[Editor's note: This post was written by Laura Zax, guest blogger and Ashoka colleague, and was originally featured on Ashoka's Change inSight blog.]
A peek inside Ashoka’s process of finding and electing the world’s leading social entrepreneurs
If you know only one thing about Ashoka, chances are you know about Ashoka Fellows.
After all, the work of finding all-star innovators (work known as “venture,” in Ashoka speak) is where it all began. That was in the late 70’s, when Bill Drayton set out across the globe in search of people merging a saint’s sense of social injustices with a businessman’s sense of strategy. He found them simply by asking questions. Lots of questions. First to community members (“Who is making big change in your community?” “Where can we find them”) and ultimately to the changemakers themselves (“What is the problem you’re addressing?” “How are you fixing it?”). After learning of an innovator, Drayton and his search team would write the name down on a three-by-five card. A couple of years and a couple of hundred cards later, Ashoka was ready for its first “selection panel,” and in 1981 the world’s very first Ashoka Fellow was elected.
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