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Recently, Changemakers reported on innovations in health, including Hilmi Quraishi’s mobile phone games that give teens points for knowing more about HIV/AIDS and prevention. Changemakers sat down with Quraishi to discuss his work founding and leading ZMQ Software Systems, which has created dozens of games and technology solutions for the social sector, including ones that raise awareness about climate change and that address the UN’s Millennium goals, such as sanitation, clean water, and children’s health. 

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“The New York Police Department is doing everything it can to make sure there’s not another 9/11 here and that more innocent New Yorkers are not killed by terrorists,” said New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne. “And we have nothing to apologize for in that regard.”

"Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organized via social media . . . Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And when people are using social media for violence, we need to stop them." – British Prime Minister David Cameron

Blackberry Messenger was used as a highly-effective tool for organizing the recent riots in London and creating mass chaos, along with Facebook and Twitter.

But Twitter was also used to organize a resistance movement (#riotcleanup) that coordinated crowds of citizens from the riot-affected areas. Citizens who were outraged by the violence came together to clean up the damage. The effort was a local action that turned into a movement; with the broom as its symbol, the cleanup campaign spread across the country as quickly as the riots did, thanks to . . . social media.

I realize it is slightly ludicrous to discuss “social media” in an anthropomorphic sense. Social media is a tool used by people, and can be used in any number of ways, from organizing weeks of peaceful protests that led to the collapse of the Mubarak regime to organizing destructive riots that set fire to London for days. Yet as I watched the coverage of the events in London I couldn’t help but picture social media like this:  

[Editor's note: This post was written by Lorena López, Argentine journalist and Ashoka Changemakers collaborator.] 

Listening to communities, respecting traditions, and motivating families to get involved in self-care:  These factors are fundamental to achieving better quality of life and health, according to María Elisa Bernal, director of the Experiences in Social Innovation project of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL). In 2010, CEPAL published a study, From Social Innovation to Public Policy: Successful stories from Latin America and the Caribbean, identifying the factors necessary to guarantee access to health care in Latin America. This interview with Bernal is based on the findings of this study, as well as her years of experience working at the regional level in the field of health.

[Editor's note: This post was written by Keith Hammonds, director of Ashoka's News & Knowledge Program.]

One of the more intriguing exchanges I’ve been in on recently came between Jake Shapiro, founder and CEO of the Public Radio Exchange, and Stephen Friend, president of Sage Bionetworks. Both are recently elected Ashoka Fellows. Shapiro is a media guy: PRX is a web-based platform that allows the distribution, review, and licensing of radio content that’s produced by literally anyone. Friend, a medical doctor and biochemist, was previously senior vice president at Merck & Co., Inc. where he led the company’s basic cancer research effort. Among other projects at Sage, Friend has created an online space where genomic and biomedical researchers can convene, interact, share basic research, and build upon one another’s insights in an environment governed by neither academia nor industry — speeding treatments and cures.

Every March, the world heads to Austin, Texas for South by Southwest (SXSW), the film, music, and interactive superfestival. And while SXSW is still a full seven months away, its smart and fervent followers are already making plenty of noise. So many promising panel proposals have already rolled in, the event organizers have asked their global community to help decide which to feature. That’s where you come in.

In 2012, Changemakers is hoping to host two interactive panels on open growth and creating brand-aligned social change. But we need your help to do it. (More information on the panels after the jump.)

[Editor's note: This post was written by Alison Craiglow Hockenberry, contributing editor at Ashoka Changemakers®, and originally featured on the Huffington Post.]

When health innovation expert David Aylward is asked if the developing world can learn from the U.S. healthcare system, his answer is an emphatic yes -- "They should do the opposite!"

Aylward, senior advisor for Global Health and Technology at Ashoka, is not exactly joking. For all our sophisticated technology, medical talent, and access to medicine, we all know the U.S. health-care system needs a significant upgrade. Fundamentally, the situation is not very different from that in countries on the other end of the economic spectrum.

"For different reasons, the developed world and the developing world are ending up in the same place: with health-care systems that are inefficient and not sustainable," Aylward said.

But as it turns out, this is actually reason to celebrate. It means that countries rich and poor, rural and urban, can learn from each other to bring more health to more people everywhere.

[Editor's note: This post was written by Jayanthi Daniel, Content and UX Specialist, Africa.com.]

The landscape of media has changed so much over the past 20 years that for even the most seasoned journalists, it’s almost unrecognizable.

Twenty years ago, how did we get our news? How did we hear about the important events of the day? How did we even know that the important events of the day were the ones that all of the world needed to know about?

For many journalists —newspapermen and women, television anchors under make-up and heavy lighting — the media world in 1990 was a small one. Anyone interested in the news read newspapers or magazines. Those without time to read during the day caught up with evening news reports on television. It was, amazingly, a golden age in television and print journalism.

Now, with the advent of online news and content, the world has drastically changed. Newspapers these days aren’t fat with advertisements; they’re conducting rounds of layoffs. Instead of a treasured evening news hour, dozens of channels devote their airtime to 24-hours of what’s now called the “news cycle.” Is there even enough news to sustain that amount of time? Some would say no, pointing to the increasingly blurred line between “news” and “entertainment."

Wilting from this summer’s record temperatures? We’ve got 10 great books to get you energized.

We asked social innovators from around the globe, including a few members of the Changemakers team, to tell us about their favorite summer reads. From poetry to memoirs to personal wisdom guides, our summer reading list is packed with insight and knowledge that is guaranteed to get you pumped to make change.

So load up your beach bags and e-readers—there isn’t a more perfect way to escape the August heat than a great book (and possibly air conditioning)!

Summer break is quickly winding down for many across the United States. But for a special team of almost 500 young men (mostly in their teens or 20s), vacation has just started. 

The young men I’m referring to are professional basketball players. And thanks to the NBA lockout, those athletes and their coaches are in for a break that is a little (or a lot) longer than usual.

While the NBA lockout is a bad deal for all parties involved (at least in the short term), there is one positive outcome from this mess at the local level: Many players and coaches, with extra time on their hands, have decided to use their influence and affluence to make a difference in communities at home and around the world.

[Editor's note: This post was written by Alison Craiglow Hockenberry, contributing editor at Ashoka Changemakers®, and originally featured on the Huffington Post.]

From Angry Birds to roller coasters, from the Harry Potter films to viral YouTube explosions of Diet Coke and Mentos, your summer fun is made possible by science, technology, engineering, and math.

But the STEM subjects, as they're known, are in serious need of a public relations overhaul. Somehow they've gotten a bad rep among students for being "boring." And grown-ups who should know better often think of them as "uncreative." Ludicrous.

People who have studied and work in STEM subjects are responsible for much of our modern amusement, communication, health, and progress. They invent and make the stuff we love. They improve our lives. They do cool stuff. They imagine the future and build it.

Carter Emmart, for example, takes the data collected from the most sophisticated telescopes and turns it into wild visuals that make the audiences at the Hayden Planetarium's space shows feel like they are traveling through space and time. "My job is to translate the difficulty of science into understandable stories," says Emmart, who studied physics and art. His movies whoosh viewers on a breathtaking, heart-pounding journey around a scientifically accurate 3D solar system and across the Milky Way, passing uncountable numbers of stars and galaxies to the edge of time. Can you think of a kid who wouldn't want to be part of that when they grow up?

An Interview with Scott Noppe-Brandon

It is often said that American economic competitiveness depends on our capacity to innovate. But how exactly can innovation be fostered in schools?

To answer this question, Scott Noppe-Brandon, executive director of Lincoln Center Institute and co-author of Imagination First: Unlocking the Power of Possibility, is leading a campaign prompting each of the 50 states to conduct Imagination Conversations. The Conversations are series of public panel discussions in which leaders representing a multitude of professional backgrounds discuss the role of imagination in their work and how to foster imagination in schools and communities.

Last week, after two years of Imagination Conversations across the United States, America’s Imagination Summit took place at Lincoln Center in New York. It served as both a celebration and a recapitulation of all that had been learned during two years of ideological exchanges. Featured speakers included Peter Cunningham, assistant secretary for Communications and Outreach at the U.S. Department of Education, Sir Ken Robinson, Deepak Chopra, and Tony Derose, Senior Scientist at Pixar Animation Studios.

Following the summit, Noppe-Brandon sat down with Changemakers to discuss imagination, innovation, and STEM learning.

[Editor's note: This post was written by Keith Hammonds, director of Ashoka's News & Knowledge Program.]
 
At the recent MIT | Knight Civic Media Conference, Ethan Zuckerman – brand-new director of the Center for Civic Media and co-founder of the relentlessly innovative site Global Voices – offered a pretty brilliant state-of-the-field address.  Media, he observed: