Kristin and Kirsten as they hire for CFO and COO roles (and step out of them themselves). Moving forward, they expect funding to come from a mix of foundations and investors interested in sustainability/green economy, economic/jobs development, education, and health.

THE PEOPLE Kristin and Kirsten met in 2004 during the first weeks of business school at UC-Berkeley. After realizing their shared focus on school reform, they interviewed Bay Area teachers, primarily at charter schools, an effort that informed their initial plan. They explored many avenues to solving the problem of nutrition in schools, including setting up a non-profit consulting group to advise schools on changing their practices. But listening to feedback from teachers and administrators and seeing the restraints from a time and facilities perspective, they settled on the approach they are advancing now.

Kirsten Tobey

Kirsten grew up in Los Altos, California, the daughter of two school teachers. Hiking trips with her father led her early on to love the outdoors and drew her, as a young person, to issues of the environment. At 12, she heard Frances Moore Lappe speak about her “Diet for a Small Planet,” and that evening announced that she would be a vegetarian, a choice fueled as much by environmental concerns as by healthy eating. On scholarship, she attended the private girls’ school where her mother taught, and had the opportunity, with her parents, to go to Puerto Rico for a school service engagement, an experience that introduced her to Latin America. At 16, she returned, living with a Costa Rican family for eight weeks as part of Amigos de las Americas. She was struck by the way in which her host family grew their own beans, made their tortillas from scratch, and subsisted off of the land. Her interest in food—where it comes from, and how it’s prepared—continued to grow. One summer in college, Kirsten turned an empty plot of land into an instructional garden, using it to help young people connect with the food they ate. She introduced various creative teaching methods, including a pizza section of the garden, where children planted the herbs, tomatoes, and various other pizza toppings.

Kristin Richmond

Kirsten became a classroom teacher during her first year after college. Having grown up with teacher-parents, she found it to be a natural environment. But she had also become interested in effecting change at a more systemic level and took a job at Earthjustice. There, she learned she didn’t want to be a lawyer, but did find interesting ways to contribute to the firm’s overall efficacy, including building an effort to organize disparate clients into natural, cross-sector alliances in order to pursue broader campaigns.

Kristin spent her early years on a ranch near San Antonio where most of her immediate family had lived and worked for generations. When she was 13, she moved to boarding school in New Hampshire,

Kirsten enrolled at UC-Berkeley’s school of business to learn more of the skills she knew she needed to have the kind of impact she wanted to see.  55

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THE PROBLEM

M ohamed Z aazoue EGYPT

Child Protection Health Care Delivery Teachers/Educators

In an environment dominated by an emphasis on treatment to the exclusion of prevention, Dr. Mohamed Zaazoue is introducing a cultural shift in attitudes toward health and healthcare. He is creating a first of a kind system to deliver preventative health education directly to Egyptian children and their parents in ways that allow them to take charge of their own health.

THE NEW IDEA Mohamed is targeting all socioeconomic segments of Egyptian society with an approach that is less about combating any one specific disease, and more about moving Egyptians from the role of passive consumer of medicine to that of active health seeker. First, he has set off to make learning about preventive medicine interesting and user-friendly, recognizing the current perception that it is a tough and boring process to become aware of all of the various diseases and all of their corresponding symptoms and preventive measures. A series of competitive quiz games held at venues ranging from hospital waiting rooms to makeshift tents in the desert and a newly created character featured in coloring books, puppet shows, and a soon-to-be television cartoon series help achieve this learning process. Mohamed targets children as a key leverage point in this process recognizing that the prevailing passivity toward health has not yet been ingrained in them and that parents are much more likely to pay attention to information related to their children’s well-being than to their own. Mohamed has also focused in on the importance of having the medical profession play its appropriate role in encouraging a culture of active health prevention or wellness. He is going directly to the source and reorienting future doctors while they are still in medical school away from an approach centered on simply giving medication instructions to patients, to one of health educator, partner and collaborator. Having mobilized more than 400 medical school volunteers in almost every governorate in Egypt for his health awareness campaigns, Mohamed plans to introduce credited field work as part of the medical school curriculum to yield more empathetic doctors who can effectively relate to and communicate with their patients. Mohamed is also recruiting and mentoring other groups interested in specific health issues affecting the country, offering them a legal umbrella— his Healthy Egyptians citizen organization (CO)—with hopes of creating a broad coalition of local organizations focused on helping Egyptians lead proactively healthy lives. 56

While the government of Egypt is estimated to spend up to 6 percent of GDP on health and there are more physicians in Egypt per 100,000 citizens than in most developing countries, morbidity and mortality rates in the country are high and increasing. Up from an already alarming 46 percent in 2010, for example, Egypt’s child iron deficiency rate rose to 51 percent in 2011. Not only does iron deficiency anemia lead to impaired physical and cognitive development in children, as well as an increased risk of morbidity, it also reduces work productivity in adults and contributes to 20 percent of maternal deaths. Egypt is also among the top fifteen countries accounting for three-quarters of childhood pneumonia cases worldwide. Termed “the forgotten killer of children” by UNICEF, pneumonia is indeed the leading killer of children under the age of five in Egypt. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), proper nutrition and hygiene account for 50 percent of the solution when it comes to preventing pneumonia, while vaccination accounts for 47 percent (the remaining 3 percent is a permanent variable). Yet Egypt’s national immunization program has not been updated in over fifteen years and does not include the pneumonia-fighting vaccines. Indeed, Egypt’s health focus has been primarily focused on treatment, largely ignoring the role of prevention. The few times that the government has brought health education to citizens have been during times of sudden outbreaks such as the swine and avian flu epidemics that swept through Egypt.

“We offer parents a brief presentation about the disease and its prevention, a very simple multiple choice quiz, with the prize of crayons and coloring books about pneumonia for their children. The truth is, everybody wins.” —Mohamed Zaazoue, Inter Press Service And while the supply of health education is low, so too is the demand. Underpinning this situation, Mohamed believes, is a general assumption that medical knowledge is complex and reserved for doctors. Mohamed connects this unspoken consensus to the fact that anyone who is not a medical, dental, or pharmacy student never encounters a class on health education in their entire academic career—not in middle or high school, not in university. These students grow up to become adults who do not think to seek health information and doctors who do not think to share their exclusive knowledge. It is not uncommon to find patients who only know the name of their disease and how to take their medication. They do not know what the disease does to their body, what the dangers associated with not following the treatment protocol are, what other treatment options exist, or how to prevent getting sick in the first place. This stark segmentation of health education in the schools is only further compounded by traditional notions of authority—especially among an older generation of Egyptians— which also affects the doctor-patient relationship. This passivity

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toward health education not only threatens to see the traditional diseases go unchecked, but also poses a challenge to tackling the increasing advent of lifestyle diseases in Egypt.

T H E S T R AT E G Y To rupture the divide between health education and ordinary citizens, Mohamed worked with students at the School of Fine Arts at the university in which he was a final year medical student to create a comic book about a boy, named Montasser, who follows an unhealthy lifestyle until he contracts pneumonia from the evil villains, Hemo and Nemo (named after Hemophilus influenza and Streptococcus pneumonia, the two leading bacterial strains that cause pneumonia). Montasser, which means “champion” in Arabic, then sees a doctor who advises him on how to lead a healthy life i.e. wash his hands, do not eat anything that has fallen on the ground, cover your mouth when coughing and sneezing, etc. and how to overcome the illness. With 8,000 copies of this comic book, which also serves as a coloring book, Mohamed started conducting awareness workshops in his hospital’s waiting rooms. But rather than lecture, Mohamed and his team of volunteers, whom he recruited as a managerial board member of the Egyptian Medical Students’ Association (EMSA), tell parents they are conducting a competition in which all winners will get a prize. With the parents’ attention locked in and a general mood of playful interest established, Mohamed’s team conducts a short presentation on the preventative steps of pneumonia, including where they could purchase the vaccine, if interested, and hands out a one-pager that outlines the key points in very straightforward language. They then hand out the quiz and a few moments after, they partner with parents to give hints and review answers. All children end up receiving the comic books, the story of which the volunteers read to the children as the latter color in the images of the book with the accompanying crayons they receive as prizes. Since September 2011, Mohamed has continued to experiment with different interactive activities to incorporate into these sessions. These include a puppet show that features Montasser, treasure hunts in which the hidden items are healthy food items, and role plays in which parents, children, and volunteers can act out the scenes of the comic book, as well as others they create. Mohamed has teamed up with twenty local university hospitals in fifteen governorates and volunteers from those medical schools to execute this ongoing health education. Medical students have been joined by students from other schools at the universities, as well as members of the general public, who have heard about Mohamed’s initiative and want to participate. Mohamed provides the relevant training to these groups, including how to approach different scenarios they may encounter, such as an illiterate or hostile parent. These teams have begun to expand out of hospital waiting rooms in health caravans to host health education sessions in the heart of various communities. Mohamed has also recently received permission from the Ministry of Education to host similar sessions in Egypt’s primary schools with the goal of identifying a champion within the school to train and lead the program during “parent days” as well as during ongoing sessions throughout the year. To

round off public exposure to this health education, Mohamed is in the process of expanding the Montasser Overcomes comic book series to next focus on nutrition, with a special focus on iron deficiency anemia, as well as turning Montasser into a television cartoon series. Mohamed has already had significant success penetrating television, as well as newspapers, magazines and radio, during his campaign leading up to World Pneumonia Day. Indeed, Mohamed produced a short documentary movie, which he ensures is aired each time he does a television interview, about the current situation of pneumonia in Egypt and the state of public awareness in Egyptian families across socioeconomic classes.

While waiting for checkups, parents take a multiple choice quiz based on pneumonia-related short stories; in the end however, everyone will win books, with coloring stories for the children and awareness material for the parents.

Recognizing the importance of bringing many actors in to sustain the cultural shift he is trying to induce, Mohamed founded the Egyptian Coalition Against Child Pneumonia, which brings together individuals and COs in Egypt who have shown an interest in addressing child health, like the longpresent Save the Children, and connects this group with the larger, Global Coalition Against Child Pneumonia to exchange resources and best practices. In one such example of collaboration, Mohamed produced an Arabic-language educational video about pneumonia, which the Global Coalition immediately sent to all of its members, who then posted the video on their homepages, giving the Egyptian Coalition immediate exposure. Mohamed has also received the endorsement of the leading professor of pediatrics at his hospital, Ain Shams University, for all materials Mohamed produces, recognizing that the “professor” title carries a lot of weight in Egyptian society. He is also leveraging the support of an enthusiastic professor (who ordered 2,000 more packages—which includes the comic book, coloring pencils, and the quiz—for his students after receiving an initial set of 250), to 57

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begin the work of mainstreaming health education fieldwork into the medical school curriculum. Mohamed was also able to bridge the business/social divide by getting a leading pharmaceutical company to donate enough vaccines to have 14,000 families vaccinated after a campaign his robust team of volunteers led. Recognizing that after learning about the preventative measures for pneumonia, some families will focus on the hygiene and nutrition, while others also want to receive the vaccine, Mohamed knows it is important to find a way to make vaccines available at a reasonable cost. Currently, Egyptians can only buy the vaccine in pharmacies and at a price that is out of reach for a significant segment of the population. For this reason, Mohamed approached the Ministry of Health at the very beginning of his work. And after being told that one reason the ministry has not moved forward on making the relevant vaccine available is the absence of local studies outlining the incidence of the disease—all currently available figures emanate from foreign organizations—Mohamed has organized a group of student volunteers to conduct the study. More importantly, he is demonstrating that Egyptians will take preventative measures if the education is provided, and he is building a movement whose demand for such measures will be hard to ignore. Indeed, there have been signs of progress on this front as the Minister of Health, after quickly dismissing Mohamed from his office just a few months before, replied that he was looking to update Egypt’s national immunization policy and would start with the “Hemo” and “Nemo” vaccines when recently asked on a news program about Egypt’s health prevention measures.

Mohamed’s Healthy Egyptians launched the national “Protect Your Child” campaign on World Pneumonia Day.

Originally operating solely through a volunteer-based network coordinated through his position on EMSA, Mohamed is in the process of registering his CO. While planning to continue the volunteer and partnership nature that has characterized his work to-date, he is taking on a core team to serve as point people for the various initiatives. One such initiative includes recruiting people who may not have yet worked through all of the details,

but are interested in addressing a health issue in Egypt through prevention and awareness. Healthy Egyptians will offer them a legal umbrella, as well as opportunities to exchange ideas and problem-solve with his team.

THE PERSON With a father and grandfather who are doctors, Mohamed always knew he would also put on the white coat. He remembers admiring his dad who would wake up in the middle of the night to answer a call to save a life. After sharing with his father, who had relocated the family to the UAE for work, that he would go to Egypt to pursue his medical degree, his dad advised him to move at the age of fifteen so he could finish high school in Egypt, and meet young people studying all subjects before entering the medical faculty in university. Mohamed started participating in rounds early in his medical studies and remembers observing many differences in the hospitals from what he was used to in the Emirates. While he expected differences in tools and equipment, he was taken aback by the fact that there was no transfer of knowledge from doctor to patient. He started sitting down with the patients of his professors, providing them with information on the ailment they had. For example, rather than just dismiss a diabetes patient with a shot of insulin, he explained what steps could be taken in the person’s daily life to prevent the next trip to the hospital. An exchange program in the U.K. reinforced that changes were needed in Egypt as Mohamed remembers how hospital patients he saw there knew so much. They had researched illnesses and symptoms ahead of time and came equipped with questions. This led him to search for an organization through which he could systematically address the issue that patients in Egypt simply did not know anything about their diseases—were sometimes afraid to ask—and doctors were trained to treat and not to communicate. He joined the newly established EMSA and was quickly elected to the board, from which he recruited members of the association to join his initial campaigns, focused on the leading killers of children, to propel a larger health education movement. Upon graduating in 2012, Mohamed has put his medical studies on hold to launch and lead Healthy Egyptians. Finishing in the top 1 percent of his class has allowed Mohamed, however, to be given the role of resident at the university hospital, which permits him the title of “staff doctor.” This affirms his position as an insider of the medical establishment, without the responsibilities of practicing medicine. 

HUMAN RIGHTS

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Sasha C hanoff U N I T E D S TAT E S

Disaster Relief/ Crisis Managment Displaced People/ Refugees/Migrants Public Policy Sasha Chanoff is finding lasting solutions for the world’s most vulnerable refugees. Sasha’s organization works to transform and improve the sphere of refugee resettlement through a variety of interlinking strategies centered on creating the infrastructure and know-how for an appropriately trained and professionalized citizen sector to work with the United Nations and governments in ways that improve equity and access to this life-saving solution for refugees.

THE NEW IDEA Refugee resettlement, the process of permanently and legally relocating refugees to countries where they can rebuild their lives in safety, is the only solution available for many refugees around the world who can neither return home nor stay safely where they are. Yet in the past decade approximately 250,000 resettlement slots made available by the U.S. government for refugees who have no other options for survival have gone unfilled due to systemic inefficiencies. Historically, refugee resettlement has been a low priority in the grand scheme of refugee assistance and protection.

organization by raising funds outside of the government system. RefugePoint is therefore uniquely positioned to effectively respond to the fluid and unpredictable nature of refugee situations. In an effort to greatly expand the impact of his work, RefugePoint has built a relationship with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to enhance resettlement by sending staff across Africa to work in a variety of urgent and emergency refugee situations. At the same time, RefugePoint aims to use its collaboration with UNHCR as a model that can lead to additional collaborations between the citizen sector and UNHCR around the world. To that end, RefugePoint is conscientiously building a network of refugee assistance and rights organizations and providing information, guidance, and training to facilitate collaborations with UNHCR and governments in order to enhance resettlement. When RefugePoint started seven years ago the citizen sector accounted for approximately 1 percent of referrals on the continent. Both governments and multilateral institutions are beginning to look at RefugePoint as the place that will continue to innovate how resettlement is going to work.

THE PROBLEM Today fifteen million refugees in the world languish in semipermanent camps or urban slums, often for decades, sometimes for generations. Historically, returning home or integrating into the country of first asylum have been the dominant solutions to the plight of refugees. But today the average amount of time an individual lives as a refugee is approximately 17 years. The protracted nature of conflicts and inability of host countries to absorb large influxes of individuals and accord them the right to move forward with their lives are among the reasons that these two solutions are not options for many uprooted people.

Beginning with the organization he founded in 2005, RefugePoint, Sasha is leading by example and building the infrastructure for COs to engage in the resettlement process. RefugePoint is not only demonstrating that the citizen sector can effectively partner with governments and intergovernmental agencies to ensure that the benefits of resettlement accrue to more people, the organization is also making sure the system takes into account the most neglected communities in ways previously unachievable. RefugePoint is putting the plight of the growing population of urban refugees more solidly on the map of agencies in a position to protect them through the use of resettlement. RefugeePoint is also developing an expertise in identifying newly threatened refugee groups that reside both in and outside the refugee camp system. Sasha is able to do so in no small part thanks to the flexibility afforded to his

Sasha is pioneering a new role for effective and professional citizen organizations (COs) in the refugee resettlement process. Through collaboration, his organization is working to influence and transform the international human rights and humanitarian community in ways that lead to life-saving solutions for the most vulnerable refugees.

RefugePoint works in camps and cities across Africa to improve access to resettlement for refugees with no other options for survival.

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UNHCR is the global agency mandated to lead and coordinate international action to protect refugees. Up until Sasha founded RefugePoint, the UNHCR was the only organization actively involved in sending almost all refugee resettlement referrals to the twenty-four countries that allot roughly 100,000 resettlement slots every year. (The largest host country is the U.S.—which welcomes the majority of these referrals—followed by Canada and Australia.)

undertaking. Sasha is keenly aware that resettlement is seen as the Holy Grail for many refugees and that it therefore requires very high-level thinking and management of the risks involved, as well as close coordination with the UNHCR. With deep experience inside and outside the intergovernmental refugee resettlement process, Sasha is thoughtfully crafting a new role for the citizen sector in this system. Resettlement is a solution that is growing among governments worldwide, not just because it saves lives when no other options are available, but also because it creates more humanitarian space for other forms of assistance and solutions. In a recent U.S. Department of State letter highlighting February 2012 as the month that the three millionth refugee entered the U.S. through the resettlement program since its founding, the US government added that resettlement also impacts the lives of those stuck in crisis situations who do not have the opportunity to resettle by “preserving and expanding the humanitarian space in countries of first asylum.”

T H E S T R AT E G Y

RefugePoint finds and helps to permanently relocate refugees in life-threatening situations to countries where they can rebuild their lives in safety and with dignity.

The resettlement process can be truly life-saving, but after working with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Kenya and across Africa at the beginning of his career, and with the UNHCR in Kenya, Sasha realized how broken and underutilized the system was. Historically, resettlement has never been a top priority for the UNHCR, and yet few other agencies have ever engaged in the resettlement field in a way that has brought about vast changes or improvements. Complicating the landscape, today over 50 percent of the world’s refugees no longer live in camps, but rather try to eke out an existence in urban slum areas, where their plight often goes unseen, and from where there is relatively little, if any, resettlement presence and effort. In spite of these pressing problems, most COs working with refugees focus on either direct humanitarian aid or refugee rights work or a combination of both, yet have often not even been aware that resettlement is an option for the most vulnerable in their purview. Or alternately, they are not engaged because they do not have the appropriate relationship in place with the UN and governments, or because resettlement is viewed as too complex an

After working for ten years in the resettlement field in Africa and the U.S., Sasha decided to pursue a master’s degree in humanitarian assistance to ref lect on his experience and plan the founding of his organization—Mapendo International, now RefugePoint. A couple of months after completing his graduate degree in humanitarian assistance (and before he had formalized his organization) he learned of a terrible massacre of Congolese refugees in Burundi. Although the refugees were vocal about the fact that they weren’t safe in a camp that was too close to the border of Congo, the Burundian government did not allow the refugees to move to a safer location on time. Extremists crossed the border, surrounded the camp, and, with guns, grenades, machetes and gasoline fires, killed and injured over 250 mostly women and children. Sasha had undertaken rescue efforts in the Congo through his previous work and felt compelled to do something. He contacted a senior Department of State official and senior UNHCR officials, and then traveled to Burundi to meet with the survivors in order to create a rescue resettlement proposal. This marked perhaps the first time a citizen sector actor led the way in starting a refugee resettlement effort that ultimately lead to nearly 1,000 of the survivors safely resettling to the U.S. This experience confirmed to Sasha that there were ways for COs to identify and refer to UNHCR and governments overlooked cases and groups in need of resettlement. In the beginning, Sasha took on a small number of missions sending staff to collaborate with UNHCR in order to prove that his team could be an effective partner and to put his organization on the map. While RefugePoint now does a lot more than working on the nuts and bolts of resettlement in collaboration with intergovernmental agencies, this was a crucial first step to demonstrate that the citizen sector can be a relevant partner in the resettlement arena. RefugePoint now has staff in Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Zimbabwe,

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South Africa, Malawi, and the U.S. While some of the staff work in refugee camps to increase resettlement capacity, others are located outside of the camps to identify overlooked populations eligible for resettlement. In addition to expanding across Africa, RefugePoint has built an urban refugee program in Nairobi that provides life-saving interventions through health, community services, and placement into safe havens for those at immediate risk. The organization uses this urban program to hone identification methods for refugees in need of resettlement in urban settings, to stay at the cutting edge of new trends and protection tactics in urban situations, and to train staff going out to various locations across Africa. This urban program also plays an important strategic role as a signal to the international community that RefugePoint is aware of the complexities involved in refugee assistance and rights work, which allows and enables RefugePoint to pursue its resettlement strategies. RefugePoint initially placed particular emphasis on enhancing resettlement efforts within selected COs, which have a high-level of professionalism, a foothold in the local refugee landscape, and a strong relationship with UNHCR. A milestone moment came when UNHCR invited RefugePoint to co-host a training for COs across Africa on how to more effectively collaborate with UNHCR to enhance resettlement. The momentum for this training lead to RefugePoint co-hosting with UNHCR to create a took-kit of resettlement best practices that UNHCR has disseminated and made available globally to organizations interested in building collaborations that strengthen resettlement. In its 2011 annual Global Resettlement Needs document, UNHCR for the first time highlighted other organizations in countries around the world that can be partners in identifying vulnerable refugees for resettlement; which represents a significant potential expansion of resettlement possibilities. These are the gilding blocks for a broader vision of creating a network of like-minded organizations globally that have the capacity to attend to the needs of refugees who are in dangerous or life threatening situations and for whom resettlement is the only viable option.

“RefugePoint is an international humanitarian organization that provides lasting solutions for the world’s most vulnerable refugees.” —The Huffington Post RefugePoint regularly takes part in meetings in Geneva and Washington, D.C. with UNHCR and government decisionmakers to inf luence global policy and practice. RefugePoint also gathers information about refugee crisis situations in which resettlement can be used as a life-saving tool, and shares this information with the UNHCR and governments in an effort

to focus resources on refugee populations in extremis. Previous advocacy for resettlement has often stemmed from U.S.based organizations, which send teams out for short visits to locations around the world. RefugePoint’s ability to influence resettlement comes from an in-depth on the ground knowledge which RefugePoint feeds to decision-makers and helps to turn into actionable steps that can lead to the resettlement of previously unidentified and overlooked groups. At the same time, RefugePoint’s privately funded actions have served as a catalyst of sorts for increasing resettlement by creating an element of competition with the UN’s refugee agency to improve resettlement in areas where there are critical needs. Private funding is the fundamental element that has enabled RefugePoint’s innovations. RefugePoint has connected with networks of major donors concerned with genocide, refugee and human rights issues. Their current support configuration is roughly 60 percent individual/major donors, 20 percent foundation, and 20 percent UNHCR funding. They accept no government funding and cap their UN funding to remain independent and nimble. Their fundraising has been bolstered by high-level media exposure that helps them steward existing donors and engage new ones. Their charitable contributions have grown rapidly from $350K in 2006 to $800K in 2007, $1.4M in 2009, and $2M in 2010. Looking toward the future, forced migration will continue to be one of the most pressing global challenges, in particular due to ongoing climate change which directly correlates to increased conflict and displacement. RefugePoint aims to create a global humanitarian scaffolding which ensures the rights and protection of the most vulnerable refugees and creates pathways to viable futures. In addition, RefugePoint is exploring how to enhance the strategic use of resettlement as a burden-sharing mechanism with refugee hosting countries in order to bring about additional protection dividends to refugees.

THE PERSON Sasha’s initial commitment to the well-being of refugees stems from his family’s background. Growing up, he listened to his grandfather’s stories about building a new life as a family of Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and his great aunt’s stories of escaping pogroms. The message he received was that many refugees need a new country to call home and, given an opportunity, can rebuild their lives and flourish. Those stories struck him deeply and led him to the work he is now undertaking with RefugePoint. Sasha spent his formative years going to a fairly unconventional school co-founded by his father: The Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts. There were no tests, grades or requirements and the only expectation was for the students to be responsible for themselves and for the school community. The environment fostered initiative and creativity. Sasha took that

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mandate very seriously and held several leadership positions at the school. Wesleyan University, where Sasha pursued a Bachelor’s degree, continued to foster that spirit of responsibility and innovation. To this day, Sasha embraces the worldview he was introduced to through his early education, which enabled students to define their own paths and push beyond formal bounds. Before his immersion in Africa, Sasha was a refugee job developer in Boston where he worked hard to bring together the city’s traditionally territorial resettlement agencies. In an effort to highlight and foster refugees’ strengths and skills he collaborated with Tufts University to create a refugee cultural and athletic celebration day that motivated a number of refugees to start their own businesses. When Sasha worked across Africa, initially for the IOM and then with UNHCR, he began to understand the systemic problems affecting refugee resettlement and set out to fix them. One event in the year 2000 was particularly transformative. As part of a small U.S.-funded rescue team, he was sent into the Congo to evacuate citizens who were being systematically imprisoned and massacred due to their ethnicity. With Congo at war and the complexities of the situation, they were instructed to only evacuate 112 survivors whose names were on a list provided to them. When they arrived in the safe haven where the survivors were gathered, they found a group of thirty-two widows and orphans who had just arrived after miraculously surviving sixteen months in one of the most sinister prison camps. They were not on their list, and they would perish if they did not evacuate them. The instructions were to leave them behind in fear that the entire evacuation would otherwise be derailed and they would lose everyone. Sasha faced the most critical and urgent moral dilemma of his life. He finally decided, with his two colleagues, to try and evacuate the thirty-two as well and succeeded. That experience, and his work across Africa with the Sudanese Lost Boys, Somali Bantus, Liberians, and other refugee populations, opened his eyes to the fact that there were many refugees who were overlooked and stuck in life-threatening peril, and yet avenues to safety existed. This knowledge, experience, and insight led to the founding of RefugePoint. 

A lice E masu UGANDA

Agriculture Equality/Rights Land Reform Women

Starting in the Teso sub-region of northern Uganda, Alice Emasu is transforming the social architecture of largely patriarchal rural communities by enabling women to be land owners. Alice believes that unlocking the ability of rural farming women to own land is absolutely critical to their economic development.

THE NEW IDEA In 2003 Alice founded the Association for the Re-orientation and Rehabilitation of Teso Women for Development (TERREWODE), to provide practical solutions to women in post-conflict areas. She is removing the barriers toward economic development for Uganda's small-scale farming women and building a national grassroots movement of women a practitioners in all sectors. Alice has created a multi-pronged approach that addresses the most critical health issues, agricultural productivity, and legal issues related to land ownership. She has a diverse network of collaborators coming from the health, legal, and agricultural fraternity. Alice encourages women to believe in themselves, and to believe their justice system will work for them. Women then become advocates for other women in the community around land rights violations. Alice is also developing a visible body of law at the local level that makes everyone in the rural communities she is working with aware that women have the right to own land. To accomplish this, Alice works at the district level with women’s groups and local leaders to draft bylaws that protect women’s right to own land. She is also creating a grassroots framework of activists including women, local leaders, and retired civil servants to actively facilitate the enforcement of these laws on behalf of poor and vulnerable women in their communities. To ensure the spread of her work, Alice has built a national organization that is plugged into national and regional networks of human rights organizations, media practitioners, and law enforcement bodies. This enables her to spread the district level draft bylaws and the message about the rights of poor and rural small-scale farming women across a broader audience.

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THE PROBLEM Alice believes that the reason why women in rural areas are among the poorest of the poor is because they cannot engage in farming as a sustainable livelihood. She also sees the reproductive health problems women face as a direct result of their high level of poverty; inextricably linked to the fact that the women do not own the land they farm on. These three problems are really the same problem and require an intervention that addresses them all while identifying the most critical piece: Land ownership.

can make any transaction with family land, including selling, pledging, mortgaging, exchanging, or transferring it. Since the introduction of the spousal consent law, women in urban centers have exercised their right to be equal decision makers in the way their co-owned land is used. The widespread awareness of this law within urban centers and the ease of access to law enforcement agencies makes it easier for women in urban areas to fend off abusive husbands and opportunistic relatives who pose a threat to their land ownership status.

Government programs and many citizen organizations have tried to promote agricultural productivity in rural areas by giving out improved seeds to farmers. Financial institutions are extending credit to farmers and input dealers are figuring out ways of getting inputs down to farmers at a good price. In addition, many interventions are focused on creating more value for farmers and passing this value to them through elaborate value chain models. The reality on the ground is that very few women actually benefit from this increased value for the simple reason that they don’t own the land they farm on and men stand to benefit most from these opportunities. Alice sees the need for a women-focused approach that addresses the unique challenges that women farmers face in order to set them on the path to economic development.

T H E S T R AT E G Y Alice chose to roll out her citizen-based model in Teso subregion because it is where she grew up and where she experienced firsthand the iniquities faced by women due to suppressive cultural practices. This area also represents where some of the most vulnerable women in Uganda are found, having been victims of not only a patriarchal culture but also over twenty years of civil unrest. Alice has an intimate understanding of the realities as well as the power dynamics of the area.

“…TERREWODE’s activities should be expanded to parishes, sub-counties and districts, with information and experience shared with technical staff. [Ejupu] commended the work of TERREWODE for healing school girls and returning them to school … ” —Chief Ejupu, International HIV/AIDS Alliance Land is a crucial source of livelihood for Ugandans, especially for those who live in rural areas, as agriculture is the main source of livelihood. Women however, have historically been more susceptible to land grabbing by people from within and without their families. The Constitution of the Republic of Uganda, 1995 was therefore revised to provide for the emancipation of women through the introduction of Section 38A which stipulates that the consent of one’s spouse must be obtained before the other spouse

Fistula survivors drama sensitizing police to implement laws protecting women and girls from abuse.

In the rural areas however, the situation isn’t as straightforward. Not only are women in these areas often illiterate and poor— making access to legal services near to impossible—they also have to conform to traditional governance structures that are patriarchal in nature. Disempowering cultural practices dictate that women cannot own land and that upon the death of their husbands, they are inherited by their in-laws along with their husbands’ assets. Because the land the women farm does not belong to them, neither does the produce or the revenue they generate from their farming activities. So, although there is no law barring women from owning land, these prejudiced cultural practices take precedence and are reinforced even further in postconflict areas. Alice identifies the most passionate retired civil servants from the public sector and turns them into active agents of change at the grassroots level. The strength of this group lies in the fact that they have lived in urban areas and have seen women exercise their right to own land and be treated as equals. This group also enjoys enormous respect in their home villages, and has the ability to influence decisions and even traditions. Alice is putting these retired senior citizens in active roles as adjudicators of local courts and has—starting with three districts—mobilized local leaders and women’s groups to create district level bylaws for use by the adjudication courts to allow women, including the adjudicators’ daughters and granddaughters, to own land.

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Using district bylaws the elders can intervene on a case by case basis to allow women to own land and begin their journey toward economic prosperity. For example, a woman lost her husband and was inherited by her in-laws. During the process, everything she owned was taken by her new husband and when she conceived, she was thrown out of the home. Homeless and with no family to turn to for help, she took her case to the adjudication courts and had the elders intervene on her behalf. They negotiated with her in-laws and succeeded in returning her marital home and land back to her. Several years later, this same woman has a thriving dairy farm and is able to support her children and those of her brothers and sisters, protecting them from going through the same ordeal. She is also actively involved in one of Alice’s groups and is passionate about helping other women overcome similar challenges. Alice has also made it a condition for the women in her groups to identify and recruit other women who have suffered from fistula as a precondition to benefitting from the program. In so doing, she has kept her growth strategy focused on reaching more and more of the most vulnerable women in fragile post-conflict areas. Fistula is a highly stigmatized reproductive health condition that results from child sex slavery, defilement, and the pregnancy of premature girls. Women who suffer from this condition are often rejected by their communities and live their lives as outcasts. Alice is spreading her work through national networks and grassroots women’s groups, first to post-conflict areas as the women in such areas are vulnerable to land rights violations. For example, Alice is engaging with local communities in Kasese, a district in southwestern Uganda, a region that like the Teso subregion was ravaged with civil war and conflict for many years and suffers from the same challenges. Key to Alice’s approach is her use of the media to build a nationwide organization of change agents. She has engaged journalists who are writing about the problem and sensitizing the wider community from which she is recruiting members of her organization including retired civil servants, advocates, law enforcement offices, and women’s groups. The national level organization that she is building is not just an awareness push but she is also creating within it a system for accountability of duty bearers at the grassroots level. Alice is building an accountability system whereby has her organization transmits information from the work of the women’s groups and other stakeholders mobilized through her network to other women, policymakers, and opinion leaders across the region. In doing so, she is feeding decision makers and custodians of resources related to the area of rural development with a real-time catalogue of what is happening on the ground. By actively engaging a broad spectrum of stakeholders and providing them with real-time and actionable information, Alice is giving everyone in her network the tools and capacity to make a difference in the lives of poor farming women in rural Uganda.

THE PERSON Alice was born in the Teso sub-region of northern Uganda to a village chief. What was supposed to be a privileged life turned upside down when her father passed on when Alice was only three-months-old. As tradition in that part of the world dictated, her mother was inherited by her in-laws and Alice watched her suffer discrimination and stigma associated with widowed women. To survive, they had to go from door to door begging for food and Alice’s mother often had to walk many kilometers to find work— mostly plowing other people’s shambas in exchange for food for her children. What made it worse is that, at the time, the Teso subregion was rife with civil conflict. Men were targeted by the rebel groups that terrorized the area and because of this, in trying to protect their men, the women did all the work outside the house including cultivation and any form of business. The situation was therefore not unique to Alice’s mum. She saw families marry off their young daughters in exchange for food. Alice saw many young girls become pregnant and die due to childbirth-related complications. She lost six of her closest friends under similar circumstances. Having grown up amidst such wretched conditions through most of her childhood, Alice felt compelled to do something about it. At only 16, Alice started writing newspaper articles for New Vision, Uganda’s leading newspaper—to create awareness on a national scale about the plight of the people and particularly the women of the Teso sub-region. She was eventually hired by the newspaper before completing her university education and became the last journalist hired by the paper without a degree. While at New Vision, Alice recalls that the paper did not tolerate news stories focused on women. She remembers her first article being torn in her face, as it didn’t represent what the newspaper stood for. Alice convinced them to publish the story and eventually advocated for the introduction of the paper’s first women’s rights centered pull out called Women’s Voice. This prompted the second leading newspaper, The Daily Monitor, to introduce their own version of the same pull out which they called Full Woman. Over ten years at New Vision, Alice became one of the most respected female journalists in Uganda; known for her passion for issues related to women’s rights. Alice recognizes that land ownership by men and not women has been engraved in African cultural tradition for generations. She also recognizes that the power dynamic in such areas pronounces men as superior to women. Alice therefore had to find a way to tilt a complex and patriarchal governance structure to recognize women as equal shareholders of community assets in a way that doesn’t threaten men, protective of their social status, or the women who are shy about provoking them. 

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S hauneen L ambe UNITED KINGDOM

Child Protection Law and Legal Reform Underserved Communities

As an independent not-for-profit organization, Just For Kids Law can leverage the power of the law to hold all players in the youth justice system accountable. Just for Kids’ staff use their expertise to threaten local authorities and statutory support organizations with legal action if they do not provide the correct assistance. Their lawyers can also take formal action against legal practitioners who do not abide by the regulations that are in place to protect young people—for example, if a judge fails to protect the annonymity of a young offender. As an independent organization, Just for Kids Law is therefore able to put pressure on all the key stakeholders in the youth justice system to ensure they are providing the best possible support for young people by introducing a level of accountability.

Shauneen Lambe is changing the criminal justice system’s treatment of young offenders from one of punishment and stigmatization into an opportunity for positive intervention. Through Just for Kids Law, Shauneen is reframing the way in which the criminal justice system interacts with children in the U.K. by training legal practitioners, advocating for legislative reform, and bringing legal expertise to tackle the root causes of youth offending.

THE NEW IDEA Just for Kids Law uses the power of the law to fundamentally change the way that young people are treated and supported in the criminal justice system: providing personal support, advocacy, and legal expertise to help young people tackle the problems they face in their daily lives. From her personal experience of working as an attorney defending young people on death row, Shauneen realized that with earlier intervention many of her clients would not have ended up facing the death penalty. She saw that the moment young people first came into contact with the criminal justice system was a crucial tipping point in their lives, when they could be given the appropriate guidance and support to change their futures. Shauneen believes that lawyers are uniquely positioned to identify the broader needs of child defendants and make sure they are addressed. Just for Kids Law staff provide direct representation for children and young people in court, but also in proceedings where legal help is not traditionally available: they help children access housing, training, or re-entry into the education system. Furthermore, their youth advocates ensure that young people with mental health problems, learning disabilities or special educational needs are properly assessed and receive the support they need. Just for Kids Law therefore acts as a bridge between the criminal justice system and the social support available for young people. In many instances, Shauneen advocates for young people who have not received the most basic services they are entitled to receive. By broadening the remit of lawyers defending young people to tackle this problem, Shauneen is introducing a child-led, rights-based approach to addressing youth offending.

Lambe and Hughes Cousins-Chang, spoke at a City Hall debate, part of the Mind the Justice Gap public legal education project run by the Justice Gap, Hackney Community Law Centre and University College London’s Access to Justice Unit and Hackney Council for Voluntary Services.

As well as using the law to change the provision of support for young people outside of the courtroom, Shauneen is reframing the way that young people are defended inside the court both through her own legal work and through her training programmes for other lawyers. The way that lawyers traditionally argue a court case is focused narrowly on the act of the crime itself and whether a judgement of guilty or not-guilty can be reached. However, Shauneen believes that a broader perspective must be used, incorporating mitigation: understanding the personal stories that might have led a young person to offend, such as their parental situation, housing needs or medical circumstances, and using them as mitigating factors when judging and sentencing. Shauneen sees Just For Kids Law as a connector between the two key parties in the criminal justice system—on the one hand influencing the judges, magistrates and lawyers, while at the same time understanding and empathizing with the young

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people they represent. Shauneen therefore personally takes on the most complex and strategic court cases, to set legal precedents of a child’s rights based approach for the rest of the youth justice sector and to introduce elements of mitigation to youth cases. In addition, Just for Kids Law transforms the youth justice system by training legal practitioners in their models of best practice, mitigation, and personal support for youths. By training lawyers to reveal the reasons that might have led a young person to offend, Shauneen is introducing empathy within the courtroom and allowing the root causes of a young person’s criminal behavior to be addressed. In a legal system and cultural climate that criminalizes youths, Shauneen offers a successful, multi-level solution that will fundamentally change how children experience the youth justice system.

THE PROBLEM The fundamental aim of the youth justice system is to prevent offending by young people. Yet as it stands 80 percent of young people end up re-offending. The statistics show that the youth justice system is failing to tackle the root causes of criminal behavior among young people. Children in the youth justice system often face multiple and complex challenges. Many come from the most troubled backgrounds, including abusive homes, exclusion from education, and kept in care. A large number have been refused access to the basic services they are legally entitled to receive, such as housing and education. Without early and effective intervention, many of these vulnerable young people will be drawn into a cycle of crime and exclusion from mainstream society: at great cost to the state and to young people themselves. However instead of tackling the reasons behind youth offending, the U.K. has adopted an increasingly punitive stance— incarcerating more children than any Western country besides the United States. In the past twenty years, the number of children in custody has increased by 795 percent. This trend can be traced back to a landmark trial in 1993, known as the Venables and Thompson case, in which two 11-year-old boys were found guilty of abducting, torturing, and murdering a two-year-old boy. The case received wide coverage in the tabloid press and had a hugely negative impact on the public and political perception of young offenders and the age of criminal responsibility. In England and Wales the age of criminal responsibility is 10 years of age, compared to 14 in most European countries. This means that from the age of 10 a child is treated with the same level of responsibility as an adult, despite the fact that he/she does not have the same rights. As a result, children in the U.K. can be tried in adult courts in an inappropriate and intimidating setting, which statistically gives more severe sentences than the equivalent trial in youth courts. The UN Commission on Human Rights has specifically criticized the U.K. for criminalizing its young people and neglecting children’s rights. Nonetheless, since the Venables and Thompson case, there has been little public or political will to raise the age of criminal responsibility in the U.K.

In the U.K., an entire generation of young people have been drawn into the criminal justice system which labels them for life as offenders. However the law is failing to provide these young people with the specialist support they require. Currently, there is no specific training requirement for legal practitioners defending young people, despite the fact that youth law differs fundamentally to adult law. This means that the legal practitioners are often unfamiliar with relevant legislation and specific case law and unable to identify issues concerning the broader vulnerabilities or mental capacity of child defendants. They may not be aware of youth-specific community sentences or with alternative support services that could be available for their clients. Furthermore the youth courts are used as a training ground for newly qualified lawyers. These factors mean that young people are not receiving the services and sentences appropriate to address their offending, and instead move through the system as an increasingly large and voiceless population.

T H E S T R AT E G Y Shauneen’s vision is a system that protects and empowers young people, instead of criminalizing and punishing them. To fulfill this ambition Shauneen has developed a three-fold approach, which focuses on enforcing the duty of care the state has for the welfare of young people, changing the provision of legal representation and support for youths, and reversing the current trend of incaceration in the U.K.

“The aim of Dignity Day is to instill people with dignity. It's important to the way we work with young people. They feel like they’re struggling in the city; they see no jobs available and are seen as a negative force. It’s about bringing dignity to their voice, to show they’re relevant…We like to teach young people… to treat themselves and others with dignity. They have lightbulb moments when they do that.” —Shauneen Lambe, See Change Magazine The first part of Shauneen’s strategy focuses on transforming the delivery of personal support and legal representation in the U.K., to ensure that every child receives a minimum level of care. Just for Kids Law is uniquely placed, when necessary, to enforce the duty of care the state has for the welfare of its young people through litigation. The organization thus provides a safety net for the most vulnerable young people to access services. Legal practitioners also have a responsibility to provide children with correct legal support. From her first-hand experience as a barrister, Shauneen recognized the need to develop a short, intensive

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"I think Just for Kids Law is a most remarkable new kid on the block, an inspirational social invention in the law where innovation is rare."

training program for legal practitioners to enable them to better support and advocate for child defendants. Just for Kids Law has therefore pioneered an innovative training model delivered in part by former juvenile defendants. Hearing from young people who have been supported by Just for Kids Law gives legal practitioners real insight into the direct experiences of young people caught up in the criminal justice system, as well as providing young people with a chance to voice how they want to be treated as a client. This in-depth, one day course helps to develop a real understanding of young peoples’ distinct needs, and improves practitioners’ ability to communicate with young people and thus represent them more effectively, incorporating mitigation techniques to their legal defense work. Legal practitioners are trained in best practices for representing children in criminal proceedings with reference to specific case law regarding young people. The training also highlights the critical role that youth offending teams, psychologists, social workers, and local authorities can play in helping to achieve the best outcomes for young offenders both inside and outside the courtroom. Last year alone, Just for Kids Law trained over 400 lawyers, judges and magistrates in cities across the country. However, lawyers are not required to attend training before they represent children in criminal proceedings. To counteract this and bring about systemic change within the legal profession, Shauneen plans to establish youth justice advocacy as a specialist field, which would require a minimum level of knowledge and training. While the ambition is for this training to become mandatory for all legal practitioners, it may take many years for this to come about. In the meantime Shauneen is therefore developing a kitemark to recognize those who have undergone specific youth justice training, creating an incentive for legal practitioners to attend. As well as training legal practitioners, Just for Kids Law also coaches the wider spectrum of youth justice professionals in the law surrounding rights to education, accommodation and social welfare, so that they can advocate effectively on behalf of the young people they work with. By working with all of the key stakeholders in the youth justice

—Baroness Helena Kennedy QC

system from lawyers, judges and magistrates to the police, youth offending teams and childrens charities, Just for Kids Law is able to fundamentally change the provision of support for young people using the power of the law. Next, Shauneen must fight against the U.K.’s punitive approach to dealing with young offenders and bring about a reversal in the current trend for incarcerating more children. The second part of Shauneen’s strategy therefore focuses on changing key laws and policies that should help to prevent the unnecessary criminalization of young people. Shauneen has identified several areas of strategic litigation, which will allow her to set new legal precedents such as the overuse of custodial sentences for young people and the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales. Success in these areas will improve legislation and outcomes for all children and ultimately reduce the number of young people being drawn into the criminal justice system. The training of key legal practitioners and the use of strategic litigation will reduce the punitive and criminalizing trend in the youth justice system. However, it will not fully tackle the root causes of much youth offending: lack of personal support for the most vulnerable youths. Therefore Shauneen also plans to increase the number of young people who can access her model of legal and personal support. She intends to scale Just for Kids Law nationally by embedding her model into existing legal practices around the U.K., leveraging their resources and expertise. Shauneen specif ically targets local High Street law f irms, who are willing to open a youth justice department as part of their core business to provide specialist legal representation for young people from the community. A Just for Kids branch will then be established in conjuction with each High Street firm to make sure that each child’s rights are also being met outside of the courtroom through mentoring, access to housing, education or mental health services. The decision to target High Street law firms is a key part of Shauneen’s scaling strategy for two reasons, first, Shauneen realized that young people will not leave

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their local area to receive legal support and thus services must be offered in the community, secondly, High Street law firms are key to her strategy because these firms have a clear incentive to build a good reputation among local clients therefore providing a high-quality service. Each office will have as a goal to become self-sufficient in the long-term, tapping into local funding sources to ensure sustainability. Having developed the blueprint for the Just for Kids Law model in North and West London in partnership with two different law firms, Shauneen is now ready to focus on spreading a new pattern of legal services for young people across the country. She intends to spread to South and East London before taking her model to other cities in the U.K., such as Birmingham and Manchester. As a non-profit organization, Just For Kids Law raises funds from philanthropic donors including corporations, foundations and individuals, as well as earning revenue from legal aid fees which are provided by the state but do not cover payment for all the work. Ultimately, Shauneen plans to grow Just for Kids Laws’ earned income by exploring the potential to monetize their trainings and develop specific resources such as a youth justice manual for legal practitioners.

THE PERSON Shauneen had an international upbringing, moving between the U.K., Hong Kong, Germany, and Belize before the age of 10. Her father, as an Irishman sent abroad, personally experienced the tensions between the Irish and British in the 1960s and 1970s, and valued tolerance, empathy, and understanding in his children’s upbringing. Shauneen attended a local school in Belize and became immersed in a community of migrants and refugees. She returned to the U.K. to go to boarding school, and went on to study psychology and philosophy at Edinburgh. While studying as an undergraduate, Shauneen was shocked by the lack of basic safeguards against discrimination in the university and strove to promote measures for social justice, successfully establishing the university’s first equal opportunities officer. To support herself financially Shauneen found work accompanying defendants to their court cases, where she witnessed the power of the legal system on people’s lives first-hand and decided to become a lawyer. In 1995, during Shauneen’s first year of studying law, Englishman Nick Ingram was executed in the U.S. The case received great media attention and Shauneen was shocked by the story’s press coverage. She resolved to go to the U.S. for her summer holidays to work with Nick Ingram’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith. Unknown to Shauneen at the time, this would start her on her life-course of working with young people caught up in complex criminal cases. Clive became one of Shauneen’s closest mentors and she continued to help him with death penalty cases in the evenings back in bar school in the U.K. During her summer holiday, she returned to Belize to visit prisoners on death row and witnessed first-hand the terrible living conditions prisoners were 70

subjected to. This experience led her to set up a support fund for the prisoners to sustain their basic rights. In the U.K. in 1997, Shauneen started practicing as a legal advocate trainee. She found the culture of moral and emotional detachment among her colleagues difficult, and was considering leaving until she managed to channel her energy into working on legal cases. When she completed her training she was the only student not to apply for a permanent position at her law firm. Instead she returned to the U.S. where she created a new program for Clive Stafford Smith’s organization, the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center. This program targeted the most racist parish of Louisiana and provided intensive investigation and litigation to support the unprepared public defenders of youths facing the death penalty. The first case she worked on she joined too late, and to Shauneen’s distress the child was convicted and sentenced to death. Every child she supported from then on was saved from the death penalty, and she realized the difference that quality legal defense could make to a trial’s verdict. It also became clear to her, from looking at the complex backgrounds of young people while preparing cases, that these serious crimes could have been prevented if there had been earlier intervention. In 1999 Shauneen helped to set up for Clive a U.K.-based organization, Reprieve, supporting the cases of those on death row and drawing attention to human rights for prisoners more broadly. She remained on the board of Reprieve until 2006 and laid the groundwork for the organization from scratch in the U.K.: raising its profile, leading its fundraising efforts, and developing a board and team. Reprieve is now an internationally-renowned human rights group with an annual turnover of nearly £2 million (US$3.2M). After working in the U.S. for another three years Shauneen returned to the U.K. and started exploring the youth justice sector. She was alarmed by the path of criminalizing youths that the U.K. was on, and approached leaders with her idea for Just For Kids Law, but was met with resistance from legal professionals. She realized that, contrary to her American experience, English lawyers were bypassing any opportunities to link their youth casework to broader issues, strategic litigation, or activism for their clients. It was hard to find law firms at the time specializing in youth justice. She therefore approached Lawrence & Co. solicitors with the proposal to establish the first Youth Justice Department for them, which they accepted. Her client base grew year to year, confirming the unmet need for specialist support of young offenders. In response to the rising demand for additional support for young people in the criminal justice system, Shauneen launched Just For Kids Law as a charitable organization in 2006. 

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J unto O hki JAPAN

Access to Learning/ Education Disabilities Underserved Communities

Junto Ohki uses information technology to promote full citizenship of the deaf community in Japan by developing on online database of signs, thus increasing access to basic services and removing barriers between global sign languages.

THE NEW IDEA Junto is the co-founder and president of ShuR Group, the company behind a technology that combines aspects of social media and social enterprise to create the first sign language dictionary in the world, called SLinto, a Wikipedia for signs. He is starting with 101 words but aspires to eventually include 126 languages in the dictionary. Junto has developed a keyboard which has simplified how to look up a word or sign while making it possible to directly translate from one language’s sign to another. Junto has also developed an online website which can capture the world’s 126 sign languages while providing links between the languages that never existed before. This idea is systems-changing in the way that it facilitates the evolution of sign language while at the same time incorporating the deaf community it seeks to benefit as part of the decisionmaking process. Junto has created a crowd sourcing platform where deaf users can vote on the usage of certain words and based on the response, create a user-generated dictionary that standardizes Japanese Sign Language. This not only involves the deaf community and grants them direct responsibility in normalizing the language, it doubles as a data mining tool that allows interested parties to better understand the words that are commonly used by deaf people, specifically technical terms such as health, mechanical, or other specialized vernacular.

years, the Japanese government has endorsed lip reading over sign language for the deaf community with the result that now the government is playing “catch up” in order to quickly solidify the language. This has resulted in the haphazard and inefficient formalization of sign language. In recent years, the Japanese government has paid over US$10 million to identify 100 standardized signs. 50.2 percent of students in Japan matriculate to university, while only 16 percent of the deaf community attends college. In 2008, deaf people still could not obtain a driver’s license, become a pilot, a pharmacist, or engage in many other professions or career paths. In the Japanese Congress (Parliament) only one person is deaf compared to fourteen blind politicians.). Additionally, the deaf community is more vulnerable without regular access to health care information and emergency services. All of these issues correlate back to a lack of ownership of sign language by the deaf community. There are 126 different sign languages in the world without a mechanism to translate between them as there is no sign language-written language dictionary. This means deaf people who use sign language as their mother tongue have a difficult time learning the written language.

“ShuR is now available at some 350 hotels, restaurants, train stations and other places. It is free of charge while interpreters are at the office.” —The Japan Times With this dictionary, deaf people can search for a word that they don’t know in written language by sign language. It will help deaf people to better learn written language. The situation is further complicated by the fact that in one country there may be several signs for one word (in Japan there are twenty different signs for the word “egg”). Furthermore, if an individual is born deaf, their ability to form sentences varies quite largely from those that develop deafness at some point later in their life.

T H E S T R AT E G Y

THE PROBLEM

Junto’s development of the dictionary for sign language encompasses a number of components that include not only design but functionality that mimics Wikipedia. Junto is capturing sign language in a dynamic way. The main ideal behind the SLinto Dictionary is that deaf people can actively participate in shaping the content. People can take a video of sign language, upload it to the website, edit words, search for words, and evaluate and critique other user’s work. This is the world’s first cloud sourced, interactive sign language dictionary platform.

The deaf community in Japan does not experience full citizenship globally and has historically been marginalized. For thirty

Junto’s travels to Korea inspired his development of the keyboard for sign language. He noticed there that different countries had

Junto not only wants to standardize Japanese Sign Language through his technology, but he hopes to provide efficient access to services and information that enable the deaf community to become full participants in society. He is addressing the issue of access by providing new forms of entertainment, travel documentaries, emergency web-based translation services, and social services.

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keyboards that varied depending on the user’s language. It was at this moment that Junto recognized the importance of duplicating this idea for sign language users since prior to his creation there was no way for sign language users to type the language onto a keyboard. He made a keyboard which uses the “figure-of-finger” method, recognizing that the number of fingers is universal even if sign language is not.

Junto introduces his online sign language program to engaged students.

Junto has built a defined pipeline that will incorporate many more sign languages into his online dictionary. In one year, Junto will expand his service to 7 different sign languages including: Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese, American, British, and International Sign Languages. Junto projects that in 1.5 years, three out of seven dictionaries, JSL, KSL, and ASL will have more than 3,000 words and the other four will have 1,000 words. He then hopes to launch five other sign languages on his program: Finnish, Canadian, New Zealand, Australian, and Kenyan. In two years, Japanese, Korean, and American Sign Languages will have 7,000+ words in their database and the other four languages will have 2,000+ words with the hopes of launching another fifteen sign languages. Junto plans to expand the database to use another service such as auto interpretation or visual recognition. In three years, all seven of the sign languages should have 10,000+ words and the other twenty sign languages should have 3,000+ words. Junto’s long-term goal is that in ten years, the site will no longer function just as a dictionary but as a portal site for deaf people all over the world and provide all the necessary information to obtain information as well as to communicate.

THE PERSON Junto's father worked a day job for six months before he quit and taught semi-professional golf for ten years, later becoming a professional golfer. His mother is a piano teacher. Both of his

parents are entirely self-taught and self-employed. One of Junto’s grandfathers was a Mahjong champion and the other produced uniforms. Growing up, Junto learned what it meant to be discriminated against. As a fifth grader, he stood up for a friend being bullied by his peers, and as a consequence, the group (including the friend) gave him the “silent treatment” for months. Finally, Junto reached out to the head of the group and broke the pattern. Junto was faced with this issue again as an exchange student in Livonia, Michigan. Initially, he was not openly welcomed by many of the students. On the soccer field he faced a lot of harassment. He was able to break this cycle again and became quite popular, being chosen “Honorary Homecoming King” even though exchange students were not allowed to be on the Homecoming Court. Though Junto was able to break through these social barriers, it was during these early experiences of isolation that he learned empathy for the isolation experienced by the deaf community in Japan. Though Junto is not deaf, nor does he have anyone in his life that is, his organization is built around the deaf community. His initial interest in the deaf community was sparked in junior high when he viewed a program on TV about sign language. Junto fell in love with the art of sign language and observed how the intricacies of different gestures and hand movements could convey meaning. While at university, he started a sign language group on campus. He was contacted (based on his leadership of the group) by a famous singer to sign for her during the annual holiday program. At the time, Junto did not know how to sign so he forced himself to learn in six months to be able to do this event for which he received strong support from the deaf community for his skills. It was also at this point that he realized how little entertainment was accessible to the deaf community. Based on this demand, he started an Internet-based travel program. In order to find hosts for these travel programs he reached out to the deaf community in his neighborhood. These were Junto’s first encounters with a deaf people. While the TV program was Junto’s ultimate objective, he learned the challenges that deaf people face by traveling with a deaf neighbor to Kamakura. This led to other ideas. During the Tohoku events of March 2011, Junto was active in online-based information sharing for the deaf community. Within six hours of the initial crisis, Junto had put together a website and provided 24-hour translation services. While he initially thought that the users would be the deaf community within Tohoku, he found his service was critical for the Japanese deaf community in Japan and abroad, which had limited access to information. Junto’s foresight to engage, connect, and interact with the deaf community in Japan is transforming their participation as engaged citizens. 

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M artina B odnarova S LOVA K I A

Children © Stephan Rauch

Educational Institutions Educational Reform

Martina Bodnarova is tackling the challenges of the Slovakian education system in order to ignite a movement of cooperation, empathy, and creativity to spread beyond the classroom walls.

THE NEW IDEA Through SuperClass, Martina is cultivating and spreading empathy in Slovakia, beginning with the educational system. Her idea is based on the premise that every child has the right and capacity to participate and shape the cultural life of society. Martina uses the Slovakian school system as the mechanism to actualize her vision. She has developed an applied model of inclusive pedagogy to transform educational practices in Slovakia that unites dialogue and cooperation, while also fostering community and social conscience. At the heart of her methodology, Martina incentivizes new values in the school system including participation, openness, and teamwork. Through incentives, she creates an educational framework that values the unique qualities of every child. As a result of SuperClass, kids learn to act together when solving a problem and mastering a challenge, taking advantage of the unique set of skills in the group. Martina creates space for kids to express themselves freely, which for many, is the first time they are recognized as part of a solution. Through SuperClass, Martina insinuates the teaching of empathy, cooperation, and changemaking behavior into the school system so that children learn these skills. She does so, however, under the guise of a competition, with language and performances familiar in Slovakian school classes and extracurricular activities. Even though Superclass enters the school system looking like a competition, in reality it is non-competitive in its approach. Through SuperClass, Martina brings kids together to independently envision, plan, design, and create a performance around a particular theme. The competition theme varies by year, but always reflects current social issues and mature subject matters. These themes aim to increase the cultural awareness of children, teaching them to feel, think, create, and discover their talents. Every child, regardless of his/her background, race, ethnicity, or school, is ultimately a co-creator and a winner, and receives recognition by SuperClass. Superclass incentivizes kids to cooperate with each other and the teacher. It improves their social and communication skills, equips them with new perspectives

for their private and professional life, and encourages them to participate actively in the community. Because SuperClass is active on the national level, it creates meeting points for children from a multitude of schools, regions, towns, and social backgrounds. In SuperClass, all children are equal, whether they are from different ethnicities, rich or poor families, have disabilities or are young offenders housed in juvenile detention centers. Martina’s idea is successfully spread through engaged teachers within various subjects, especially Slovak language, literature, religion, ethics, and music. There is a growing interest by students and teachers to apply the methodology beyond this traditional sphere, such as in the geography or mathematics curriculums. Martina sees her model of inclusive pedagogy as a tool for transforming and humanizing the entire field of education.

THE PROBLEM The education system in Slovakia has deteriorated over the last two decades of transition. Young people are trapped by inactivity and passivity in the classroom. Children need to be liberated from this indolence, yet require stimulation and motivation that is currently missing in the classroom. Without building cooperation, empathy, and teamwork as key values in schools, the educational system will continue to deny students the opportunity to learn and positively relate to one another. Martina creates a simple mechanism to enable children to think and reflect on valuable ideas, and then act on them together. The primary and secondary education in Slovakia is deficient in terms of its promotion of independent thinking and student initiative, creative learning, updated teaching material, methods, and syllabi, which are often inherited from the former communist educational system. Due to these factors and low salary compensation, the number of qualified teachers is decreasing across Slovakia. Children are not encouraged to ask questions, form opinions, or discover the world around them. Successful education is correlated with passing grades, as individualism and competition are at the core of the official pedagogical concept. The result is a system in which teachers are trapped in a spiral of poor remuneration, social status, and lack of access to further education. Students and teachers do not find school to be a fun place to learn, let alone to exist. This deteriorating school-wide morale, learning environment, and student performance leads to more visible problems such as low school attendance, bullying, and an increasing prevalence of school dropouts. It also leads to a small and elite percentage of kids who have access to the opportunities that exist for educational growth and development. According to official statistics, only 4 percent of children in Slovakia are so-called “talents.” This small group of children has the opportunity to represent their schools or communities at championships and competitions and receive dedicated support. SuperClass supports the other 96 percent of children and proves that every child is gifted, willing to learn, and full of potential and creativity. Without the necessary emotional skills to master challenges and seek opportunities to grow, aggressive behavior, bullying and 75

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indifference are consequences that play out in the classroom. Schools, however, do not currently reduce bullying and aggressive behavior effectively, which further inhibits children’s learning and development of emotional intelligence. These emotional skills are also key for reducing the social segregation that continues to undermine fair education and employment prospects for marginalized communities. For example, thousands of Romani children are erroneously placed in special schools or segregated in Roma only schools across Slovakia. Martina’s idea is founded on the assumption that all people are naturally able to empathize with one another and create change, they just need to be surrounded by conditions that foster it. She believes the school system is the ideal entry point for activating change from within children, rather than allowing problems such as aggressive behavior, bullying, and social segregation to persist and become norms in society.

T H E S T R AT E G Y Martina’s model is unique and simple at the same time, employing a mechanism that is sufficiently motivational so it can live and spread itself. SuperClass is a national competition for school classes, in which an entire school class works together for a full year on a particular theme. The theme of the SuperClass competition varies annually but always ref lects current social issues, such as “Can money change the world,” “What it means to get old,” “Cooperation,” or “All for one and one for all.” An entire school class is expected to focus on this theme for the school year and create an original performance or video clip of their communal impressions and view of the theme after the full year of reflection and practice. The preparation for SuperClass begins with topical discussion guided by teachers from various subjects (especially Slovak language and literature, religion and ethics, or music), development of the materials, and practice and training. Children lead each step of the production, however, from brainstorming the first ideas to the presentation, with an emphasis on the participation of all children within the class. In a school system where children are reduced to mere recepients of static information and outdated teaching material, SuperClass opens a space for activation, reflection, collaborative action and student-led learning. The competition rounds are organized in all district capitals of Slovakia, in venues where the children have the chance to present on a real stage. For many children, this is the first time they are in a theater, let alone on a stage being applauded by the 300+ students in the audience from other schools participating. The grand finale of SuperClass is held in Bratislava each year. Superclass encourages children to come to school and to stay in school. It provides a simple mechanism to encourage children to attend, and also to think and ref lect on valuable thoughts and ideas. For example, for a class to participate, all children must participate. If one child decides he/she does not want to participate, the entire class is disqualified. This has never happened, however, because the class convinces the child who resists through positive reinforcement. New relationships among students are built that foster non-aggressive leadership. The teacher’s role shifts, too, as he/she becomes more of a coordinator, while the class learns to lead itself. 76

Even though the culmination of SuperClass is a performance, SuperClass is not about the performance as is the case with many competitions. It is important that children perform, yet not important how perfectly they perform. The performances create the structure to offer kids an entire year to express ideas freely, work together, and not be inhibited by competition. This ensures that minority children, including Roma and disabled children, are included. Children come to compete, but they leave feeling that they have won, and recognize that everyone else has won, too. SuperClass ensures that an entire class works together and respects one another as part of the end product. This process ultimately changes children and their perception of themselves. SuperClass is accredited by the Ministry of Education as a voluntary competition for schools and is part of the official educational program of Slovakia as a recommended project within compulsory school subjects. This allows educational facilities to include SuperClass as a voluntary activity within the school curriculums. Even though the entire Slovakian school system is based on different subject-based competitions, SuperClass is the only national competition that aims to inspire a new culture of empathy in the elementary and secondary schools of Slovakia.

Students are expected to come up with an original drama performance/video clip that will show their perspective on a current theme. The winners receive the title of SuperClass.

Martina is creating a world where children learn how to communicate without conflicts, be empathetic, avoid judgment, develop joy from acquiring knowledge, and approach life creatively. Martina engages a wide range of stakeholders in order to actualize this vision, yet cleverly incentivizes them to participate in SuperClass. The competitions are designed to activate children, engage them collaboratively and create a new class culture. The students love SuperClass because it is fun, interactive, and goal-oriented. Teachers are also key stakeholders required for the success of SuperClass. SuperClass strengthens teachers’ curriculums and strategies in the classroom. Teachers can even earn a larger salary through the continued education credits offered through SuperClass, which are approved by the Ministry of Education. There are currently more than 500 teachers involved who receive feedback and advice by the

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SuperClass organization on a rolling basis. Parents are involved to support their kids, get engaged in the competition and become ambassadors of the empathy movement. Government officials, churches and municipal authorities consider SuperClass to be a way to revitalize the cultural life in their communities. Experts and academics, engaged as advisors and trainers, process SuperClass academically and promote the results within universities and national educational institutions. The Ministry of Education, a key strategic partner of SuperClass, increasingly promotes it as a best practice and incorporates the approach and methodology into its educational reform. The products of the competitions are spread throughout the country using the power of social media, together with press conferences and the mass media. Martina’s mid-term aim is to establish communication and networks with the more than 3,000 primary and secondary schools in Slovakia. Extensive lobbying is done at the regional educational offices of the Ministry of Education, the body ultimately responsible for approving the competitions for which schools are applying, and the 400 Slovak Mayors, who are generous supporters of SuperClass. Three press conferences per year spread the empathy movement into the media and homes of Slovak society inviting them to join SuperClass, raising awareness and triggering public discussions about problem areas not yet sufficiently recognized, such as bullying and the lack of educational development opportunities for all children. Since the birth of SuperClass seven years ago, 25,000 kids have completed the program. Martina’s goal is that as children participate in SuperClass, this new type of learning becomes the norm in schools globally. Currently, of the 300 classes participating each year, at least half rejoin each year. Schools who have participated in SuperClass since the first year are more independent and students more curious to learn. To reach Martina’s vision for changing school systems globally, SuperClass has grown significantly since 2006 when Martina founded it. Currently there are SuperClass classes in Romania, Serbia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. At the summer camp for training coordinators, coordinators from new potential countries have participated, including France, Norway, Finland, and Luxemburg. Martina aims to spread SuperClass throughout the European Union and to develop a European network of national SuperClass competitions. Because SuperClass is a relatively simple methodology that generates a great deal of enthusiasm in teachers and students, it can easily be copied and spread. SuperClass will also spread easily through its network community approach, in which teachers themselves become active members within the SuperClass organization and work as ambassadors to spread the idea into more schools. SuperClass was recently recommended as a best practice in an official strategy paper of the Ministry of Education discussing the future of the Slovak education system. And in 2010, SuperClass was the only project from Slovakia that had been chosen as a “Good Practice Model of the European Educational Network.” As such, it will be promoted in all the states of the EU as a role model for teaching applied humanities. Martina is

at a key turning point in her work as she begins to scale across Europe, after building the infrastructure and momentum in Slovakia.

THE PERSON Martina was born into a family of teachers and physicians, which fostered in her a thirst for knowledge and a passion for education. From her early childhood, she was exposed to the problems in the school system and the importance of quality education. In her youth, she became involved in projects aimed to improve health and education systems. During high school, Martina was a member of a group that brought drama performances, including puppet theater, to hospitals in order to improve the patient experience, in particular oncology departments. She later worked on a large-scale project for elementary schools that focused on environmental education and ecology. Martina went on to complete her Master’s degree in cultural management at the Faculty of Philosophy of Comenius University in Bratislava just as the revolution was beginning.

Superclass incentivizes kids to cooperate with each other and the teacher. It improves their social and communication skills, equips them with new perspectives for their private and professional life, and encourages them to participate actively in the community. The fall of the iron curtain and the disintegration of Czechoslovakia took Martina to the streets, where she experienced the power of collective action and persistent passion for social transformation—entirely driven by young people. At the time of the revolution, Martina did not know if the young people would succeed or if they would be persecuted. Despite being pregnant at the time, Martina and her friends joined the movement. She created the posters used on the streets and reassured neighbors that the times were changing for the better. Martina distinctly remembers that this drive for change came from young people, who were active without fear. During these diff icult yet transformative times, Martina understood that change is most possible when young people believe in its possibilities, and then drive it forward. She saw university students as the first to join the movement, followed by secondary schools one by one, and finally companies and enterprises. Surrounded by soldiers and police, Martina remembers questioning if the soldiers and police would listen to the orders from the top or to their own children’s plea for freedom. For the most part, they listened to their children, and Martina experienced how a powerful idea spreads quickly throughout society. But she also understood that sustaining a movement requires the long breath of building up infrastructure. This became the observation that led her to found SuperClass years later. 77

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Martina began her career in the turbulent aftermath of the fall of socialism. High unemployment rates, social disintegration and the cultural vacuum left in Slovak society inspired her to experiment with arts as a means to lift self-esteem, create meaning, and build community. Beginning in 1993, Martina developed educational and artistic programs for children outside of the official school curriculum and experimented with a number of pedagogical methods and tools. After the birth of her second child, Martina became part of a team that established a center for people in crisis. In the 1990s, and despite her involvement in pioneering a number of other children’s programs at the time, Martina pioneered the field of art-therapy in the Hospital of academician Ladislav Derer in Bratislava. She later became a manager of children’s projects at the National Centre for Music. During this time, she was routinely confronted with the competition-based and exclusive practices of the Slovak Ministry of Culture. For several years, Martina struggled alone to make the changes she envisioned from within the system. She recognized that systemic change would be far too slow through this method, so in 2005 Martina founded SuperClass. A mother of three, Martina is particularly committed to creating a world for her children and all children that promotes empathy. Rooted in her own experiences as a mother, she recognizes that change must begin in the schools. Her son was regularly bullied in school, and despite Martina’s pressure, the teachers were never able to address the bullying in the classroom. Reinforced by her experiences during the revolution, Martina knew this transformation to free, creative, and active youth and school systems would involve a slow process of change in the way the young generation thinks. The children in school today and the children in future generations were not part of the same revolution that Martina experienced, but SuperClass enables Martina to bring that experience to children so they have the same ability to look at what is in front of them and say, “This is what I have to do.” This mission requires opening up the eyes of children and helping them recognize their potential to envision and act. In 2005, Martina happened across an episode of American Idol on television. She was impressed by how it attracted so many young people, yet was shocked by the passivity and consumerism it promoted. This was when she had the simple realization that helped to inspire SuperClass: she realized that by turning the concept of American Idol upside down, combining it with inclusive pedagogy, and using the national competitions as an entry point into the official school system, she could ignite a national movement of empathy. Why not attract children working on themselves so that they would be motivated to be active in developing a program themselves? Martina implemented a successful pilot program within the National Centre for Music, which was later rejected by the institution because of incompatibility with the official practice. She launched the SuperClass initiative later in 2005 while still working at the National Centre, which was enormously successful with 300 classes joining the initial competition. In 2006, she left the National Center to commit herself fully to SuperClass and develop her vision that every child can work together to create an empathic, meaningful and just society.  78

N iranjan

M eegammana SRI LANKA

Information/Technology Rural Communities Youth

Niranjan Meegammana is educating underserved communities by closing the rural and urban education gap. Niranjan’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT)-based educational system is improving rural students’ access to quality education in local languages, enabling them to become more competitive in national examinations in order to gain admissions to higher education institutions. His initiative comprises an interactive means of self and group learning which makes curricula efficient and exciting. Niranjan’s teaching methodology and materials are a vital resource to youth and their teachers in remote communities who do not otherwise have access to quality educational facilities.

THE NEW IDEA Niranjan is closing a huge disparity in the Sri Lankan educational system by having created a model for the creative use of ICT to enhance learning and improve access to quality education for rural students. Niranjan, a pioneer of Sinhala Unicode in Sri Lanka, has combined his aptitude in developing content in local languages with the growing ICT use among Sri Lankans through Nanasala (government funded e-learning centers) to ensure that the quality of education for all Sri Lankan students comes to parity. His electronic educational materials and teaching methodology have created a multiplier effect at the local and regional levels. By significantly improving marginalized communities’ access to high-quality knowledge that has been contextualized to their local settings, he has also helped children and adults meet socioeconomic and environmental challenges by pioneering local language technologies, and standardizing and mainstreaming local content development on a large-scale, while using technology to make learning fun and easy. Niranjan is also using Skype to conduct tutorials that would be otherwise too expensive for poor students. By enhancing the learning content with visual and audio prerecorded materials that can be simply uploaded onto a SIM phone card, he is the first to provide local language learning materials that can be used offline. Niranjan’s most popular tutorials are mock exams and past question paper answering sessions that can be accessed using mobile phones. His wide distribution of digital learning materials with lots of animation, tutorials via Skype, and prerecorded DVDs have already contributed to national objectives of reducing school dropouts and have improved the examination performance of rural students.

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Niranjan’s organization, Shilpa Sayura (Sea of Knowledge) covers multiple disciplines in primary and secondary education. He has formed collaborative partnerships with the Ministry of Education and the National Institute of Education using the existing school system to reach out to marginalized groups with an alternative education model. Niranjan has reduced the digital, poverty, and gender divide while promoting equal access to education through Telecenters, which have been transformed into a digital education network.

“Shilpa Sayura e-School adds new content in local languages covering primary and secondary education with over 12,000 lessons and 7,000 test questions for learning 16 subjects of the National curriculum. The multimedia rich, interactive pedagogies and e-learning facilities … engage rural students … by providing an alternative space to access quality education.” —ITpro

One of the largest roadblocks to achieving effective education in the rural areas has been the inadequate preparation and supply of teachers. Schools in rural areas remain understaffed as qualified teachers prefer to work in urban areas. As a result, the qualification level of the teaching staff in rural areas is appreciably lower than the national average. In general, both urban and rural schools use teacher-centered, textbook-based outdated British educational models. These techniques have their own limitations in adapting to local and global realities. Thus the knowledge that rural children gain from rural schools is not practical or helpful in preparing them for jobs in the local economy. As a result they lose trust and interest in education. The worse case result is the closing down of rural schools for a lack of students. According to the Department of Statistics, in Sri Lanka, there were 1,298 schools with fewer than six students in 2000, and this number increased to 1,368 in 2002. During the same period, 147 schools were closed for lack of students. At the same time, there are limited adult education programs or trade-related skill training opportunities for youth to acquire livelihood support skills in rural areas. Thus, these youth eventually add to the agriculture labor force as unskilled workers—a phenomenon which has resulted in a high rate of underemployment or unemployment and thus, less economic productivity.

THE PROBLEM

Sri Lanka’s “free education” policy has caused a major setback in promoting equitable access irrespective of the fact that it has undoubtedly enabled high literacy rates and gender parity in education. Children of more aff luent families seem to derive larger benefits from the system than those from less well-to-do backgrounds. Poor students face problems in meeting the “hidden costs” like after-school tuition, sports, uniforms, stationery, and commuting. The only alternative they see is to drop out. A recent survey shows 20 percent among the poor drop out of school by Grade 5. The free education policy has also resulted in bureaucratization, politicization, and stagnation of the education system. There is neither accountability nor academic freedom in this model, as education is centralized, owned, and controlled by the State.

Sri Lanka boasts a basic literacy rate of 91.2 percent and a 1:20 teacher-pupil ratio that claims an excellent educational standard compared to most developing countries. The main reason for these positive statistics is the country’s free education system. However, these statistics conceal the reality of rural schools, where an unequal distribution of learning resources leads to a poor quality of education. Urban schools, on the other hand, are usually capable of drawing enough financial resources and skilled teachers, and are better equipped with modern learning resources to attract more students. This trend perpetuates and expands the gap in the quality of education between rural and urban schools and has resulted in the closing of many such rural schools, thereby limiting educational opportunities for poor rural children. Educational spending based on the number of potential students in schools focuses on providing funding for recurrent expenditures and physical infrastructure, ignoring the quality of education as a strategy toward human resource development and thereby reducing poverty. Sri Lanka’s free education system works at a disadvantage for rural schools.

Niranjan introducing Shilpa Sayura for the first time to rural students at Hamillaketiya Telecentre on World Children’s Day, Ratnapura District, Sri Lanka.

T H E S T R AT E G Y Intrigued and inspired by the dawn of computer technology in Sri Lanka from 1984 to 1989, Niranjan, a land surveyor in rural Sri Lanka, began seeing the potential applications of ICT to alleviate many of the problems that plagued rural communities. Initially, one of his main focuses was developing content in local rural languages. During the early 1990s he developed Sinhala language software which he then used to produce the first local language navigation charts for fishermen. Soon after, he developed the first local language fonts for Microsoft Windows (www.locallanguages. 79

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lk) and in 2005 Niranjan formed the first Sinhala Unicode Group— an online knowledge-sharing, local language technology and content development community, with around 900 members, who contribute to developing the community and industry standards and solving issues in Sinhala Unicode. These issues involved standardizing Sinhala letters and developing technical, related new computer language in Sinhala. As some of the new computer-related words were not a part of local languages the group created those words and began standardizing them for formal usage.

During this period Niranjan, using the Sinhala font he had developed, created a learning package for his elder daughter whose grades in high school had dropped precipitously. He believed his daughter could not grasp what was being taught due to the controlled and non-interactive nature of the lessons. Niranjan gathered her reading materials and the national curriculum and designed an electronic learning system for her that he thought made the lessons more interesting. The result was remarkable. Not only did his daughter top the list of students who passed that year’s O-levels exam from her district, but other girls who studied with her as a team also achieved distinctions in science and mathematics (subjects considered generally difficult).

Rural teens take a lesson from Shilpa Sayura at Sunday School, Balaharuwa Temple, in Monaragala District.

With his approach backed by successful results, Niranjan and a few teachers sat together to look at the available learning materials and to devise a way to combine ICT to enhance students’ self-learning ability and their access to quality and improved educational materials. The birth of Shilpa Sayura came through this initiative in 2006. Niranjan designed Shilpa Sayura as a bottom-up educational model; a dynamic system that could change and improve based on community needs, feedback, and new opportunities. The core research and development group consists of ICT, education, community and development experts who work as a bridge between beneficiary communities and the content system. At the initial stage a content map was prepared based on National Institute of Education (NIE) curriculum by a group of teachers who have been trained to develop curricula by the NIE. This was Niranjan’s first experience with the government education system. The content map based on NIE curriculum included over 8,000 units, and suggested how each lesson was to be organized in text, images, and animations. Niranjan designed 80

the content map in a way that it could be reviewed and updated with NIE curriculum changes and community needs. The content base was then generated and reviewed by a panel of school teachers from around the country and piloted with school children and teachers with help from the Ministry of Education. For example, in Lahugalla, a war-affected and poor village, Niranjan used his learning model to help ten students pass their Ordinary Level exams. Of these ten students, two obtained “excellent pass” in mathematics using Niranjan’s materials. The feedback received was used to further upgrade the subject matter and improve its delivery. The content includes text, supported by movie clips, photographs, animation, interactive exercises, and java applets, going far beyond a textbook’s ability to impart knowledge. In November 2006 Shilpa Sayura piloted its self-learning e-curriculum in twenty Telecenters in the south that have been setup by the government to offer ICT services, skills, and e-learning opportunities to people living in remote and rural areas. Shilpa Sayura’s self-learning program quickly encountered success through the impact it had among rural youth. By 2009, Shilpa Sayura’s content base was increased from 6,000 units to 8,000 units and its program was implemented in 150 Telecenters in a three-stage replication process. By 2010 Shilpa Sayura served 9,000 students in 150 Telecenters located in seven provinces of Sri Lanka. Niranjan, with a few teachers and youth working with him on the development of the e-curriculum formed the Shilpa Sayura Foundation in 2009 and have been working on an “e-school” project to scale-up their efforts which increased the content base to 14,000 units. They are also working on developing content to include primary and senior secondary education while developing Tamil language e-curricula. Shilpa Sayura has also developed self-learning content on the topics of sustainable agriculture and community health to begin expanding upon the success of this method to various populations. Niranjan has developed content on all subjects for his primary beneficiaries; primary and secondary grade students, with the help of a group of school teachers from the education department. Exams for Grade 11 in Sri Lanka are conducted through a national examination and it is crucial for students to pass this exam to move further with their education. Extended beneficiaries of his work include unemployed youth, women, elders, and disabled citizens. By using Niranjan’s self-learning ICT programs many unemployed youth have taken up Telecenter jobs to earn an income. He strategically develops partnerships with related technology developers and community developers to increase benefits coming from Shilpa Sayura’s work. One such example is the University of Colombo Language Laboratory, which used Shilpa Sayura to help visually impaired people with a text-to-speech program. Another is introducing the Shilpa Sayura learning model in villages that have no electricity with a battery-operated computer system. It is of core importance that the model is not dependent on rural communities’ access to electricity. The curricula are loaded onto the computer as locally hosted content. The audio and video content in e-curriculum can also be loaded onto a SIM card and used on a mobile phone. His uniportal e-learner system has a student management system to provide digital IDs to students. Students who login can access content by curriculum or go deeper by content categorizations. They can also create personal profiles, create their own content and share it with the group. Group discussions, comments, rating and personal content map creation are possible through this uniportal system.

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Over the next five years, Niranjan plans to expand his work so that it becomes an alternative educational platform to deliver access to learning for marginalized communities in Sri Lanka and beyond. He intends to deliver his education services through online, offline and live teaching at a cost to students from the middle-class and then subsidizing content delivery to poor rural youth, including vocational training, agriculture, social entrepreneurship, and health. Niranjan plans to develop a program that will encourage social entrepreneurs to set up e-schools in rural Telecenters and schools lacking access to education.

K atrin R ohde B U R K I N A FA S O

Citizen/Communitiy Participation Income Generation

THE PERSON Niranjan was born in a small, ancient village of 200 families. The families were farmers and small traders and everyone was related. It was a major achievement for the village when Niranjan passed his fifth grade scholarship to attend a central school. The principal became his mentor and Niranjan emerged as a student leader. During this time his family was evicted by the government for a large infrastructure project to build a dam, diverting river water for hydroelectricity. This incident, although trying and traumatic for someone his age, played a critical role in developing Niranjan’s ability to see opportunities for change in difficult situations.

Rural Development Youth Katrin Rohde has created a farm school that offers uneducated rural boys more attractive options and wages in their own villages by giving them the opportunity to receive an education and suitable professional training that will transform agriculture and raising livestock into more efficient, profitable, and dignified trades.

THE NEW IDEA

Niranjan became a Survey Engineer at the age of 20 before switching to ICT in 1992 and becoming a webmaster at the dawn of the Internet phenomenon in Sri Lanka around 1996. Niranjan is qualified with a British Computer Science (BCS) degree, Land and Hydrographic Surveying and as Adobe Educator. He was inspired by Bill Gates’ example to found E-Fusion (pvt.) Ltd (www.sinharaja.com) in 2000, which aimed to change how people use computers and encourage small business growth. Niranjan worked to build and improve local language fonts, but fonts weren’t enough for him, so he began writing content for private businesses and government service departments in Sinhala. Niranjan describes his introduction to ICT for development as “love at first sight.”

Katrin is combating rural exodus, and more specifically, the “streetboy” phenomenon, by creating a viable alternative to city life in rural communities. She realized that to get young boys truly excited about staying in their rural communities, it is crucial to provide a real and empowering economic opportunity for them to plug into during their teenage years. To achieve this, Katrin has created the Tond Tenga Center, a boarding school where the most vulnerable boys—orphans and sons from poor families— from rural areas are trained for two years in new farming techniques. Each detail of this initiative (i) serves to reinforce the sense that economic opportunity is real and (ii) a strong sense of empowerment during each step of the process.

In 2000 Niranjan introduced a popular local language website, www.kaputa.com, which offered free Sinhala and Tamil fonts, local language writing tools, and local language content. At one point, kaputa.com had more than 60,000 subscribers who communicated in Sinhala and Tamil. Niranjan’s objective in developing this site was to encourage rural communities who faced barriers communicating in English to be able to access local language email facilities.

In terms of empowerment, Katrin has created a unique selection process that involves the entire community, and thus, elevates the status of the opportunity. When chosen after long deliberation by a group of elders, parents, and peers, the boys often feel more pride in their own self-worth and see themselves as valuable in the eyes of their community, often for the first time in their lives. The very fact that the school is a boarding school, located near the capital, and made up boys from various villages around the country, also adds to the prestige of the opportunity, as they feel they have been selected to do something truly important. Katrin nurtures this new self-conf idence during boarding school with courses and conversations that push the boys to explore who they are as individuals, and ultimately, how to work together.

Niranjan is passionate about his work, especially to fulfill his dream of bringing the benefits of ICT to the rural poor. He is known as a pioneer in the Sri Lankan ICT industry, leading in web technologies, Sinhala font technology, government portals, travel and tourism technologies, and content. Niranjan believes education is the foundation for innovation and social change in the face of emerging global challenges and works joyfully to reach out to underserved youth. Today, his work is considered one of the top and most timely interventions in using ICT for development. In the last five years his work has grown rapidly and has won him several international awards. Niranjan currently lives in Kandy with his wife, daughter and son. 

Equally key in Katrin’s initiative is to create real economic opportunity. To accomplish this, elders sign a contract committing them to provide land to their program graduates so they may practice what they learned during home visits, and eventually launch their own agribusiness after graduation. Katrin 81

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also provides an education that is comprehensive (discussing all aspects of the value chain) and intensely practical with two years in classroom and two years in the field; provision of production materials; and development of wells). Even the choice to focus on organic production in particular is rooted in the real markets and the possibility for income generation attached to this growing industry. Katrin chooses villages carefully, paying close attention to their ready access to transportation along major roads to the capital and access to water. So in essence, long before anyone gets on a bus, she has pre-negotiated the village transformation process.

The center estimates that the project has thus far affected as many as 240,000 inhabitants in the eight villages where the boys originate. Much of this is from the outpouring of neighbors who visit the boys’ farm and ask to be taught the new techniques when they see how the boys are able to produce a lot more, without expensive chemical fertilizers.

THE PROBLEM Young people are fleeing to cities in ever increasing numbers, leaving an aging population to tend to the land. Not only does this reduce the number of able bodies available to grow food, but these same young people often find themselves populating the slums of urban centers. These youth, between the ages of 13 and 18, with little to no education, without any professional qualifications, must fend for themselves surrender to in their quest for survival, committing criminal acts for which they are punished or simply left to becoming delinquents, commonly referred to as “children of the street.” The cause of this rural exodus is grounded in several issues. Already an environmentally challenging place to farm due to austere climate conditions, the Sahel is starting to feel the effects of the use of chemical fertilizers and other taxing agricultural techniques—like monocropping—that have exhausted the land, such that farmers often struggle to grow enough food to feed their families or generate enough surplus to sell for income. Young people also struggle to get access to land in the first place, and fundamentally, they lack training to understand how to transform the current status quo of agriculture to one that is efficient, modern, and profitable. In these conditions, young people do not want to invest their energy into an activity they consider too difficult, “backwards” compared to images of city life, and simply not rewarding. Orphaned boys and those from especially impoverished families who cannot afford to pay school fees are the most susceptible to having the combination

of these factors push them toward the cities, where they struggle to gain footing, and may slip into the life of children of the street.

T H E S T R AT E G Y To establish a selection process that successfully targets, recruits, and retains the most vulnerable youth, Katrin begins by entering various villages, explaining the opportunity, and then gathering representatives from across the village to offer names of boys that would best match the opportunity. The proposed candidates then fill out a written application and Katrin’s team begins to get to know each boy until they have settled on the ten (e.g. ten from ten villages for a total of 100) who will join her program. While the selection process probes for issues like the level of interest the boys have in staying in the village, previous experience with cultivating the land, work ethic, and general motivation (in an attempt to find the most entrepreneurial boys), Katrin also prioritizes the selection of boys who come from particularly challenging situations, in danger of becoming streetboys because they have nothing else to do. The participation of a varied group of people, including the chief constable, elders, teachers, parents, and young people in this process, elevates the status of this opportunity during the selection process, and ensures community buy-in. This is crucial for establishing continued support once the boys graduate from school and return to the rural areas to implement their newly acquired skills full-time.

Harvest day on the community farms.

With community buy-in secured, as well as the boys’ participation and excitement, Katrin focuses on delivering a real economic opportunity to the boys, the foundation of which is the provision of an education that is comprehensive and intensely practical. Starting with two years at the boarding school, the boys learn new skills across the entire value chain. They learn methods of organic agricultural, silvicultural, and pastoral production.

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The boys sell in town to those well-off and conscious that many farmers use, without measuring, masses of (e.g. in Europe longforbidden) insecticides. These consumers are eager to purchase organic products. In the next two years, Katrin hopes to open two shops and an organic restaurant in the capital. Additionally, the produce is actually priced competitively against normal produce so ordinary consumers may also purchase it.

The first day at breakfast for the new girls’ bio-farm.

Much of this information comes from Tond Tenga’s partnerships with universities in Burkina Faso, Spain, and Germany, who are increasingly focusing on organic tropical agriculture. But Katrin also seeks out relevant, though quickly disappearing knowledge of organic production from over sixty indigenous groups spread across Burkina. In various courses, the boys strategize around effective methods of distribution and marketing surplus goods because, as Katrin says, “it serves no purpose to have a producer increase his production above that of his own consumption without teaching him what he must do to sell the excess production in a profitable manner.” Once they graduate, each group of boys returns to their respective village to carry out a two-year apprenticeship on the land that was bequeathed by the village elders at the time of their selection to the program. They are visited by various Tond Tenga staff who continue their education by ensuring that they gain access to all of the necessary components to put what they learned into practice as they begin their group micro-business. These trainers work with the boys on everything from acquiring production materials like seeds, animals, carts, and machetes, to installing necessary infrastructure, such as wells. Critically, practical education actually begins from the first year of boarding school, as Katrin’s team instructs the boys to lay mustard seeds on the given land to help rehabilitate the soil. Then, during the first school holiday, the boys start to dig compost holes in their villages, asking their families to bring in dung and ashes and to work it into their ground. This is done so that when they begin to farm full-time, the soil will be properly rehabilitated and nourished, allowing them to be immediately successful when they start growing vegetable gardens. The very fact that Katrin has decided to focus on organic farming is also related to the need to establish a real economic opportunity for the boys. Not only does organic farming present an opportunity to farm sustainably—not sacrificing the future for today—but it also has a real market available, and growing.

Launched in 2005 with the financial support of the Dr. Elvire Engel Foundation (and later support from Soroptimist and the Luxemburg government), the Tond Tenga Center has seen its first class of one hundred boys complete the two-year classroom training and two-year apprenticeship. The center estimates that the project has thus far affected as many as 240,000 inhabitants in the eight villages where the boys originate. Much of this impact has come from the outpouring of neighbors who visit the boys’ farm and ask to be taught the new techniques when they see how the boys are able to produce a lot more, and without the expensive input of chemical fertilizers on the same land. They have begun working together to, for example, send all of their vegetables in one car to town and then divide the costs; or, buy their seeds together to get a better price. Currently, there is a national radio show that popularizes Katrin’s program and the organic production methods of work which can be used by everyone. Katrin has now set her sights on creating a similar school for young girls who have left school. She is also looking to create a third school that charges admission to subsidize the cost of running the boys’ and girls’ schools at no charge. Once these initiatives are rooted, Katrin plans to travel throughout Africa sharing her model, which demonstrates that with training, anyone can grow rich from their own land. She f irmly believes that similar farm schools can be created around all big cities in Africa to reduce the proportion of young people leaving their rural homes.

THE PERSON Katrin, a well-established manager of two bookshops in Germany, had always been cognizant of how difficult loneliness and cold weather is to tolerate in Europe, especially for foreigners. For this reason, she became a member of an organization that regularly visited the sick and those who lived in refugee camps. During one such visit to a psychiatric facility, Katrin met a person from Burkina Faso who was convinced that if only he could have his medication from home, he would be cured. It was at this moment that Katrin made her first trip to Africa. Despite words of advice from everyone around her not to go, Katrin got on a plane. Shortly thereafter, she fell ill by the borders of Burkina and Mali, where a Burkinese officer took care of her in what she recalls as “very extraordinary.” After her recovery, Katrin continued the trip, retrieved the traditional medicine of the psychiatric patient, and returned

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to Germany. Without ever mentioning that it was she who had gotten the medication for the patient, she continued her daily activities with the organization.

James Whelton

The idea to travel again to Burkina was constantly on her mind, as she felt distinctly moved by the “wonderful, hospitable, welcoming, charitable people, who, despite their difficulties, always wore a smile on their faces and exhibited a great zest for life.” Katrin had also made a promise to the custom’s officer to raise funds to build a school in his village. After accomplishing this task in 1992, Katrin realized she could be quite successful at fundraising to support needed initiatives for those in difficult situations, especially vulnerable children. With this realization, she decided to sell everything she owned in Germany, including her bookstores, her house, and all of the furniture to move to Burkina Faso in 1993.

IRELAND

Access to Learning/ Education Technology/ Information Technology

James Whelton, a natural builder, teacher, avid entrepreneur, and tenacious tech expert, is creating a youth movement of citizen coders to spread a mindset shift in young people based on mentorship, inclusivity, and community-driven action.

THE NEW IDEA James is building a citizen movement of young technology experts with the necessary skills to keep up with the rapidly evolving field of technology. He has crafted a global network of free coding clubs built on action-based learning, collaboration, and open source principles. Not only is James equipping boys and girls with the skills to actively contribute to technology, a key influence in their lives today, but he is also empowering them to combat the growing restrictions and barriers of technology. The openness of the Internet used to be its greatest strength, but it is growing more restricted as it develops.

The boys love this photo and call it “protect your environment.”

Immediately shocked by the phenomenon of children living on the streets, Katrin rented a house where she lived with eighteen street children. Understanding this was not enough, she founded Managré Nooma Association for the Protection of Orphans in 1996; which has gone on to see the successful building of two orphanages, a hospital, a center for the physically handicapped, a center that serves women, especially those living with HIV/AIDS, and two houses for young mothers that are victims of family rejection. Despite achieving gains in tackling issues for these various vulnerable groups, Katrin could not stop thinking about the issue of street children. After over a decade of interacting closely with the street children in Burkina’s capital, Katrin realized that any real solution to this problem would have to focus on working with them while they were still in their villages. Thus, Tond Tenga was born. 

James’ work addresses the reality that while citizens are active users of the Internet, most do not possess the technical knowledge to understand its reach into their privacy and are ill equipped to contribute new innovation. James’ movement is seeding a whole generation of tech experts and a skilled workforce, and is bringing in excluded populations such as girls and rural residents. Beyond that, through its collaborative, open source approach, CoderDojo is creating a generation of citizen coders—young people and mentors developing into empathetic collaborators while actively contributing to the technological forces that increasingly shape their world.

THE PROBLEM Technical literacy, as taught in secondary schools in Europe and Ireland, tends to extend no further than an education in basic computer skills, such as word processing and spreadsheet competence. It is based around the European Computer Driving License, an archaic and expensive qualification that does not allow young people to engage with technology in a proactive way or contribute to the growth of new ideas. Additionally, the rate of change and innovation in technology is so fast that schools and universities are incapable of keeping pace. Computer science curriculum can change very little per year due to cumbersome and slow university policies, which drastically limit the ability to keep up with the tech field that surfaces new innovations and updates weekly if not daily. Faced with no systemic educational tools to learn how technology works and how to create it themselves, young people

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are forced to pursue ad hoc training or other interests. In addition, women are dramatically underrepresented in the tech field.

who rise within the organization are not merely the tech geniuses, but rather those who teach others and collaborate.

There is huge demand for people who can navigate effectively in the tech world, an ecosystem in which everything is either a threat or an opportunity based on one’s ability. While the tech world used to be completely open, today it is rife with restrictions and barriers, challenging creativity. On the one hand, governments are trying to police and regulate the web, with bills such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), while tech powerhouses are making privacy rights and data access more cryptic to the everyday user.

CoderDojo succeeds at making development and learning to code—once a ‘bedroom and basement’ activity—a fun, sociable experience. In addition to learning to code, members meet likeminded people, show off their projects, and troubleshoot problems. Participants collaborate, compete, and share their creations, both in person and online. CoderDojo puts a strong emphasis on open source and free software, encouraging participants to share and grow the knowledge database online within its strong network of members and volunteers globally. The global online network allows new innovations created by members to be uploaded and used as examples and curriculum in Dojos worldwide—immediate knowledge sharing that inspires young people to create their own curriculum and spread it around the world.

“Whelton founded Coder Dojo, free clubs where kids learn how to program…Now there are 130 dojos across 22 countries, with 10,000 kids learning to code for free each week.” —Forbes The inability to competently and actively break down the walls in tech as quickly as they are built up carries with it a great deal of lost economic opportunity. In a country with unemployment hovering at 14 percent, and youth unemployment at 39 percent, the tech sector in Ireland has 10,000 unfilled jobs. There is a great gap in tech talent in Ireland, despite a concentration of the top tech firms in the world located in Dublin, including Google European Headquarters, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Zynga. While these major companies are located in Ireland, they find themselves forced to import the majority of skilled labor from elsewhere in Europe.

Keeping costs low, CoderDojos are set up, managed and taught by volunteers. The volunteers are technical experts who emphasize the real world applications of coding while also promoting the collaborative, knowledge-share environment of each Dojo. The organization provides tools on loan—from laptops to hard drives— to participants who lack the financial resources to purchase their own. James has built his organization on the principles of open source collectivism—he has designed extensive online systems to crowd-source answers to challenges, solve technical problems, and answer the thousands of email queries he receives.

T H E S T R AT E G Y At CoderDojo, young people become part of a global youth movement driving future talent in the fast-moving tech world. Designed to spread virally, CoderDojo allows champions, once vetted, to set up their own branches that are connected to a global network online. Young people attending a CoderDojo learn how to code, develop websites, apps, programs, games, and more. James has woven the principles and structure of martial arts into the clubs, developing a belt system whereby students receive badges and belts for progressing through levels of expertise. Badges are awarded for achievements as disparate as building an iPhone app, attending a certain number of sessions, mastering HTML, developing a game, or helping an elderly person learn computing. In order to advance to the next belt level, each student must have mastered designated coding skills as well as acquired a set number of badges. There is a substantial “Social Good” focus woven into the belt system, encouraging participants to use their new skills to contribute to their communities or provide services to citizen organizations. James is developing a replication criterion into the highest belt level, meaning that in order to receive a black belt, one would have to start his/her own CoderDojo. Leadership, coteaching, and teamwork are placed at a higher priority than simple technical acumen. Coderdojo is designed so that the young people

Mentors and inspiring role models helped James; he points out that Coder Dojo educational clubs are run by volunteers “It’s all free, so the atmosphere is very passionate because people really want to do it.”

CoderDojo uses an innovative teaching style that shows young people the real world applications of their training in core coding languages like CSS, HTML, and JavaScript to design websites such as Facebook and iPhone apps. It offers a structure that allows participants to collaborate and teach themselves, seeing progress in real-time. A club requires a free location and two to three computer experts who can support young club members in their efforts. James has made a concerted effort to reach out to girls, dramatically underrepresented in the tech field. James, himself a victim of childhood bullying, is emphatic about building an open 85

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and accepting atmosphere for people traditionally excluded from the tech field. CoderDojos across the world boast a gender ratio of 60 percent boys to 40 percent girls—a dramatic shift from the traditional ratio of 90/10. James also does substantial outreach to rural areas, where Internet can be a lifeline of opportunity for isolated populations. Internetbased computer programs and training can be ideal for far-flung locales with few resources, and a source of potential work for the unemployed. James is also partnering with large tech firms such as Google, with many other potential partnerships in progress. James sees Ireland as ripe for becoming a tech powerhouse globally, driven by a highly skilled local workforce in a hub of global tech firms. James is building CoderDojo into a viral organization that maintains a high level of quality while allowing easy implementation worldwide. His goal is to reach saturation across Ireland over the coming year, and join local groups with a flourishing international network, with Ireland as the center and key driver. Currently, the demand far surpasses the supply, with waitlists of 70+ common at some sessions. James would like to expand his current offerings to meet capacity and allow cities, towns, and villages nationwide to access the resources they need to implement their own CoderDojos.

James talks with young people about technology at the Dublin Web Summit – the largest tech conference in Europe.

Less than a year old, James’ organization has thousands of members, with groups located in cities around Ireland, the U.K., South Africa, Uganda, Russia, and many states and cities in the U.S., particularly in Silicon Valley. Additionally, CoderDojo has spawned other Dojos, clubs that use the same model to teach different skills. For example, there are Dojos that meet in Dublin before CoderDojo meetings that focus on learning Chinese and other languages. With the unprecedented demand for further expansion, James’ goal is to build a global organization that can be completely sustained by volunteers and that becomes as common and accessible as the Scouts worldwide. He is offering an alternative for those students ill-suited to traditional athletics leagues or arts programs. His dream is not only to create an organization, but a mindset. In order to keep CoderDojo free and sustainable, James is developing the Hello World Foundation, as an umbrella organization to CoderDojo. He will use the foundation to fund the extra costs required for Dojo events and operations as well as a small team who will continue to manage and shape the organization. CoderDojo is just one piece of a larger vision to 86

create a global movement enabling youth to engage in tech in a positive way. James plans to raise €1 million (US$1.35 million) in the next year and is designing strategies for revenue generation under the auspices of the foundation. Mirroring the model of the Mozilla Foundation, The Hello World Foundation will allow James to expand his vision far beyond CoderDojo to true global impact.

THE PERSON James is a lifetime entrepreneur and technical wizard. Always attracted to computers, he found few official resources, inside and outside of school, to learn more about them. As a young child, he figured out how to make computer animation and spent his days taking apart electronics to see how they worked. At age nine, he saved his pocket money for a month to buy a book on HTML, teaching himself how to code so that he could make a website for his animations. Creative and curious by nature, James made various gadgets throughout his childhood such as a toaster wired to a computer and a proximity kettle that boiled more or less based on your distance to it. Gripped by a passion for technology, James left school a month early at age twelve to take a university level technology course, his first entry into the intimate community of tech professionals. At age thirteen, James began doing freelance web design. That same year, he sought to start a computer club at school for those interested in learning together, but his school refused, so he began to hold meetings outside of the premises. By fifteen, he found himself checking emails from clients at school and spending his evenings working. When James was sixteen, a good friend of his family needed a large amount of CAT scans sent to the U.S. for a medical second opinion. The files were too large to send by email, but they were under pressure to get the opinion as soon as possible. James took it upon himself to build a website especially for the scans, making them easily accessible to the doctors in the U.S. and thus facilitating the second opinion for the family. During his final years of secondary school, he gained international renown as the first person to successfully hack an iPod Nano. His growing expertise in tech led other students to ask his advice, and he finally succeeded in founding a school club for coding, which fielded forty students at the first session and met twice weekly. At seventeen, James found a ticket for sale online for $700 to one of the largest technology summits in the field, which had been sold out for months. He managed to get the ticket for free by committing to build a website for the seller. James spent a memorable couple of days with some of the largest names in tech, such as the founder of Twitter, and went home energized and inspired. The following year, James was featured as a speaker at the same event, an affirmation of how much he had accomplished in just one year. Before he had finished secondary school James was tapped as a consultant for tech firms. Eschewing university, he founded and ran a digital company, Disruptive Development. Building off his earlier efforts, he founded CoderDojo to open the world of coding to more young people in a simple and viral way. He turned down hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential investment in Disruptive Development to focus on managing Coder Dojo full-time. 

SENIOR FELLOWS & MEMBERS Senior Fellows and Members are elected into the fellowship later in the entrepreneurâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life cycle than the Fellows introduced earlier in this volume. They receive no stipend but are welcomed into the fellowship and greatly enrich it.

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Yvonnick H uet FRANCE

Agriculture Income Generation Microenterprise

business. Empowering local stakeholders and encouraging the creation of national institutions on micro-entrepreneurship and agro-ecology, Yvonnick has built solid ecosystems that can ensure the sustainability and growth of his model. Now running programs in 13 countries in four continents, he has directly supported the creation of 27,500 small businesses with a great survival rate, generating 100,000 sustainable jobs and helping 250,000 people to escape poverty. Through Yvonnick’s network of “master-farmers” and trained organizations that disseminate his model, he estimates that he generates a multiplier effect ratio of 12.

THE PROBLEM

In the mid 1980s Yvonnick Huet pioneered a market-based model to solve poverty and food issues through the restructuring of viable local farming markets in developing countries. Unlike the field of development that has traditionally been charity-focused and culturally skeptical toward economy-oriented projects, Yvonnick has focused his efforts on small businesses as the key facilitator in development. He has become the architect of a new field that promotes access to markets and full economic citizenship.

THE NEW IDEA In response to the lack of sufficient attention to economic dimensions in programs facilitated by traditional development organizations, in particular in French-speaking Africa, Yvonnick became one of the first to promote market-driven solutions to develop poor people’s economies. In addition to market-driven solutions, Yvonnick focuses on restoring these communities’ roles in society while also shifting the mindset of individuals so that they engage as active participants in the market. For seven years in Congo, beginning in 1984, he diverged from the traditional development practitioner approach to begin designing and piloting an unprecedented model to build local independent farming markets. Yvonnick pioneered a multidimensional approach, beginning with business creation and development in addition to farming techniques and the emergence of new institutions. At the heart of his idea is his vision to harness the potential of informal and poor workers in the surroundings of major cities. Yvonnick wants to build strong networks of micro business-minded farming entrepreneurs capable of accessing the market and competing with big agro-industrial players and imports. Supported by the state and private companies, he has successfully shaped the market, reversing the 85 percent rate of imported goods of Brazzaville’s food market into 85 percent locally-produced fruits and vegetables. After ten years of on-the-ground experience, Yvonnick then scaled his work to other contexts that were also in need of market responses to economic crises. Throughout the 1990s he systematized his approach to build “green belts” in the surroundings of major cities in French-speaking Africa and Asia. Working hand-in-hand with grassroots organizations, ministers, and development agencies at both national and international levels, he facilitated a shift in mindset toward the support of small

In the 1980s Congo’s economic and agricultural system was mostly planned by the state, and divided into big state farms, national development projects funded by international agencies, offshore companies, and a large informal economy by local population. As in many other developing countries often struck by food crises since the 1980s, little space is given to small-business entrepreneurship, resulting in the lack of a structured and durable food production system as well as economy-driven solutions to overcome poverty. In addition, these local economies rely on big industries whose exported goods are not even produced with the intent to feed local populations. Under this system, there are significant barriers to the creation of small businesses and limited tools available for local populations to overcome them. Particularly twenty years ago, when Yvonnick began working on developing his model, the solutions to poverty reduction offered by development assistance agencies were often too partial and too short-term to address the root causes of the problem. Fragmented into farming techniques, business support, social assistance, and financial aid, they were not extensive and collaborative enough to help people through the complex path of becoming full economic citizens. In addition, the development projects of citizen organizations (COs) were completed according to the international donor’s agenda, instead of according to local needs. At the time, no budget lines were dedicated to small entrepreneurship support. Most of the funded programs were focused on free education, health, and food. Due to their short-term approach, they limit the resilience of development assistance and fail to address the projects’ courses after the COs leave. Local populations become dependent on the assistance of the COs. Finally, CO solutions are often offered from the North to the South, are not in touch with the field, and lack consultation and local involvement. Recognizing the limitation of their networks and on-the-ground expertise, international donors and private companies are more willing than ever to invest in long-term solutions and propose an integrated approach. As the French Agency of Development (AFD) explained, financial institutions are very demanding of approaches such as Agrisud’s. To solve the accelerating challenges of poverty and the food crisis, as well as specific issues of disadvantaged groups such as women or young people, it is critical that there is an increase in the number of actors who work to rebuild the microeconomic fabric and thus foster long-term economic development.

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win alliances, Yvonnick is opening new markets from which small producers were previously excluded, while advising private groups to shift their practices and develop economic relationships with local populations.

Yvonnick has programs in several countries. This farm is part of the Market Gardening project in Congo.

T H E S T R AT E G Y In 1984 Yvonnick saw the creation and development of a large number of micro businesses as a key strategy to foster new farming markets and restore the autonomy of poor populations. He initially used the support of the Congolese state (getting a percentage of oil revenues) and major private companies like Total to launch his programs. Now, Yvonnick ’s integrated approach is based on a three-step process to reorganize the farming structure: (i) conduct an in-depth market analysis to understand local macro and microeconomic specificities and design the proper path of intervention (ii) design a grassroots action plan to identify local partners and potential beneficiaries (iii) train beneficiaries to build business capacity and to improve techniques among small farming businesses. Underlying these efforts, Yvonnick also works to ensure that individuals consider themselves as central to the supply chain. Agrisud follows their progress over three years. During this time, Agrisud provides them with the right tools to understand and propose an appropriate offer to the market, constantly watching its evolution through economic research institutes. Agrisud has also worked on expanding the network’s markets by building bridges with private companies such as Veolia for water distribution or Club Med for food supply in tourism hotels. By facilitating those win-

Yvonnick recognizes the great potential of his problem solving model within contexts beset with natural catastrophes, political instability, and food crises. Since 1993, Yvonnick has been applying his approach to many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Determined to avoid reliance on Agrisud, he has encouraged the emergence of powerful local networks to support small businesses in their development. Yvonnick emphasizes the creation of national structures affiliated with Agrisud to ensure the sustainability of the model. When a gap exists in the local institutional setting, Agrisud fills this gap through initiating new activities to fill it. In Gabon for instance, the Gabonese Institute of Development, a national non-profit entity to foster the agroecology field across the country, was created by Agrisud (1992) and has been playing a key role in structuring the local farming markets ever since. In addition, by constantly increasing the number of business-minded farmers, Yvonnick’s ground approach lies in building the capacity of “master-farmers”—trained and experienced farmers supported by Agrisud—to disseminate the know-how in local area networks. This strategy is proving a tremendous impact: In the Democratic Republic of Congo, 2,000 farmers were supported directly by Agrisud, but through the network effect of master-farmers, 25,000 farmers have been effectively trained. With master-farmers in thirteen countries, there is great potential for this self-fuelled process.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, 2,000 farmers were supported directly by Agrisud, but through the network effect of master-farmers, 25,000 farmers have been effectively trained. With master farmers in thirteen countries, there is great potential for this self-fuelled process. Responding to a high demand, Yvonnick has created tools to formalize and deploy the way Agrisud impacts markets. His expertise is so recognized today that he is routinely consulted by local actors and international donors. This proactive approach allows Agrisud to apply its own project without the interfering agenda of international donors. It also accrues roughly €5 million (US$6.5 million) in funding each year from local ministries as well as French and European development agencies to launch and sustain programs. To impact markets on a permanent basis, Yvonnick is building strategic alliances with key partners in new countries and new sectors: CIRAD for horticulture, French Senior Fellow Pierre Rabhi’s Terre et Humanisme for agroecology,

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and AFD for French development assistance. Yvonnick ’s methodological approach has enabled him to scale widely in various contexts. Constantly acting on new opportunities, he is currently launching a project in France with the Food Bank to support unemployed women in creating small businesses around wasted fruits and vegetable recycling. Finally, to further multiply Agrisud’s impact beyond its own development capacity, Yvonnick has developed two Learning Cycles to train COs and institutions in order to spread his tools. The ninety COs trained so far are transforming their practices while reaching new in-need populations and integrating a systemic economic approach to respond to developing countries challenges. Yvonnick recognizes that to reduce poverty and increase food security, individuals and communities need functioning, local markets and that to help create and sustain these local markets it is critical to shift the mindset of individuals so that they view themselves as active and engaged participants in a supply-chain for the market. He recognized that a key part of this was changing the relationship between the individual farmers and the other actors in the local markets. Yvonnick brings together groups of individuals to overcome barriers to entering the market (e.g. transportation costs, the need to have a certain amount or volume of food, and physical space constraints in the actual marketplace where goods are sold); and then he works to create an enabling environment for the farmers to succeed and last over time. Activities that help him achieve this include, training in negotiating skills, training local organizations to provide business advice, and enlisting local institutions to provide small amounts of credit to the collective. Yvonnick has become a reference and architect of the field. He can now share broadly his expertise and know-how through apprenticeship cycles. Yvonnick keeps innovating to apply his model to various contexts to help people reduce hardship by becoming successful micro entrepreneurs. In Cambodia, Niger, Haiti, Angola, or Sri Lanka, in contexts of social and humanitarian crisis, thousands of refugees have crafted a social and economic role in society by launching their own small businesses. More recently, Yvonnick has begun to apply his approach in France by supporting long-term unemployed women who need an integrated and entrepreneurial solution to improve their condition.

THE PERSON Yvonnick spent his childhood in Brittany where his mother planted the seed for the idea of going to Africa. He studied agronomy and eventually left as a volunteer at 22. For seven years he worked as an agronomist in the humanitarian field with an international volunteer organization, in charge of creating a regional tree-nursery in Niger or setting up food security programs in Sao Tomé. In 1985, when he was about to take a position with the EU, he had a key encounter with the economist Jacques Baratier in Niger, who shared with him the same insight:

Humanitarian development requires an economic dimension in its solutions. They both decided to commit to creating Agricongo, which implied no salary and also taking his wife and newborn daughter with him to Africa. Yvonnick ’s co-founder passed away, but Yvonnick continued to lead and be the visionary for the organization’s work.

A volunteer is trained in agro-ecology in Cambodia.

Yvonnick capitalized on every failure and success of the Agricongo project to improve his approach step by step. An ambitious and structured personality, he wanted to develop the project and thus imagined a new organization able to bear the development of his model. In 1992 he created Agrisud, the international manifestation of Agricongo, and launched in Gabon and Cambodia. Meanwhile, Yvonnick stayed in the Congo with his wife and two daughters, also managing the national project and international development. He stayed even during the civil war, to eventually return to France in 1995 to coordinate the Agrisud network from there. Yvonnick’s vision of international development has allowed Agrisud International to increase its presence four-fold in new countries in ten years. Aware of the challenges presented by such an extended network, he has redeveloped his team to be more efficient, while always attentive as a manager to inform and work with every local team to understand the importance of Agrisud. Positioning Agrisud as a master-farmer transferring its knowhow, Yvonnick intervenes as an expert to the PNUD and the EU. Interested to share its experience, he also gives lectures on sustainable development in schools and universities in France. In 2009 Yvonnick co-founded with Be-linked the Business and Poverty Association at HEC Business School. Always assessing solutions and formalizing tools, he is now working on an extended social measurement based on a pilot SROI study realized in partnership with Planète d’Entrepreneurs. He remains modest, in spite of being made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and enjoys his life in West of France with his wife and daughters. Still impassioned with Africa and by the field, Yvonnick continues to travel there and to other continents to launch new projects, create new partnerships, and invent new models for development, while preserving his core vision of full economic citizenship for people around the world. 

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THE PROBLEM

S ilvio M eira BRAZIL

Education Reform

Intellectual Property Students

Dissatisfied with the poor performance of Brazil in the field of information technologies and software development and convinced that the country had enormous creative potential, Silvio Meira created the Recife Centre for Advanced Studies and Systems (CESAR) in 1996. A unique, public-private nonprofit institute which has become an extraordinary catalyst to innovation in software development, academic excellence, and private sector investment in the region.

THE NEW IDEA Silvio has achieved synergies in the transfer of knowledge in information technology between universities, businesses, and society. CESAR integrates innovation centers in Brazil into a knowledge network, which is able to rapidly implement software development projects connected to the future without jeopardizing quality. This network is transforming Recife—a city generally associated with low development, violence, and poverty, into the largest hub for technological software innovation in the country. Silvio first created a world-class academic center as a professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco, convincing colleagues to participate with him in forming the leading university and think tank for software development in Brazil. Then CESAR formed an even more ambitious partnership with the state government to begin a software development park, Porto Digital (Digital Shore), which has attracted major investments from leading companies. In addition to founding CESAR, Silvio also stands out as a business entrepreneur who has been one of the major promoters of a model of technological development with regional diversity. He is also one of the creators of Porto Digital, a new generation “Silicon Valley” in Brazil: An environment of entrepreneurship, software innovation and business information technology and communication, which brings together, more than 150 companies and 5,000 employees in the Northeast. Silvio’s goal is to reach 200 companies in 2015, 20,000 employees and revenues of up to US$1.3B—12 percent of the state’s GDP.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are societal engines that generate breakthroughs in what have been century-old ways of producing information and communication processes. From the creation of NASDAQ to the exponential growth of virtual social networks hosting more users than the population of entire countries, there is no denying that this technological revolution is having a very important impact on most aspects of life. Nevertheless, in Brazil, significant advances in the field of technology are few and far between. This is due, firstly, to the fact that most Brazilians still have a limited and utilitarian view of the potential of ICTs to change the way we operate. Partly as a result of this lack of interest in and understanding of their potential, Brazil invests very little in innovation and technological development. Second, for these technologies’ full potential to be exploited, it is necessary for the country to create a fertile environment for entrepreneurship and innovation. Unfortunately, the Brazilian business culture remains reluctant to take risks, and prefers old models of industrial development as opposed to models that generate new technological infrastructure, such as software technology.

“CESAR … is one of the most impactful private initiatives in Brazil. It transformed Recife, where it now forms part of an important tech cluster called Porto Digital, but it also changed its region and even the whole country.” —TNW While Brazil has been benef itting from the new type of knowledge generated by the global market of ICT innovations and solutions for years, it has only recently begun to go after these new opportunities. To become a real protagonist in this field, Brazil will have to cease being a mere consumer of imported technologies. There are currently 100,000 vacant jobs in the computer science industry because the country lacks qualified professionals in this sector. For the country to participate and bring value to the technological revolution, it must think and act decisively and differently. Investments in ICT innovations are costly and risky and investors in innovation and entrepreneurship are still in an embryonic stage in Brazil. This lack of capital and skilled professionals ensures that new companies in this sector rarely get out of their pilot phase and become stagnant within three years of beginning their operations. In addition, when ICTs have been developed and used, they have often found themselves to be unequally distributed, privileging

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T H E S T R AT E G Y Very few technology parks around the world concentrate on software as their core competence, and most of them emerged from academic and business centers. Silvio had a unique vision as a social entrepreneur, academic, and business entrepreneur—to create an academic learning center, an applied research software center, a business incubator, and a software development park. The motor of this new model of development is CESAR, whose expertise ranges from chip design and the construction of embedded systems up to design, development and operation of information systems, mobility, performance and security applications, software reuse, methods and processes for software engineering, testing and operating systems, among many areas of the ICT value chain. To create CESAR, Silvio relied on Professor Henry Etzkowitz’s Triple Helix model, ensuring constant interaction between academia, research and development institutions, and society. The Triple Helix enhances the creation of centers of excellence, collaboration and competitiveness, that in turn help generate new innovations applicable to daily life. This structure has been operating through a unique methodology Silvio developed called apreendimento (a word bringing together the verbs “to learn” and “to entrepreneur”). This methodology has become the organization’s true nerve center through which CESAR’s managers and staff become allies and together learn in entrepreneurial ways where calculated risks, and above all, errors are allowed and even welcomed, since they are the basis of innovation. In 2000 Silvio realized that CESAR’s knowledge should be applied to benefit regional development in the Northeast of Brazil. He created Porto Digital (Digital Shore), thus transforming the drug and prostitution ridden historic center of Recife into a leading software technology hub. Local companies have thus become neighbors of multinationals such as IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, and Samsung. Porto Digital brings together 150 companies which employ approximately 5,000 people and earned R$450M (US$270M) last year. Today, CESAR alone employs approximately 670 people, and indirectly reaches more than 10,000 people who benefit from the secondary job opportunities created as a consequence of the economic development CESAR is bringing about. To ramp up the training of new professionals who will catalyze regional development and ensure the continued growth of the organization, Silvio created Cesar.edu, the education unit of the organization. Its mission is to train new generations of professionals, through educational programs directed toward the market, allied to well-established methods and procedures to address the practical and updated inclusion of professionals in the business environment of ICT.

The basis for knowledge generation is supported by a team of outstanding teachers with both practical and academic experience, who design, create, evaluate, and systematically review the institute’s curriculum, ensuring that it remains cutting-edge, and constantly feeding in CESAR’s own innovations. Cesar.edu offers technical courses for high school students, undergraduate and graduate courses, as well as classes designed specifically to respond to the demands of companies. It has already trained 230 students (around 50 Ph.D. students per year). One of Silvio’s greatest impacts has been to build an unprecedented bridge between universities and businesses. After transforming Recife into a hub for technological innovation in the Northeast of Brazil, CESAR has become an organization of national relevance. The center maintains offices in Sao Paulo, Recife, Curitiba, and Sorocaba. The Curitiba branch was recently accredited by the Ministry of Science and Technology to perform regionally sanctioned Research & Development activities in Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul. The goal is to bring CESAR’s approach to ICT innovations and its excellence to the high-tech ecosystem that is on the rise in Southern Brazil. For Silvio, a technology hub worked after 25 years. At 55, his vision is to ensure that the next 15 years of Porto Digital and the work of CESAR wil continue throughout Brazil. To ensure Porto Digital’s leadership and relevance, Silvio is working on his next innovation. He is beginning to develop a network of investors in technology-based companies to solve one of the main bottlenecks of scientific and technological development in the country: The provision of strategic investments in the field. Silvio is launching a fund of seed capital, with R$20M (US$12M) in funding, in partnership with FIR Capital of Minas Gerais. This will add to CESAR’s existing fund, with investments currently between R$500,000 and R$1M (US$300,000 to US$600,000). The Ministry of Science and Technology, the main source of public funding available in this field, current investments range from R$200,000 to R$300,000 (US$120,000 to US$180,000).

the country’s richer regions such as the Southeast. An important opportunity for regional integration and development is therefore being lost.

Chief-scientist of CESAR in action.

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THE PERSON

Viera Z ahorcova

Silvio was born in Taperoá, interior of Paraiba, in the impoverished Northeast of Brazil. With much effort, he managed to graduate in electronic engineering from the Technological Institute of Aeronautics, the country’s most prestigious institution in the field. After a master’s degree in computer science from the Federal University of Pernambuco he pursued an academic career. Like many of his fellow professors, Silvio furthered his studies abroad and did doctoral studies under one of the five most brilliant professors in computer engineering in England. When he left for England, he dreamed of becoming the number one software developer in Brazil and one of the best in the world. After completing his Ph.D. and turning down dozens of jobs outside of Brazi, he realized his true ambition was—to create a hub of software excellence in Northeast Brazil which could become an economic engine of regional development and attract the best software talent. Silvio enlisted a few of his close friends and colleagues and they began to teach state of the art computer science at the Federal University of Pernambuco. Their students quickly became globally competitive and highly qualified at a time when Brazil was focused principally on importing foreign products and solutions. Several companies realized how precious these skills were and began to invite Silvio’s students to work at the headquarters of most banks in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Silvio and his colleagues were then faced with the paradox of training top notch professionals in the Northeast, who then “migrated” to the rich states of the country. Faced with this evasion of talent, they began working on solutions to enable the local market to absorb these new professionals. But as the market was stagnant, Silvio was compelled to create an initiative that would secure a space for research, development, and the creation of businesses in his own region. This is how CESAR was born. Silvio and his team began to address the real demands of society regarding ICT solutions, and at the same time they attracted new customers in the field. Since then, CESAR has grown to become the biggest hotbed of software innovation and entrepreneurial training in Brazil. Since its inception, the institution has achieved a series of recognitions that have changed the ecosystem of information technology both in the Northeast and nationally. These include the prize for most innovative FINEP research institution in Brazil, the choice of the institution as an example of business creation by the World Economic Forum and an honorable mention at the Stockholm Challenge. Silvio was also considered by the magazine Info, as one of the 100 most important people of information technology in Brazil, having received from the President, the Commendation of the National Order of Scientific Merit (1999) and the Order of Rio Branco (2001), the two highest national honors in the field. 

S LOVA K I A

Businesses Equality/Rights Health Care Delivery

Viera Zahorcova has engineered the field of mental health to integrate disabled citizens into education and the workforce as well as represent their rights in government policy. She has created the first institutions to address mental health and an extensive network of support for the mentally disabled and their families. Through the diverse networks Viera has built, she is ensuring early intervention, incorporation of the disabled into the education system, improved rehabilitation and vocational training, and full employment for disabled citizens.

THE NEW IDEA Over the last two decades, Viera has been at the forefront of the movement to engage disabled citizens in society as equal economic players and ensure their full economic citizenship, proper social treatment, and human rights. She was instrumental in creating the first experimental early intervention center for disabled in Slovakia, which now serves as the country’s model for developing early intervention care for the mentally disabled. In this center, multidisciplinary teams of specialists work with families who have disabled children ranging from prenatal to school age. In 1998, Viera founded the Association for Help to People with Mental Disabilities in Slovak Republic, which evolved into the umbrella organization for forty-seven independently-run organizations that support the disabled. Viera’s vision and entrepreneurship is best illustrated by her perseverance toward full employment opportunities for the disabled. In 1999 Viera founded the first Agency for Supported Employment (APZ), an employment network which has now expanded to over sixty APZs in Slovakia and thirty in other regions of the world. Quite rapidly the APZs brought together local and regional governments, clients, the disabled and organizations seeking new employees, who all had different agendas, yet APZ helped bring these players together toward a shared goal. One of the creative ways that Viera continues to coordinate, scale, and ensure quality is by associating APZs with the Slovak Union of Supported Employment, which provides counseling and education services to its members. Viera has also developed quality standards in all supported employment agencies, which enables APZs to be considered a social service.

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Viera has built diverse networks of governments, citizen organizations (COs), parents, for-prof it organizations, and healthcare institutions at a time when these stakeholders did not traditionally overlap, and in a society that discriminates against and isolates disabled individuals. To build this comprehensive mental healthcare system, Viera has had to focus on her ultimate purpose: The full integration of the disabled into society, in particular, relating to their education and employment opportunities, as well as the legislation essential for their fair treatment. Viera’s experience began twenty-f ive years ago when she began empathizing with the disabled, although it has transformed into a systemic approach to disability that combines intervention, education, and employment support. Viera’s continuum of care has been adopted as national policy in Slovakia and is funded by the state.

A waiter assists a customer at Cafe Radnička.

THE PROBLEM The introduction of totalitarian regimes after World War II affected the development of democratic nations across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Even though there were differences in the intensity of oppression by country, there are universal characteristics of this time: Limited attention to human rights, government control of individuals, a paternalistic approach to government, oppression of civil society, and irrational optimism. Because of this irrational optimism and the overly idealistic society it assumed, there were assumptions that social problems did not exist and thus little attention was paid to disabled citizens. In particular, the quality of care in mental health institutions was very poor. Rehabilitation principles were limited, resources were scarce, and a regimented treatment model was in place for the treatment of patients. Even though impressive economic and political progress has characterized the CEE region since the

end of the communist era, many transitioning countries of postcommunist Europe, including the four Visegrad countries (Czech, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland) still lag behind. In particular, there is a visible mismatch between economic development and the evolution of social policies to support citizens, especially with respect to mental health. For example, mental health institutions considered unacceptable according to international standards are still in operation. It is estimated that roughly 6 percent of all CEE countries populations are disabled. In addition, 30,000 people remain in psychiatric institutions in the other Visegrad countries. Because many CEE countries still employ the classical institutional model for the treatment of disabled, people with mental illness remain at the periphery of society with limited rights. Although many are incapacitated, many individuals are left in specialized institutions even when their prognosis does not require it. In addition, there are still hospitals that fail to meet basic human rights in their treatment regimens, such as those hospitals that place more than twenty patients in one room or only provide one toilet for fifty or more patients to share. There are even CEE countries with institutions that have more than 500 beds. In some countries there are only 100 beds for 100,000 inhabitants. These examples of poor quality of care result in the deprivation of human rights for many. The mentally disabled in CEE society are still considered dependents. In addition to the trend across CEE to institutionalize rather than integrate mental health disabilities within society, the policies relating to the rights of disabled citizens do not universally ensure a fair society. In the Slovak Republic, for example, it was not until 2000 that all children, regardless of disability, were required to complete some level of education. Viera responded with organizing a campaign to lobby for changes in the educational law, which ended up in the new school law that supports the acceptance of all children in the education system. After this success, the association was able to enforce the right to integrated education for children with mental disabilities.

T H E S T R AT E G Y To achieve her vision of a more inclusive approach to disability, Viera has taken an integrated approach that combines all the key stakeholders in the field. She works with the parents of disabled children to ensure they feel supported, the disabled community, organizations who hire regularly, local and national governments, and the social care centers who refer patients to institutions. Viera and her team have built a coalition to earn a special nongovernmental commission status, which permits working directly with the Ministry of Social Affairs, Labor and Family. In addition, Viera has convinced government officials to address problems in the state-run facilities; she has built her strategy off of successful placement of some of these patients into the open labor market.

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Inspired by her travels abroad in 1988, Viera opened the first experimental early intervention center in Slovakia, which now serves as the model for developing early intervention care for the mentally disabled across Slovakia. Viera approached eight Ministers of Health before she was able to find one to approve the Department of Early Diagnostic and Intervention as the model to spread at the state level. Viera and her colleagues assisted with the creation of thirty-two centers for early intervention. The most famous of these centers are still functioning in regions such as Kežmarok, Spišská Nová Ves, Košice (Eastern Slovakia), Banská Bystrica, Nitra (Central Slovakia), Nové Zámky, Trnava, and Komárno (Southern and Western Slovakia). By the early 1990s Viera began to publically address the employment of those with mental disabilities in the open labor market. Through her association’s network, Viera set up the first sheltered workshops (Prima and Aktiva in Eastern Slovakia) in cooperation with employment offices. These workshops are partially financed by the state (30 percent), participant fees (25 percent) and other funding sources (45 percent). However, Café Radnicka, which Viera established in the center of Bratislava, was most critical for promoting employment of people with mental disabilities across the country. This initiative helped to connect politicians, officers, citizens, employers, and other people in the movement to promote the employment of people with mental disabilities. During the nine years following its establishment, it led to the replication of similar venues in several other Slovak towns (e.g. Trnava and Trenčín). By 1998, the Velvet Revolution brought changes in the structures of the clinic as well as the healthcare system as a whole in CEE. It also allowed parents to discuss the challenges faced by their children more openly. Viera began holding parents’ meetings, which evolved into the Parents’ Club, and she has since created the Association for Help to People with Mental Disabilities in Slovak Republic (ZPMP in SR). This organizational growth took place once Viera decided to quit her job in the clinic to dedicate her time fully to developing the healthcare system for children with disabilities and their families. Under her leadership, the association has catalyzed the movement of parents of children with disabilities and became an umbrella organization to forty-seven independent organizations supporting people with disabilities. Viera’s association helps to ensure that the membership organizations and their clientele (parents, specialists, and supporters) communicate and collaborate. The association is also a tool to change the attitudes of people on the local level through engaging them in community and integration activities. This umbrella association also offers educational programs for members, so they are able to establish new, modern, and good-quality services for people with mental disabilities (daycare centers, sheltered housing, and sheltered workshops). The association’s social network has become powerful enough to challenge employers and change the life conditions of people with mental disabilities to enable their employment.

In 1999 Viera established the f irst APZ as a non-prof it organization and became its director. The agency created a network of social partners in employment areas within the Bratislava region to learn how to communicate and work for the benefit of clients. Because the model was highly successful, Viera and her colleagues approached the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, and Family to implement this model of work in other regions of Slovakia. In cooperation with the Ministry another three new APZs were created. In the first year of operating APZs with state funding, the agency had 123 clients, and committed to finding employment for at least 30 percent in the area of Bratislava, although it managed to provide employment to 55 percent. In 2005, the growing network of APZs succeeded to enforce the changes in the Law on Employment Services to introduce APZ as one of the instrumental tools in the employment field. Since 2004, there have been fifty-seven agencies established in Slovakia and in 2004 Viera established the Slovak Union of Supported Employment associating APZs throughout the country to ensure members’ quality and scale. This union provides counseling, education, and other services to its members. While twenty-two agencies have been created with the support of APZ led directly under Viera, there have been over thirty other APZs in other regions serving different groups of disadvantaged people (i.e. employment of Roma people, ex-prisoners, long-term unemployed, and others). Between 2006 and 2009 Viera launched and created Quality Standards for Supported Employment. Based on the application of these quality standards into the work of APZs, Viera was able to ensure public funding for APZs. Agencies are registered as providers of specialized social counseling at the regional level and can get authorization from the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, and Family for this social service and the costs of the service subsidized by their respective regional governments.

In 1999 Viera founded the first Agency for Supported Employment, an employment network, which has now expanded to over 60 APZs in Slovakia and 30 in other regions of the world.

In addition to her focus on the parents and the APZs as means to build employment opportunities for the mentally disabled, Viera also works with the personnel employed by mental health institutions. She supports them in launching projects that lead to the employment of clients at the facilities. The ones who are not able to work will transition to home-based care institutions that ensure basic human rights and dignified treatment. Viera will implement this approach within the next two years and will

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provide education about supported employment combined with support to social workers, assistants, case managers, and job coaches in the process of tailoring jobs to specific individuals. While addressing the personnel of the facilities, Viera is also addressing potential employers to support them in job creation for people with mental disabilities. In partnership with labor offices she has managed to convince several local and international companies based in Slovakia to continuously employ people with mental disabilities. Among the employers are McDonald’s, national libraries, factories, receptionists at healthcare facilities, schools, and social organizations. To build awareness among employers about the value that people with mental disabilities bring to companies, Viera has developed a number of interactive tools such as short movies, where employers as well as employees with mental disabilities give their testimonies on why it is important and valuable to work with people with mental disabilities. Viera is actively engaging individual business owners, but also leading business organizations regarding this challenge.

well-known public figures in a number of social campaigns and initiatives. Viera’s organization is one of three members of a coalition that will be working on implementation of the process of deinstitutionalization in the next five to ten years. To achieve this, Viera will enforce international documents (UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) and arguments supporting the need for humanization. The process will be implemented by the APZs in Slovakia. Over the next year, Viera will also focus on the wide implementation of quality standards into the work of APZ. Viera strongly believes in the supported employment method as a chance for disabled persons, thus she plans to strengthen it in other regions in Slovakia. Viera expects that it will take another ten to fifteen years to solve the challenge of deinstitutionalization completely and holistically, while also developing an alternative system for social care and services. It will be more cost effective and socially beneficial if economic and human resources allocate resources to support the disabled in their day-to-day lives rather than provide nursing services in costly facilities. Viera is recognized as the reformer of the social care system within the region, in particular for people with mental disabilities. She is considered an international expert for transitioning countries, where she is often invited to share experiences of her work. Viera hopes that the work she does in university settings, in addition to international conferences where professionals and COs participate, will also help disseminate best practices from her region. Viera is dedicated to working toward accelerating the changes that will improve the quality of life of all people—regardless of their disability.

Cafe Radnička employs six disabled people and while it is breaking down barriers in communication, it is also exceeding the expectations of the public.

Viera’s extensive experience with key players in the field has taught her that those with disabilities learn best in an environment that is not only supported by organized institutions, but also society at-large. Public awareness and changes in attitudes toward people with mental disabilities is instrumental in social integration. Viera, along with the network of APZs and other organizations supporting people with mental disabilities and their families, are continuously engaged in publicity and promotional activities for the integration of the disabled while also showcasing their potential. There are a number of annual events and activities organized both at the national as well as community level that involve participation of the disabled, their families and regular citizens. These series of events present products and services offered by people with mental disabilities, which engages local communities in joint activities with the mentally disabled. Café Radnicka and other similar initiatives have broken barriers in communication, service, and also provided space for mutual cooperation and communication between the mentally disabled and the general public. This model is influencing public opinion and can positively change attitudes throughout society. Viera has also mobilized media, politicians, and other

THE PERSON Viera was born in Bratislava in 1958. As a graduate in psychology in 1981 she had been employed as the first and only psychologist in a pediatric clinic. Viera built the entire practice from scratch, since none of the medical doctors (pediatricians and internists) considered psychology as needed in the practice at the time.

Viera’s organization has not only spread regionally, but now varies in its reach to those more socially vulnerable and supports their efforts in education and employment.

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One of the most transformative experiences for Viera, however, was a trip to Denmark in 1980, during the second year of her psychology studies. During this trip, she worked with an international youth camp, where upwards of 50 percent of participants faced some kind of significant disability. Viera was shocked that people with such complex disabilities were active participants in the camp. There was a very disabled person lying in bed, and all the participants were transporting her with the bed, looking after her, and ensuring she could participate in the camp activities. There was a poorly-functioning autistic camper, another with Down Syndrome, and several more. The experience of witnessing and engaging with them as if they were healthy and “functioning” people was a major turning point for Viera: She still recalls the faces and names of the campers. In the early 1990s Viera had a chance to work with a wellknown professor of psychiatry and neurology named Matulay, who worked in her clinic though he was already an elderly man. Combined with Viera’s memories of her mother and grandmother who both empathized with vulnerable people, Professor Matulay inspired Viera’s interest in people with mental disabilities. In communist times, Viera had a chance to travel to various countries in Europe and become acquainted with methods and approaches in diagnostics and therapies of children and youth with developmental problems, including those suffering from risks, delays, and/or unsteadiness in development. Her observations led her to focus on a systemic solution to this problem: Early intervention, integrated education, and support for finding employment. This comprehensive model was non-existent in Slovakia, or any other communist country for that matter. Given that Viera was already working in a state hospital, she took on this challenge to improve the treatment and care of the mentally disabled as her full mission. Over many decades, Viera has changed the way the disabled are diagnosed, cared for, rehabilitated, and supported. In fact, for most of her life, Viera has ensured people with mental disabilities become integrated and fully functioning members of society. Her diverse experiences working with state institutions, building the movement with parents, and ensuring a supportive society for the mentally disabled have been instrumental in making such significant changes to Slovakia and other countries across the region, such as Czech Republic and Hungary. 

A mitai Z iv ISRAEL

Caregivers Communities Health Care Delivey

Professor Amitai Ziv, a pediatrician and an ex-Air Force pilot, is helping transform the way medical and other community service professionals (from healthcare professionals and social workers to secondary educators) are trained and evaluated, in order to enhance the social and professional skill sets of these professions. Amitai, a leader in simulation-based medical education (SBME) is bringing about a “safety revolution”—offering a significant step forward in improving patient care, reducing medical error, and embedding a systemic and transparent quality improvement process into often old and conservative training regimes, thus contributing to a deep change in patient safety culture of today’s healthcare systems.

THE NEW IDEA Amitai and the Israel Center for Medical Simulation (MSR), which he founded in 2001, employs a host of pedagogical and methodological approaches to mitigate medical error for the sake of improving and increasing worldwide patient safety. By creating a safe environment in which professionals are invited to practice, make mistakes, reflect on and learn from their errors, Amitai and his team at MSR work to improve the quality of medical staff and ultimately, of healthcare systems. In spite of notable improvements in access to medical information and connectivity among healthcare professionals around the world, there still remains a worrying dilemma: Far too many mistakes are made unintentionally by health professionals and many of them are mistakes that could be avoided, or at least mitigated, with proper training. Amitai is addressing this problem by combining the medical skills he acquired as a physician with the simulation experiences he received as an Air Force pilot. The result of this synergy of skills and experiences is a comprehensive and widely applicable model for medical simulation, which has already begun to be implemented among other community service professions and by medical institutions outside of Israel. Aside from providing procedural simulation that integrates interdisciplinary teams of medical, nursing, paramedic, and other professions, MSR trains for a wide variety of conventional and unconventional emergency preparedness situations, including

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chemical, biological, and nuclear warfare as well as putting much focus on simulating challenging and difficult emotional scenarios in medicine to improve the humane approach and communication skills of healthcare providers. As a result of this high degree of comprehensiveness and applicability, those parties interested in the link between patient safety and simulation-based training come to MSR for guidance. These include parties such as medical simulation centers, medical center and healthcare institutions, health professional schools as well as medical device and pharmaceutical companies. Other professional bodies in service fields such as welfare (e.g. social workers), education (e.g. schools’ teachers and principals) or even the commercial world (e.g. cellular phone costumer service supporters)—seek advice and training in order to better serve their mission and clients.

This safety deficiency is seen by some experts in the field as a systems failure—a combination of deficient communication and handover skills, inadequate practical training, lack of cultural competences, and the need for patient empowerment. In particular, such high numbers of errors stem primarily from a lack of awareness, real practice and teamwork—as well as due to inadequate training, assessment and accreditation in ‘soft skills’ such as communication, humility, and empathy. Miscalculations and poor administration of dosages, poor post-surgical protocol, and surgical mistakes are common medical errors that can be prevented or reduced. By creating an almost real-life environment in which one learns from his/her own practical successes and failures and improves his/her teamwork and communication skills, MSR is enabling healthcare professionals and other community-serving professionals to perfect the intricacies of their professions.

T H E S T R AT E G Y

Amitai, a leader in simulation-based medical education has brought together diverse stakeholders— from professional training institutions, to research centers, HMOs and hospitals, to government agencies and certification bodies— in order to reach professional communities worldwide which need to improve their training processes as well as their professional preparedness and clinical delivery effectiveness.

THE PROBLEM To illustrate the gravity of the high rate of medical errors, a study published in the U.S. in 1999 (To Err is Human) claimed that in the U.S. alone, 100,000 patients die in hospitals every year due to medical errors. According to Amitai, these deaths are analogous to “a jumbo Boeing 747 crashing in the U.S. hospitals every day.” The World Health Organization estimates that “medical errors and healthcare related adverse events” occur in about 10 percent of hospitalizations worldwide. These staggering figures are evidence that the current protocol for decreasing the rate of medical errors—lectures, workshops, and other forms of non-praxis-oriented training—are failing to serve the medical profession. This is perhaps one of the biggest paradoxes of Western medicine: It has highly-trained professionals, advanced technologies, a health expenditure of 6 to 18 percent of GNP, and unparalleled investment in biomedical research, and yet has unreliable health systems with high rates of error—most of which are preventable.

Amitai’s medical simulation work is based on the belief that exposing health professionals to challenging and extreme encounters where they can err without endangering real patients improves outcomes while dramatically reducing medical errors that result in needless deaths or harm to patients. Similarly, this mistake- and assessment-driven experiential education adds essential non-technical skills and professional behaviors to the knowledge base of the trainee. Ultimately, educational simulated experiences—including the realistic enactments of complex medical situations and the use of high-tech mannequins in learning about human reactions to medical interventions—have the power to save many lives. MSR’s approach creates a safe environment in which trainees can make mistakes in a proactive and controlled educational environment—a system in which the process is as important as the outcome and feedback and debriefing are as central as the practice itself. MSR trains medical staff in ‘softer’ skills as well: How to tell a family about the loss of their loved one; how to apologize for a mistake you did, how to deal with an aggressive, shy or silent patient; how to improve communication within the medical team around the patient’s bed; and, how to ensure that the information arising in this process is being registered and taken into account. When MSR offers similar services and opportunities to other social professions, one can describe Amitai’s model as a real vehicle to cultural change, offering a broad spectrum of simulation modalities and heralding a paradigm shift in the training and evaluation of professionals. MSR’s curricula reach and train over 10,000 professionals in over sixty courses per year, all of which include hands-on practice. In total, MSR has trained and assessed more than 120,000 professionals over the last ten years. Based in a virtual hospital established on the Chaim Sheba Medical Center campus, which is

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one of the largest and most comprehensive hospitals in the Middle East, the center has over 100 simulators or models and employs over 150 professional actors for its courses (“simulated patients” from all cultural backgrounds with ages ranging from 16- to 80-yearsold). The center is a not for-profit organization that achieves sustainability via a fee-for-service model and employs over thirty full-time staff members. To address more context/geographicspecific problems in medicine, MSR has also developed a variety of educational programs specifically designed for international groups, such as AIDS management for teams in Ethiopia and trauma management for doctors in the West Bank and Gaza.

Amitai’s drive to help people stemmed from the socialist educational doctrine of his parents who came to Jerusalem from the kibbutz life and from witnessing the horrors and misfortunes of war throughout his Air Force career in the Israeli army. This experience opened up Amitai’s eyes to a new world of human suffering, a sense of social rights and social values. His experience with war also brought about the realization that he wanted to transition from the killing industry to the healing industry. Amitai realized his passion and talent for simulation during his time with the Israeli Air Force. Integral to the aviation profession, Amitai fell in love with the simulation involved in training because it was not fighting; but instead was showing people to learn how to teach better. He witnessed how much the training changed his student pilot’s capabilities and from then on, he began to appreciate the art of debriefing as well as diagnosing and analyzing human error. Feeling the pull of social service at the end of his time in the Air Force, Amitai decided to become a pediatrician. After experiencing a fellow student commit suicide two hours after that student failed a test for a class in medical school, Amitai decided that the testing system—both to get into medical school and to become a licensed physician—was incomplete. It failed to assess the human side of being a physician—a side that is perhaps as important as the cognitive side. Stirred by this revelation, Amitai completed his MD dissertation on peer evaluation.

MSR’s approach gives young doctors a safe environment to practice, make mistakes and learn from them.

MSR has become a standard across Israel—all medical student candidates, interns, paramedics, anesthesiologists and all advanced specialty nurses are trained and/or tested for competencies at MSR as part of their educational process. At a global scale, MSR has approached the problem of medical error by implementing its model at medical institutions around the world. The list of international medical institutions with which MSR is currently collaborating includes Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, McGill University in Montreal, Albert Einstein Medical Center in Sao Paolo (Brazil), Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and New York Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University in New York.

THE PERSON Amitai’s life has never strayed too far from two passions: Simulation-based education and improving the world. Even while in the for-profit high-tech world in the field of medicine, these passions were never absent from his life. 100

Amitai ultimately turned his dissertation into a program that certified foreign immigrant doctors applying to U.S. medical schools. With the desire to show that the business of helping others can also be lucrative, he decided to join a U.S.-based medical simulation company that his Israeli Air Force friends had started. However, the business failed to attract venture capital at the end of the 1990s, in great part due to the fact that the field had yet to be recognized as a valid field in the business and medical worlds. In the aftershocks of this entrepreneurial failure, Amitai received an offer from the Sheba Medical Center in Israel to be its vice president, in charge of patient safety, risk management and medical education in 2000. He accepted the offer on the condition of creating the Israel Center for Medical Simulation, in order to spread his approach. In 2007 Amitai won the Charles Bronfman Prize (a humanitarian award that celebrates the vision and endeavor of an individual or team less than 50 years of age, whose humanitarian work has contributed significantly to the betterment of the world) for “establishing the pre-eminent medical simulation center, which serves as a model for such centers throughout the world. Amitai has made his mark not only in Israel, but worldwide, revolutionizing the health community’s views on medical simulation as well as how it is implemented in disciplines as diverse as preparation for mass casualty, military medical preparedness, and sexual abuse.” 

COLLABORATIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP Growing Up: The New Paradigm...................................................................103 Changemaker Schools......................................................................................107 Ashoka's Youth Venturers and Their Ideas................................................108

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G rowing U p : The N ew Paradigm AND

The Jujitsu of Introducing a New Mindset By Bill Drayton Because the rate of change has been accelerating exponentially since at least 1700 (a mathematical fact), society is now in a time of profound, very probably tipping point transformation. Every group must organize differently. And, in a world where everything is changing, everyone must become a changemaker. Any society, group or person that fails to do so will fast be left way behind. Enabling society and all its groups and people to see this new strategic environment and what it means for every aspect of their lives is now the Ashoka community’s central goal and thrust. Because Ashoka is a community of 3,000 of the world’s best social entrepreneurs and many more entrepreurial allies, young changemakers, and changemaker schools/ universities/companies (and through Changemakers.com hears from and is open to all), it is uniquely positioned to see, speed and help this new world come together as wisely as possible. Collaborative entrepreneurship, a giant and never-seen-before step beyond the solo entrepreneur, is what makes this possible. We illustrate how it is now introducing a new paradigm for growing up and education that is essential for an “everyone a changemaker” ™ society and then outline its key elements.

EVERYONE A CHANGEMAKER There has always been some, at least evolutionary change. But it has been so slow and each instance so isolated, that society has been organized for efficiency in repetition at increasing scale (think the only century-old assembly line and law firm). It was efficient for people to learn one thing and do that for the rest of their lives, be it as a baker or a banker. Education and institutions, with their walls and direction by a very few, have long been organized accordingly. However, after three centuries of exponential increases in the rate of change, these arrangements are breaking down. The new game—change begets and accelerates change as each element that changes bumps all the others around it—is not just different from, it is the exact opposite of the old “repetition reinforces repetition” paradigm. A successful organization in the future must be a fluid (no walls!), open team of teams—with synapses/synergies flowing in every direction from every point (rather like the brain). Because

every such team is serving a kaleidoscope of constantly changing, interconnected groups and needs, it must constantly change its membership and their roles. These teams won't be able to afford members who are not changemakers. There will still be repetitive work, but it is declining as fast as the centrality of change is accelerating. (Artificial intelligence, technology, the algorithm, and the web are now fast replacing jobs previously thought safe: CAD/CAM replaced 40 percent of what architects did, lidar has just replaced 85 percent of archeologists’ field work, etc.) A team isn’t a team unless each member is initiatory and takes into account and acts to help the team and its members in fast-changing circumstances. And the value of envisioning new and better futures and opportunities in an everything changing and interconnected environment is increasing exponentially.

“The only way to become a changemaker is to be one…12 though 20.” Any child or young person today who is not actively developing the complex, difficult, learned skills that will enable him or her to be a changemaker has a grim future. Most of the repetition-is-enough jobs they see now will very soon be gone. Not ensuring that s/he has these skills—and the confident selfidentity as a changemaker—before age 21 today constitutes parental and educational malpractice.

G R OW I N G U P: T H E N E W PAR AD I G M What must children and young people master to be able to contribute and prosper in the “everyone a changemaker” world? The new paradigm for growing up and education is: Every child must master cognitive empathy, and every teen must be practicing changemaking (empathy, teamwork, new leadership, changemaking). This is a statement of what is needed in any society defined by fast change. There are many different ways, and combinations of ways, of achieving these goals. The subset of 700 Ashoka Fellows focused on children and young people almost all have large scale, successful solutions. Once society focuses on these goals, the number of approaches and tools will multiply dramatically.

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This new paradigm is very much like the equally fundamental decision of a century ago that every person must master written language. The increasing complexity and knowledge content of society required it. The need and therefore the goal was clear. It triggered generations of rich research and argument about how best to reach the goal. But acceptance of the goal was not dependent on how it was to be done. Because children are different from young people (viz. confirmations, bar/bat mitzvahs, and many tribal rites—not to mention current brain mapping), it is important to define the skills to be mastered at each stage.

Children: Cognitive Empathy

Children, as young as possible, must master cognitive empathy and then practice it steadily at play, in class, and at home. Cognitive empathy is a major step beyond the “I feel your pain” empathy that even elephants have. It is a very complex skill indeed. It requires you to observe yourself understanding all those around you, layers out, further and further into the future (as it comes at you faster and faster)—and now not just in a few stable contexts (family, job, religious community), but in a kaleidoscope of interconnected, changing contexts. And then you must, using this understanding and guided by empathy-based ethics, do as little harm and as much and as significant good as possible.

“The ultimate test of success is: What proportion of 21 year olds confidently know they are changemakers.” We almost all have the capacity to do this. We have the mirror neurons and cerebral cortex required. However, we must learn these skills every bit as much as is true for literacy. Any child who does not master this skill will be cast out. There is nothing more cruel or harmful. The faster the world changes, the less rules cover. They haven’t been defined; they are changing; and/or they are in conflict. One cannot now be a good person by diligently following the rules. No matter how hard a person tries, if s/he doesn’t have cognitive empathy, s/he will hurt people and disrupt groups. Then s/he is gone. If you hurt me, I don’t want you anywhere near, no matter how much chemistry or computer science knowledge you have. This pattern, which is playing out all across the world, is hugely destructive. It is increasing prejudice. It is building hopelessness, depression, illness, anger, division. It is a major factor in worsening income distributions across the globe. Moreover, without this foundational skill, the young person at the following developmental stage will not be able to build and

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practice the next and also complex, learned skills needed to be a changemaker—teamwork, new leadership, and changemaking.

Young People

When children become young people, they are fully able to have their own dream, build a team, and change their world (their school or community). The moment they do so, they achieve their power—for life.

“Most of the repetition-is-enough jobs they see today will very soon be gone.” Today’s great entrepreneurs almost all changed their world in their teens. That’s true for Richard Branson and for over 80 percent of the Ashoka Fellows. When you next talk to a true entrepreneur, ask him/her when s/he first built something—and watch his/her eyes closely. When s/he thinks back to this moment, the time when s/he first had his/her power, you will see just how central, how magic this moment is. Once you know you are a changemaker and can lead others to change things, you will seek out the problems everyone else tries hard not to see. With each new initiative, your skill and confidence as a changemaker grows. You never need be afraid. And all through life you will have the power to express love and respect in action at ever more significant levels—and this, as both the prophets and scientists say, is what brings health, longevity, and happiness. We know we can enable almost every young person to be a changemaker. Almost all the 700 Ashoka Fellows (of the 3,000 total) who are focused on children and young people put them in charge—almost always with dramatic results. Even traditional test scores jump up. Ashoka’s Youth Venture has enabled whole townships and groups of townships to tip so that incoming middle school students enter an “everyone a changemaker” culture where there are many examples of student-created groups and where they are encouraged to dream, organize a team, and enrich and further strengthen the culture with their own creation. Indeed, Ashoka’s Youth Venture’s goal is to ensure that every young person has this opportunity and encouragement. The only way to become a changemaker is to be one and practice and practice all four skills in the youth years of 12 (sometimes younger) through 20. These four skills are: 1. Cognitive empathy. 2. Teamwork, which must be for more sophisticated and fast moving in a fluid, open team of teams world.

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3. A very new model of leadership, fitted to an everythingchanging world of teams of powerful self-initiating changemakers. The key skills are: Envision, enable, ensure. 4. Changemaking—in all roles. The ultimate test of success is: What proportion of 21-yearolds confidently know they are changemakers (“have their power”) and in fact have mastered the four skills combined together?

How many elementary school principals know that they are failing if even one second-grader has not grasped cognitive empathy and if all the students are not practicing it? How could they—since they are evaluated in terms of test scores (knowledge transfer) and ruliness (no mayhem in the hallways)? What is needed now is changing the world’s mindset, the way everyone sees where society is going and therefore the changes they must make for themselves, their organizations—and the children and young people about whom they care. To thus tip the world one must tip 9 or 10 key areas. Then one must bring the power of collaborative entrepreneurship to bear in each of these places. Here are the key steps: • A critical mass of hundreds of leading social entrepreneurs commit their lives to bringing big change to an area. They don’t do this lightly. Their collective decision is a critical open source Geiger counter reading that a field is ripe for major change. • One looks for cross-cutting patterns. • And then, keeping in mind the team of teams and “everyone a changemaker” architecture of the future, one moves from present-day patterns to defining the new paradigm for the future. • But a wonderfully attractive, win-win future is not enough. One must define the jujitsu lever that will enable the team of social entrepreneurs to change the vast and conservative world of schools and parents profoundly. Even together, the entrepreneur(s) are a very small force vis a vis the world needing change. How, even just in the four percent of the world that is in the US, would the entrepreneurs there ever be able to change even the 80,000 elementary schools if they tried to do so directly?

Shankar studied until the fifth standard when the need to earn income for his family forced him to quit school and work. But selling balloons at traffic junctions did not bring in enough money, and like many of his peers from "Criminal" Tribes, Shankar soon turned to petty crime. At fourteen, Shankar, elected an Ashoka Youth Venturer, developed a series of cricket tournaments for young people from his community in his Bombay slum area. To bridge generations old hostility between his community and the police, he systematically invited officers to the games.

THE JUJITSU: CO L L A B O R AT I V E E N T R E P R E N E U R S H I P Any parent or educator or policy leader who recognizes the urgency of achieving these goals now can bring to bear a rich set of proven tools. From the Fellows and many others. And yet very few children and young people are being given these keys to the future. Most parents and educators are simply not aware of the issue.

The key to the jujitsu is sharp, determined focus.

First, what are the least number of forces one must catalyze into interaction in order to generate a chemistry that is rapidly self-multiplying and that progressively draws in yet more forces. Then, for each of these core forces, one must very carefully select groups where there is a strong team fully committed to the ultimate and also the key building block goals. This team is a partner in a team of teams, not a franchisee to be given a formula or a curriculum. Finally, one must help the emerging team of teams envision the goal, enable it and all its members to entrepreneur successfully at a high level, and together ensure that the tipping take place because it has everyone in the team of teams helping everyone and the whole team succeed. For the “Every Child Must Master Empathy” (“Empathy”) program, Ashoka has been applying this jujitsu in the US

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for almost two years. The Youth Venture program for teens, with long, rich prototyping experience including tipping individual schools and townships, is now joining this Empathy jujitsu approach. Given growing success in the US, the other continents are now moving rapidly to follow. (They are already adding new ideas.)

“How many principals know they are failing if even one second grader has not grasped cognitive empathy.” The triggering first phase of the jujitsu is critical. It involves three core forces. Here’s the US progress so far: • A dozen Fellows are co-leading and another forty are contributing. Their work is enriched; they are hugely effective with the other actors; they love entrepreneuring at this peak level of their field and together; and this collaboration is greatly strengthening the Ashoka fellowship. • So that the jujitsu will soon have models representing all of America’s diversity of types of schools, students and communities, Ashoka is seeking out and carefully screening 60 out of the 80,000 elementary schools for the Empathy program. (Some of these schools serve the same purpose for the Youth Venture teen second half of the work.) At the beginning of the 2013 school year half that number had applied, passed Ashoka’s screening, and become Changemaker Schools and partner teams in the jujitsu’s team of teams. The other half should be on the playing field by the spring. The criteria for selection beyond diversity are: –– The school has a track record of leading change. The effort needs all its member teams to be effective! –– There is a team in the school each of whose members fully understands and believes the “everyone a changemaker” new strategic environment and therefore knows that it is critical for every child to master cognitive empathy (i.e., that it is not just one of a dozen nice things to do) and that they have an opportunity to play on a very big stage because their helping lead this change is critical for their school, community, and country as well as for their students. • Thirty “maven” writers and publishers where there is a team, whose members, like those in that of a Changemaker School, truly see the very big story that these transitions constitute and, using this lens, help those who follow them see this news and what it means for them.

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These three forces, as they come together, are enough to trigger the tipping process. The publishers have a story once the schools are demonstrating the feasibility and power of the new paradigm and are on fire carrying this word. The writers and publishers, and Ashoka Fellows leverage schools and the champions within. The Ashoka Fellows are highly credible and effective with both—and their work benefits from both. This triggering mechanism is already drawing in other mutually synergistic forces that are feeding the fire. They include three graduate schools of education who know it is strategic to be ahead of this fast-moving new paradigm. You should have seen the spark in one dean’s eyes when he realized that probably—and not too far in the future—tens of thousands of schools will be scrambling to learn how to be effective in this new game and that his school might be one of the first that will be ready to help. Five other graduate schools of education have since expressed their interest.

“Soon school boards will be asking their principals: ‘Why aren’t we doing this?’ ” The engagement of these graduate schools reinforces the Ashoka Changemaker Schools, the publishers, and Ashoka Fellows immediately. And their research will quickly help as well—for example by producing better measures of empathy than bullying rates. This new definition of talent has also drawn in a very well know, giant consulting firm and a number of its major corporate clients. Yet more reinforcement for all the other actors and vice versa. In another year or so, some parents will be asking schools, “How good are you at empathy and student changemaking practice?” And some principals will be saying, “Come here because we’re great at what really matters.” Soon school boards will be asking their principals, “Why aren’t we doing this?” From that point the tipping process to a new mindset typically accelerates explosively. ***** There follows brief sketches of two of the US Changemaker Schools and a very few of the thousands of Ashoka Youth Venturers changing their worlds across the globe.

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Changemaker Schools

Changemaker Schools Network is a community of leading schools that prioritize empathy and changemaking as student outcomes. Through innovations in school curricula, culture, and systems, these schools are pioneering how education can cultivate children as changemakers. Ashoka is identifying, selecting, and collaborating with these leading schools to enhance and amplify their models and collectively identify and address the challenges to making such an education a reality for all children. shoka’s

Changemaker schools across the country and globe working with Ashoka Fellows and key writers and publishers, who understand that no country or city or company can succeed in a world defined by accelerated change unless their people are changemakers, can tip society’s mindset—and ensure that every child masters empathy and every teen is practicing being a changemaker (empathy, teamwork, new leadership, changemaking.) Ashoka launched the Changemaker Schools network in July 2012; and, to date, it has selected the first 26 Changemaker Schools in the United States, with Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia getting ready to follow suit.

Inspired Teaching Public Charter School Located in Washington, DC, Inspired Teaching Public Charter School was founded by Ashoka Fellow Aleta Margolis as a demonstration school for the Center for Inspired Teaching. The Inspired Teaching School was elected to the Changemaker Schools Network in July 2012 and uses a standards-based curriculum centered on the “4 I‘s:” Intellect, Inquiry, Imagination, and Integrity. Last school year it created something new—regular Changemaker Days. Replacing service time (Now children, let's clean up the yard), the students in each class starting with first grade identify a problem, find a solution, and make it happen. For example, after learning about sustainability in class and comparing their school to their homes, students were appalled that there was no recycling at school. The students wrote to the principal and worked with a local recycling company to get recycling bins in every classroom. The impact on the school of this empowering, respectful approach and its invitation to students to be changemakers has been powerful—and so contagious that other Changemaker Schools have adopted it. The teachers at the Center for Inspired Teaching who are resident and learning at the school will also help spread these ideas.

North Glendale Elementary School Located in Kirkwood, MO, North Glendale Elementary School was elected to the Changemaker Schools Network in June 2013. Prior to joining the Changemaker Schools Network, North Glendale collaborated with Ashoka’s Youth Venture on “The Big Return,” a St. Louis project designed to get area youth involved in changemaking. One of the only elementary schools to participate, North Glendale’s team, led by three fifth graders, took on the challenge of improving the well-being of patients at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Each class engaged in empathy exercises to step into the shoes of patients and brainstormed ideas to make the hospital feel more like home. Students then launched fundraising efforts to pay for their ideas. At the end of the Big Return, North Glendale raised $2,381.23 to purchase video games, books, DVDs, and stuffed animals for St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Now as a Changemaker School, North Glendale is continuing to run and expand on Big Return-style changemaking projects at their school.

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Youth Venturers in America Jonny Age: 18

Jonny (then 14) launched GreenShields in 2008 with friends. Caring deeply about the environment they set out to increase the gas mileage of school buses across the nation to save money for schools and reduce carbon emissions. This involved work on several plains. It required educating school systems—never an easy task. And it required engineering. Jonny conceived GreenShields as add-ons to the traditional boxy, highly nonaerodynamic school bus. It took two years to design, test, and build a successful shield. This included, for example, Jonny persuading a university to let him use its wind tunnel. The GreenShields are now on school buses on the road. The improved gas mileage saves schools $600 per bus per year—while also cutting emissions significantly. GreenShields hopes now to produce these shields at rates of 1,000 or more per run going forward. This will allow them to subcontract to a metal stamper, who would produce shields from sheet metal, perhaps aluminum, thereby reducing the cost to under $100 per shield—thereby spurring more schools to act.

Shannon Age: 13

Shannon was inspired to become a changemaker by her twin brother, Liam, who has autism. When Shannon and Liam enrolled in elementary school together, Shannon was distressed when her classmates made fun of her brother. At first her reaction was to break down and cry. But over time she began to realize that it wasn’t that kids wanted to hurt her brother—they simply did not understand him. So Shannon and her friend Deanna launched a venture to raise awareness about autism and to intervene in individual cases of disrespect when needed. Their highly organized group, the Blue Crew, has four primary goals: (1) spreading awareness about autism; (2) recruiting students entering middle school to join their venture; (3) convincing their community to light it up blue on April 2nd with blue light bulbs to show support for autism; and (4) engaging students and faculty to wear blue on that day and spread the word that April is National Autism Awareness Month. To further create awareness, Shannon and her team sell blue items—the color of Autism awareness—such as light bulbs, Autism bracelets, and Autism puzzle piece cookies. Shannon and the Blue Crew want people to see that individuals with autism can make good friends. The proceeds from their fundraisers and events are donated to the Autism Resource Center in Boylston, MA.

Charles Age: 17

Greening Forward, formerly Recycling Education, is an interactive website powered by young people that establishes, engages, and empowers a diverse global green movement of people for the protection of the environment, Greening Forward began in response to a littering problem that then 12-year old Charles identified in his school. As Charles’s passion in environmental stewardship grew, he became a school leader on environmental awareness projects. After seeing the effect on his community, he knew the initiative could grow to empower other communities to join the green movement. Charles and his team have built Greening Forward into a civic organization that helps young people create the environmental change they wish to see by providing the tools and resources they need, such as interactive webinars to train young people on everything from using social media to grant writing to training young people to be environmental educators. Greening Forward also organizes challenges such as the “plastics free challenge,” through which teens present project ideas to address this environmental issue and receive a grant to implement it. The website also provides educational materials to help young people understand environmental issues and what they can do. Greening Forward’s Earth Savers Clubs organize local recycling programs and community beautification projects, thereby reducing a schools' carbon footprint and demonstrating to youth how to live in more environmentally conscious ways. Today, the program has grown to over 30 communities and continues to expand virtually. Greening Forward has empowered young people to recycle over ten tons of waste, plant trees, and conserve water. 108

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Youth Venturers in Northeast Japan

Northeastern region of Japan was hit by an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant explosion on March 11, 2011. Ashoka Japan launched Tohoku Youth Venture to help this poor, long disadvantaged area build both a better educational model and leaders for a different future. Several examples follow. he

The number of Youth Venturers in Japan is increasing rapidly—very much inspiring their peers. In the Japanese context—we are taught to not make mistakes, take chances, or stand out; but to be quiet, and not express ourselves—this fact is phenomenal.

Shuhei and Haruka Age: Both 16

The Fukushima nuclear disaster brought many issues to surface about nuclear power in Japan. Shuhei and Haruka realized high school students, including themselves, were not aware of the issues at all. After the disaster the media focused on emotional reactions to the tragedy and the threat of nuclear energy. Shuhei and Haruka decided to investigate from a scientific standpoint, using evidence and facts. They launched THINK NUKE, a platform for high school students to exchange ideas and opinions online—while inviting experts to open workshops and lead discussion panels, so students can explore diverse opinions and broaden their perspectives.

Yuuri Age: 17

The disaster in March 2011 left a scar in Yuuri’s home of Minami-Sanriku. Her family’s house was swept away by the tsunami and she is still living in temporary housing. The government promised to build houses for the residents, but the promise has not been kept. Yuuri felt young people had to take action since the adults did not. She gathered a group of high school students to do “story-telling” of the disaster for people who did not experience it. To convey the truth not written in the media is her team’s mission. Yuuri attends schools and community gatherings all over to tell her story. She and her teammates are studying English to pursue this mission beyond Japan.

Erika and Shally Age: Both 16

Erika and Shally go to high school together. Some of their classmates answered in their questionnaire that they spend $120 to $180 per month buying new clothes (wear them a couple times and throw them away). Since they both have parents from different cultural heritages and speak five languages between them, they like the Japanese word mottainai, which means “too precious to waste”—the word/concept does not exist in other languages. They want to revive an attitude of mottainai they no longer experience among Japanese youth. They have created a girls’ gathering to bring used clothes—cleaned and ironed—to exchange with others to minimize waste. They intend do it often so the concept spreads.

Ayaka Age: 20

Many people moved out of the nuclear radiation affected disaster region and evacuated to Hokkaido (the Northern Island). Ayaka, a native Hokkaido-ite, created a small farm where evacuees grow their own vegetables to be free of anxiety towards food. The farm also serves as an oasis for the evacuees forced to leave their homes and begin anew. Ayaka plans to start a café during the winter and serve cuisine from Tohoku region. Her goal is to make evacuees feel at home in their new land.

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ORGANIZING THE MOVEMENT World Council.......................................................................................................112 Board, North American Council....................................................................113 Offices Worldwide...............................................................................................114 Ensuring the Future: The Endowments......................................................116 Opportunities.......................................................................................................122

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ASHOK A LEADERS

World Council Fazle Abed

Robert Goheen

Fazle Abed is the founder and chairman of BRAC, the world’s largest and one of its most excellent and entrepreneurial citizen groups. BRAC brings structural change to tens of thousands of villages on three continents through education, finance, and integrated development. Queen Elizabeth knighted him in 2010.

Robert Goheen was president of Princeton University and United States Ambassador to India. He long led the Carnegie program to strengthen teaching.

Peter D. Bell

Anupam Puri

Peter D. Bell served as president of CARE, one of the world’s leading private relief and development organizations. He now is a senior research fellow at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University. He also co-chairs the Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/ AIDS.

Anupam ("Tino") Puri founded and managed McKinsey’s practice in India. In 1996, he was elected a managing director, and from 1998 onwards, he oversaw all of McKinsey’s Asian and Latin American practices. Tino was a founder board member of Ashoka.

Marjorie C. Benton

Sir Shridath Ramphal

Marjorie, very much a fellow spirit, has founded and co-founded many socially important organizations including: the Chicago Foundation for Women; the Women’s Issues Network; and The Peace Museum. She has been board chair of Save the Children, and she served as a delegate to the United Nations special sessions on disarmament in the 1970s, and then as U.S. Ambassador to UNICEF.

Sir Shridath Ramphal is Co-Chair of the Commission on Global Governance and President of the World Conservation Union. He is Former Secretary General of the British Commonwealth, Chancellor of the University of West Indies and former Foreign Minister and Attorney General in Guyana.

Vera Cordeiro One of the early Brazilian Ashoka Fellows, Vera cordeiro founded Associacao Saùde Crianca which addresses the root causes that prevent poor families from providing adequate care to their children when discharged from hospital.

Marian Wright Edelman Marian Wright Edelman is a lifelong advocate for disadvantaged Americans and is the President of the Children’s Defense Fund. Under her leadership, CDF has become the nation’s strongest voice for children and families.

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Muhammad Yunus Nobel Prize recipient, Muhammad Yunus, provided the global leadership that made microcredit a universally accepted development tool. He went on to create a series of social businesses, including the largest telephone service in the region.

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Ashoka Board Richard Cavanaugh (On Leave)

Fred Hehuwat

The Kennedy School of Government Harvard University

Former President and CEO, The Conference Board

Founder, Green Indonesia Foundation Former Director, National Institute of Geology and Mining of the Indonesian Academy of Sciences

Bill Drayton

Sara Horowitz (Designate)

Chair and CEO, Ashoka: Innovators for the Public Chair, Get America Working! Former Assistant Administrator, U.S. E.P.A.

Ashoka Member Founder and CEO, Working Today and the Freelancers' Union

Mary Gordon

Partner Emeritus, Latham and Watkins President, Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future (SAHF)

Ashoka Fellow Founder & CEO, Roots of Empathy Canada

William C. Kelly

Kyle Zimmer

Roger Harrison

Founder and President, First Book

Newspaper Executive and Chair, Leading Charities Former Chair, Asylum Aid Former Chair, Toynbee Hall United Kingdom

In Memory of Gloria de Souza First Ashoka Fellow, Elected 1981 Founder and Director, Parisar Asha Environmental Education Centre India

North American Council Marjorie C. Benton

Alice Tepper Marlin

Trustee, Presidentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Commission on White House Fellowships Former Chair, Save the Children Former United States Representative to UNICEF

Founder & President, Social Accountability International Founder, Council on Economic Priorities

Richard Danzig

Theodore R. Marmor

Former Secretary of the Navy

Professor of Public Policy and Management and Professor of Political Science, Yale School of Management

Lou Harris

Mark Talisman

Founder, Lou Harris and Associates

President, Project Judaica Foundation

Peter Kellner

Richard Ullman (On Leave)

Founder and Managing Partner, Richmond Global Coâ&#x20AC;&#x2018;Founder, Endeavor Founder, Environmental Management and Law Association (Hungary) Founder, Ural Petroleum Corporation

David K.E. Bruce Professor of International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University

Eugene Ludwig Chair & Chief Executive Officer of Promontory Financial Group Former U.S. Comptroller of the Currency

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Offices Worldwide ‡ signifies a continental hub (or headquarters) ‡ Ashoka Global & North America

Ashoka Chile

‡ Ashoka India & Bangladesh

1700 North Moore Street, Suite 2000 Arlington, VA 22209 1939 UNITED STATES T: 1 703 527 8300 F: 1 703 527 8383 http://www.ashoka.org

Lo Contador 0374 Providencia Santiago 8320000 CHILE T: +56 2 220 00232 http://chile.ashoka.org

Ashoka Innovators for the Public 54, 1st Cross, Domlur Layout, Bangalore 560071, INDIA T: 91 80 41480496 sprakash@ashoka.org

‡ Ashoka Africa & East Africa

Ashoka Colombia, Andean

Ashoka Indonesia

Calle 71, No. 5-23, oficina 501c Bogotá, COLOMBIA ashokacol@ashokacolombia.com

Jl. Durma II No.17 Turangga Bandung 40264 INDONESIA T/F: 62 22 7306914 ashokaindonesia@ashoka.org

Concert House | First Floor Wood Gardens, off Wood Ave. PO BOX 101590–00101 Kilimani Area, Nairobi, KENYA T: +254 (0) 725 879 521 eastafrica@ashoka.org http://eastafrica.ashoka.org

Ashoka Argentina, Southern Cone Juncal 840, 10°C C1062ABF, Ciudad de Buenos Aires ARGENTINA T: 54 11 4393 8646 info@ashoka.org.ar http://www.ashoka.org.ar

Ashoka Austria, Central Europe Herrengasse 1-3 A-1010 Wien/Vienna AUSTRIA T: +43 1 53706634 mringler@ashoka.org

Ashoka Canada 366 Adelaide Street West Suite 606 Toronto, Ontario M5V 1R9 CANADA T: 1 416 646 2333 F: 1 416 646 1875 canadainfo@ashoka.org http://canada.ashoka.org

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‡ Ashoka Europe and United Kingdom 15 Old Ford Road Bethnal Green London E2 9PJ UNITED KINGDOM T: +44 (0) 20 8980 9416 http://infouk@ashoka.org

Ashoka France, Belgium & Switzerland (French-Speaking)

Ashoka Ireland 18 Eustace Street Temple Bar, Dublin 2 IRELAND T: 353 1 881 4037 pohara@ashoka.org

Ashoka Israel

Social Factory 3 Bd Saint Martin 75003 Paris, FRANCE T: 33 (1) 80 05 96 55 amourot@ashoka.org http://www.ashoka.asso.fr

98 Ussishkin St. Tel Aviv 62031 ISRAEL T: +972 524 508 408 ntsuk@ashoka.org http://israel.ashoka.org

Ashoka Germany & Switzerland (German-Speaking)

3-18-19 Toranomon, Suite 1602 Minato-ku, Tokyo JAPAN 105-0001 T/F: 81-3-3434-0557 ashokajapan@ashoka.org

Erkelenzdamm 59-61 Berlin D-10999 GERMANY T: 089 2175 49751 F: 03212 1402 672 info_de@ashoka.org http://germany.ashoka.org

Ashoka Japan

Ashoka Korea Suite 1301, Gwanghwamun Officia, Saemunan-ro 92, Jongro-gu Seoul, 110 999 SOUTH KOREA T: +82 2 737-6977 korea@ashoka.org http://korea.ashoka.org

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‡ Ashoka Latin America, Brazil & Paraguay Rua Cubatão, 436, conj. 41 Paraíso 04013-001 São Paulo SP BRAZIL T: 55 11 3085 9190 diretoria@ashoka.org.br http://www.ashoka.org.br

Ashoka Sahel (Francopone-West Africa) Villa n° 3074 Amitié I s/c ARED BP 15090 Dakar Fann, SENEGAL T: (221) 33 825 43 43 F: (221) 33 825 33 43 http://sahel.ashoka.org

Ashoka Mexico, Central America Ashoka: Emprendedores Sociales Calle Tula Núm. 13 Col. Condesa Delegación Cuauhtémoc C.P. 06000, México, D.F, MEXICO T: 52-55-5256-2820, 52-55-5256-2821 F: 52 55 2624 3210 ashokamexico@ashoka.org http://mexico.ashoka.org

‡ Ashoka Middle East/ North Africa & Egypt

Ashoka Philippines

Ashoka Thailand

c/o Ateneo School of Government 4/F Ateneo Professional Schools Building 20 Rockwell Drive, Rockwell Center Makati City 1200, PHILIPPINES T: 632 899 4587 tlavina@ashoka.org

101/8 Phahonyothin 32 Road Senanikom, Chatuchak Bangkok 10900, THAILAND T: 66 2712 8610 thailand@ashoka.org http://www.thailand.ashoka.org

Ashoka Poland

Inonu Cad. Tarik Zafer Tunaya Sk. Turkdogan İs Merkezi No: 8 kat 2/2 34427 Gumussuyu Istanbul, Turkey T: 0090 (0)5300653123 F: 90 212 245 95 45 mscheffelmeier@ashoka.org http://www.ashoka.org/tr

Chmielna 20/100 00 020 Warsaw, POLAND T: +48 604 200 961 info_pl@ashoka.org http://www.ashoka.pl

Ashoka Scandinavia Olofsgatan 7B 111 36 Stockholm, SWEDEN scandinavia@ashoka.org http://scandinavia.ashoka.org/

Ashoka South Africa, Southern Africa Office 4 – b2 House 8, Tyrwhitt Avenue, Rosebank 2196 Johannesburg, SOUTH AFRICA T: +27 011 447 1758 fbassi@ashoka.org

Ashoka Spain, Iberian Peninsula

93 A, Abdel Aziz Al Saud, Manial 7th floor, Apt.# 1 Cairo, EGYPT Postal code: 11451 T: (+2) 02 532 8586, (+2) 02 236 55336 F: (+2) 02 236 54404 ibibars@ashoka.org http://www.ashoka arab.org

c/o Joaquín Costa 15 Portal 3, Planta 3ª, 1 bis 28002 Madrid, SPAIN T: 34 91 448 9255 F: 34-91-448-9962 coordinator@ashoka.org http://www.ashoka.es

Ashoka Nigeria (Anglophone-West Africa)

No 10 1/1, 08th Lane Colombo 03, SRI LANKA T: 947 736 494 96 ashokasl@sltnet.lk http://srilanka.ashoka.org

721 Road C close Festac Town Lagos, NIGERIA T: 234 1 2950872 jnzerem@ashoka.org

Ashoka Turkey

Ashoka USA 1700 North Moore Street, Suite 2000 Arlington, VA 22209 1939 UNITED STATES T: 1 703 527 8300 F: 1 703 527 8383 USProgram@ashoka.org http://usa.ashoka.org

Ashoka Venezuela Av Francisco de Miranda Edificio Mene Grande Piso 5, Oficina 54 Chacao Caracas-VENEZUELA T: 58 (212) 326 6461 http://venezuela.ashoka.org

Ashoka Sri Lanka

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Ensuring the Future: The Endowments

provide an enduring base of support for innovation across the globe. Their growth also helps ensure Ashoka’s long‑term ability to serve a field that will be critically needed as long as society must adapt and change. Ashoka’s endowments have had positive investment results anually for over twenty years. Managed with a five‑year perspective by three endowment trustees, the trustees invest with a long‑team perspective and are committed to maintaining the real value of the funds before agreeing to disbursements. Given by both institutions and individuals, Ashoka endowments often create a permanent statement about or memorial to someone the donor especially loves or respects. shoka’s endowments

The Amaterasu Endowment For the support of women Fellows working outside the Americas in the areas of women’s reproductive rights, women’s empowerment, or sustainable community. Endowed by Katherine Victoria Randolph. Established in December 1999.

The Henry Beal Endowment In memory of Henry Beal, a founding friend of Ashoka and, before his death, one of its Endowment Trustees. He was one of America’s most inspired and effective environmental managers and leaders. The endowment is focused on environment issues and AIDS. Established in 1992.

The E. Noel Bergere Endowment In memory of Noel Bergere who, though crippled by polio at three, became Master of the High Court. He was also a leader of the disabled and a patron of education in Australia. Focused on supporting a Fellow who is handicapped and/or whose work relates either to education or the law. Established in 1984.

The Joan Bergere Endowment Joan Bergere came to America as a young musician and later helped other young musicians get their first career opening at major New York City public concerts. She was a loving parent and also spiritually a citizen of the world with broad interests. Established in 1982.

The Benjamin Bloom Endowment Ben Bloom was a successful lawyer and businessman who, as the son of immigrant parents, believed strongly in creating opportunities for others to succeed as he had succeeded. This endowment has been established to honor his principles to provide opportunities for those who are willing to work hard but need to be given a chance in life. Established in 1996. Unrestricted.

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The Columbia Ashoka Fellowships I and II The Columbia Foundation created two endowments to enable Ashoka to elect more women as Fellows. Established in 1986.

The C.M. Cresta Fund Established in 1986. Unrestricted

The Padma Rag Datta Endowment Dr. Padma Rag Datta dedicated his lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work to using science to improve human welfare and preserve the environment. His father, Parasuram Datta, founded a wildlife sanctuary in Assam and was a strong believer in social justice. The family wishes that their legacy be continued through this endowment so that Ashoka Fellows may find their own path to the simple and profound acts that make a difference. Established in 1996.

The Sarah Dunbar Endowment Sarah Dunbar had an enduring concern for downtrodden people whose environment had been destroyed or reduced by modern times, especially by war and industry. Contributing to maintaining a peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2018;friendly environment was another of her passions. Established in 2000.

Endowment Fund B Established in 1999. Unrestricted.

The Michael Fein Honorary Endowment This endowment is in memory of Michael Fein and his tremendous ability to touch so many lives. He was very passionate about the social enterprises that Ashoka fulfilled. Established in 2001.

The Maurice Fitzgerald Ashoka Fellowship Maurice Fitzgerald taught in the Philippines after the Spanish American War. He loved his teaching and the people of the Philippines. For a teaching and education fellowship. Established in 1986.

The John and Eleanor Forrest Ashoka Fellowship Established in 1986. Unrestricted.

The Fort Hill Endowment Fund Established in 1993. Unrestricted.

The Fox Peace Endowment The Fox Peace Endowment is inspired by the Peace Testimony articulated by George Fox in 1651 and by the commitment of Tom Fox who was killed in Iraq in 2006 while serving as a witness for peace. Its purpose is to identify and launch social entrepreneurs and their projects dedicated to the development of structure, conditions, and communities that nurture peace.

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The Benjamin Franklin Ashoka Fellowship Focused on education and matters related to science. Established in 1984.

The Buckminster Fuller Ashoka Fellowship For Fellows working to alleviate hunger in South Asia. Established in 1983.

The General Endowment Fund for Ashoka The General Endowment for Ashoka was established in 1998 from numerous individual contributions earmarked for endowment purposes. Unrestricted.

The Sanjoy Ghose Endowment This endowment is a tribute to the work and sacrifice that Ashoka Fellow Sanjoy Ghose made in building a culture of volunteerism and a sense of citizen responsibility among the youth in India’s northeastern state of Assam. It is a legacy of the work he began to reorient the area’s youth away from violence and anarchy towards constructive and active social involvement in the face of ethnic strife, insurgent movements, and state repression. Sanjoy was abducted on July 4, 1997. The United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) claimed responsibility for this event. Unrestricted. Established in 1998.

The James P. Grant Ashoka Endowment Named for the late Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and created by his friends, colleagues, and family to “continue his life’s work and world vision.” The endowment’s purposes include supporting innovative leadership that contributes to social development among children and the disadvantaged, developing new methods and low‑cost technologies to further social development, and encouraging dialogue leading to policies that improve the lives of children and all humankind. Established in 1998.

The Albert O. Hirschman Fellowship Given to honor Professor Hirschman’s long leadership in the field of practical, grassroots development. Established in 1986. Unrestricted.

The Jimmy Hopkins Fellowship Jimmy Hopkins was a Judge of the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division. He was known as a very kind man who was a master of the law. Many of his decisions and interpretations are the basis of important legal precedent. For a Fellow in the legal or judicial arena. Established in 1997.

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The Harris and Eliza Kempner Fund Ashoka Fellowship For support of Fellows working in Mexico. Established in 1989.

The Abdul Waheed Khan Memorial Endowment Abdul Waheed Khan, who was elected an Ashoka Fellow in Pakistan in 2003, was assassinated in 2013 following death threats for his work. This Endowment celebrates his life and work. Abdul is remembered by his colleagues for his gentle, empathetic, persistent and values driven approach to finding peaceful solutions to problems. He wanted all children to learn and be prepared to succeed in the modern world.

Because of his country’s inadequate investment in education, poor communities often create their own schools, typically madrassas. Very much responding to what parents and local communities want, Abdul brought new approaches to learning and modern subjects including mathematics, science, computers, and English. Abdul leaves a legacy of great courage and determination; a spirit that was committed to change in spite of risk; and work that will have a lasting impact through the many thousands of children who will be able to live far richer, more open lives because of Abdul. Established in 2013.

The Martin Kiztner Endowment Marty Klitzner was an anomaly. He spent his life in the financial industry, most of it as president of Sunrise Capital Partners, a successful hedge fund. Yet he and his family lived only comfortably, not opulently. The family’s extra money was for others—in the local community and world-wide. Marty was one of the most loved and respected men in the American financial community. He was known for his integrity, ready smile and good humor.

In the mid nineties when Marty learned about Ashoka he said “This is my kind of an organization.” Until his death in 2012 he was a fervent fan and contributor. He was delighted to have dinner with Bill Drayton and discuss their shared ideal of helping others in the most effective way. The greed and excesses of the financial industry are a shame on it and our society. Hopefully the Ashoka Fellows supported in Marty’s name will help start the reversal of this culture. Established in 2012.

The W. Arthur Lewis Ashoka Fellowship Given to honor Professor Lewis’s remarkably broad contributions to our understanding of development and of key areas of the world. Established in 1986. Unrestricted.

The Mack Lipkin Sr. Memorial Endowment In memory of Dr. Mack Lipkin, a much loved friend and doctor who was also a leader of the medical profession and a founding friend to Ashoka. Dedicated to innovations in the effectiveness and humane quality of health care. Established in 1991.

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The Jan Schmidt Marmor Endowment Jan Marmor was a wise counselor to her family, friends, and patients. She was a fine poet and artist. She was a close friend to Ashoka from its launch. With commitment and love she built a family that believed that “no good idea should go unexpressed—or unheard.” Established 2003.

The Francisco “Chico” Mendes Endowment In memory of Chico Mendes, a friend and early Ashoka Fellow. Chico created an approach to grassroots organizing in the Amazon basin that Gandhi would have recognized but that was adapted to his own, very different, environment. Chico, like Gandhi, was killed pursuing peaceful change. The preferred uses of the funds are grassroots work and environmental issues, though the endowment carries no restrictions. Established in 1988.

The Helen Meresman Fellowship In memory of Helen Meresman, the personification of breaking boundaries with determination, grace, and charm. The Helen Meresman Fellowship was established by Roger Barnett in 1997. Unrestricted.

The Jawaharlal Nehru Endowment Jawaharlal Nehru was far more than a great national leader: He helped build a global community; he was a democrat; he was a historian; and he used his reflective power to hold himself to a high ethical standard. Unrestricted. Established in 2003.

The Jacob H. Oxman Memorial Fund In memory of Dr. Jacob H. Oxman, a devoted husband and father, and a kind, caring, generous, and principled man. This endowment is used to support an Ashoka Fellow. Any additional funds can be used either to support another Fellow or to cover operating costs. Established in 1986. Unrestricted.

Diane Pierce Phillips Ashoka Fellowship Endowment Diane Pierce Phillips led an exemplary life of spiritual integrity and servant leadership as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer, wife and mother, registered nurse, hospice volunteer, minister of the United Church of Christ (Congregational), and spiritual director. Established in 2003. Unrestricted.

The Eiler Ravnholt Ashoka Endowment In memory of Eiler Ravnholt, a friend and role model to the founder of Ashoka, a man of values and hard work. He was a dedicated public servant and active citizen, generous with his time, voice and heart. He was a lover of history and defender of our collective responsibility to assist those in need—his own life shaped by the Great Depression, World War II and the GI bill. Eiler was a fervent and loyal supporter to the vision of Ashoka throughout its existence: He will be missed by the entire Ashoka community. Established in 2012 and devoted to social justice. 120

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The Daniel Saks Ashoka Fellowship In memory of Dan Saks who, had he lived longer, would have changed U.S. employment policies even more profoundly than he already had. Dan was also one of Ashoka’s earliest creators, beginning in 1963. Focused on creating work opportunities for the poor or otherwise disadvantaged. Established in 1986.

The Morton Sand Memorial Endowment Mort Sand, long a highly successful business entrepreneur, turned his energy and creativity to solving society’s ills over his last decades. He helped build Ashoka’s Entrepreneur‑to‑Entrepreneur program, opened business opportunities for Brazil’s street girls through three Fellows there, and pushed for and was key to the launch of the Ashoka U.S.A./Canada program. The Mort Sand Endowment will be used in the U.S.A./Canada. Although it is unrestricted, the Endowment will give priority to enabling disadvantaged young people through opportunities in business. Established in 2002.

The Father Eugene Watrin Endowment In memory of Father Watrin, a remarkable educational founder and builder for over 50 years in Nepal and Ashoka’s volunteer Representative there for our first 15 years. His special commitment to the Ashoka vision and to all in its community, which he did so much to build, exemplifies why he had such a powerful impact on all around him. His greatest legacy is the model of how to live life well through service that is both highly important and performed with the modesty of true caring, love, and faith. For the support of Fellows working in Nepal. Established in 2004.

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Opportunities

• Research projects—volunteers help with in‑depth research projects to create information packages for Fellows in various thematic areas.

there is a wealth of experience and knowledge among the Ashoka Fellows. With a fellowship of more than 3,000 Ashoka Fellows around the world, Ashoka seeks to support and multiply the impacts of this community of most of the world’s top social entrepreneurs in several ways. Ashoka provides professional services to support the Ashoka Fellows, promotes collaborations and mutual help within the global fellowship, and strives to build bridges between the Fellows and other key sectors of the world. Fellows, staff, and volunteers/friends work together to make all this possible. s the profiles in this book illustrate ,

• Email bulletins, websites, and publications—volunteers assist with compiling, organizing, and formatting Ashoka's monthly bulletin of opportunities and news, which serves Fellows worldwide. Volunteers also are key to Ashoka’s over 30 websites and its publications. • Networking—volunteers help us by spreading key innovations, building understanding of social entrepreneurship and programs for the field, and through providing introductions within professional networks and organizations.

Ashoka has always relied on the commitment of smart, able, caring volunteers. The Nominators, independent referees and panelists who scout and elect Ashoka Fellows, serve as volunteers. On‑site supporters help out with myriad tasks for Fellows and in the Arlington Ashoka office and in offices around the world. Ashoka has also developed a virtual volunteer program, which allows interested supporters to offer support with research and networking for Fellows from all over the world.

“Working with Ashoka’s Fellowship Support Services has given me the opportunity to help Ashoka Fellows in a direct and personal way. Whether researching a request for information or helping Ashoka Fellows network, the goal is always the same—forging strong links throughout the Ashoka community—of which I am happy to be a small part.” Peggy Carr, Volunteer in the Ashoka Arlington office since 1987 Ashoka welcomes and very much needs volunteers in a variety of capacities, depending on their location, interests and skills, and time constraints. A sampling of the broad areas where both virtual and on‑site volunteers contribute include: • Hosting Ashoka Fellows—hosts provide international Ashoka Fellows with accommodations for a few nights during their travels away from home, be it to the U.S., Brazil, or India. • Translation—volunteers help Fellows collaborate, translate Ashoka documents and newsletters for Ashoka Fellows and others in the community who do not speak English, and help, on occasion, with interpretation.

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• Consulting to Fellow—this is a one‑on‑one relationship between a volunteer and an Ashoka Fellow, via email or in person, in which specific strategic and technical issues important to the Fellow's work are discussed and ideas and broad supports provided. • Chapters—volunteers are central to building and leading chapters, e.g., in Washington, D.C., Boston, San Francisco, Johannesburg, and Bangalore. The chapters promote social entrepreneurship, import innovations, support Ashoka Fellows, and build smart bridges between their community and the global fellowship. Please consider playing an important role in person and/or as a virtual volunteer for Ashoka in any of a myriad of possible ways! We also invite you to send us your ideas on other ways in which you could contribute. For more information about joining the Ashoka volunteer network, please visit our website at www.ashoka. org/volunteer or contact us in one of the following ways:

Fax:

Mail:

(703) 527‑8383 Ashoka: Innovators for the Public Attention: Volunteer Coordinator 1700 North Moore Street, Suite 2000 Arlington, VA 22209 USA

Email: volunteers@ashoka.org

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UNICEF

WWW.GOOGLE.COM

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ACTION FOR CHILDREN

here is nothing more powerful than the profession of social entrepreneurship in finding creative solutions to society’s ills. Ashoka defines social entrepreneurship. SUSAN MCCAW

FORMER USA AMBASSADOR TO AUSTRIA

CRAIG MCCAW

CELLULAR AND SATELLITE PIONEER

CO-FOUNDER AND FOUNDING PARTNER OF THE OMIDYAR NETWORK FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, EBAY

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1700 North Moore Street | Suite 2000 | Arlington,VA 22209 USA Tel: (703) 527-8300 | Fax (703) 527-8383 | www.ashoka.org

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