Blogs

Caroline Casey was honored as an Ashoka ChangemakeHER, Changemakers's inaugural celebration of the world's most influentual and inspiring women. Find her fellow honorees' voices here.

Sushmita Ghosh, member of Ashoka's Leadership Team and founder of Changemakers, sat down with Caroline Casey (pictured above), Ashoka Globalizer Fellow and founding CEO of Kanchi and the O2 Ability Awards.

Kanchi is a not-for-profit organization that works to change thinking about disability. Kanchi promotes the ability and value of every person with a disability and challenges traditional stereotypes through innovative initiatives aimed at a wide range of stakeholders. Kanchi works with leaders in business, government, and the media to accelerate change.

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Ghosh: When was your "ah-ha" moment when you realized that your idea could be realized on a larger scale?

Casey: I actually had a few “ah-ha” moments throughout the history of Kanchi. The first time was in 2004 while creating the first Irish Ability Awards—I knew instinctually that this idea could be replicated in any country if we got the model right, like the ISO model.

The second was in 2007, when Telefónica came to Ireland to see the 02 Ability Awards. After hearing about our activities, they had sent very high-level people to witness the final stage of the Ability Awards Program - the gala ceremony. Within minutes of the ceremony ending, they asked me whether they could take the Ability Awards to Spain.

The third moment was January 17, during the first complete cycle of those Ability Awards in Spain, when the president of Telefónica announced his plan to take the Ability Awards to five countries in five years in front of an extremely influential audience, including the Queen of Spain.  It was at that moment that the dream I had back in 2004 began to become a reality. [...]

Dr. Auma Obama was honored as an Ashoka ChangemakeHER, Changemakers's inaugural celebration of the world's most influentual and inspiring women. Find her fellow honorees' voices here.

A selection from Changemakers' interview with Dr. Auma Obama (left), CARE USA's Sports for Social Change Initiative Program Technical Advisor:

CM: The first step in “change-making” is becoming aware – becoming frustrated with the status quo and inspired to see that a different world is possible. How did you develop such awareness?
AO: When I asked why I was tasked with chores my older brother would never do, the response was always the same: “Because you’re a girl.” Because I was a girl? That answer was never good enough for me. I refused to be categorized, to be put into a box. So by the time I was eight-years-old, I began challenging the gender inequalities in my male-dominated household, and by extension the patriarchal Luo culture I was raised in.

How did you grow in confidence to give yourself permission to care and to act?
I developed very early a sense of fairness and what is right and wrong, regardless of gender. It was important to me to be able to defend my position and act on my sense of justice. This was not just in relation to me, but also towards other people as well. I guess that must have laid the foundation for the humanitarian work I am doing now. It was, however, difficult to be heard as a girl and it was only after I was enrolled in an all-girls high school when I was thirteen that I really started to find my voice.

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Sejal Hathi was honored as an Ashoka ChangemakeHER, Changemakers's inaugural celebration of the world's most influentual and inspiring women. Find her fellow honorees' voices here.

Sejal Hathi, age 19, trains and mobilizes girls across the globe to co-create social change through her organization, Girls Helping Girls

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Today, when I talk about Girls Helping Girls (GHG), I always say that part of our mission is to grow the next generation of female leaders: to build a dynamic sisterhood of changemakers that will revolutionize the way social change is achieved.

Yet, when I ponder the skills I used to launch GHG that I could offer to make this possible, I can name only bold idealism, glorious compassion, and a deep eagerness to drive a positive difference. Was I a leader? Perhaps.

Was I capable of cultivating new leaders? Most would say, “probably not.” But I very rapidly learned that inspiring girls’ leadership is less about bequeathing tools and more about nurturing a reciprocal exchange of ideas, strengths, and experiences.

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Christine Eibs Singer was honored as an Ashoka ChangemakeHER, Changemakers's inaugural celebration of the world's most influentual and inspiring women. Find her fellow honorees' voices here.

by Christine Eibs Singer, CEO and co-founder of E+Co. Singer has overseen the organization's growth from a start-up to an international leader in the developing country energy finance space. She is instrumental in maintaining E+Co’s mission to empower local small and growing enterprises that supply clean and affordable energy in developing countries, producing social, environmental, and financial returns.

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“I am an entrepreneur at heart, I knew that one day I would launch a solar PV business.” -Yvonne Faye

Women and children are most affected by the lack of access to basic energy resources in developing countries. They experience a heightened risk of developing respiratory diseases from firewood stoves with “black soot” emissions, suffer burns from kerosene, and have less time for economic or education opportunities as they labor hours a day in the pursuit of firewood and water.  However, with their firsthand knowledge of the negative repercussions of a lack of energy resources, they may be the best answer to effective implementation of energy solutions for “Base of the Pyramid” communities, and the most likely to focus on a solution that is affordable, available, and appropriate. [...]