Clarisse and Michael Linke co-founded the Bicycling Empowerment Network (BEN) to train and equip women in Namibia to be bicycle mechanics and instructors. This positions the women to be local transport technology experts, a traditional male role, and gives them access to income, affordable transport, and new skills.

When Michael Linke came to Africa in 2004, his main interest as a bicycling advocate was to address transportation challenges for HIV/AIDS health care workers. He planned to dedicate six months to setting up an organization to distribute bicycles to the health worker sector. 

Six years later, Michael and and Clarisse are still living in Namibia and working strategically to expand this transport network to other African nations. Namibia has one of the world’s highest HIV/AIDS rates, estimated at 20 percent of the total population.

A community movement that serves four of Louisville, Kentucky's most distressed inner-city neighborhoods has been extraordinarily successful in linking its members to lasting employment despite the harsh economic downturn. How does The Making Connections Network—known as the Network—do it?

It has found a unique way of applying social media theory to community organizing to help more than 1000 of its members find jobs, including many with the city's biggest employers, Norton Healthcare and United Parcel Service (UPS). More important, Network members are keeping their jobs.

Bea Pellizzari 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.

Bea Pellizzari has dedicated 18 years of her life to transforming the public image of people with disabilities. She founded La Usina in 2002 on the principle that diversity yields collective enrichment.

La Usina integrates people who have physical and mental disabilities into the labor force by using a model based on market principles and professional standards, without resorting to quotas or preferential treatment. Pellizzari recognizes that finding a job is not simply a matter of charity, but is the result of making a strong match between workers’ skills and employers’ needs.

Four years ago, she created a very successful social business called redACTIVOS that promotes and distributes several products and services created by people with disabilities. In addition to generating income for La Usina, this social business has been able to connect a network of very important Argentinean and international companies that buy the products and services made by a network of people with disabilities.

In this short video, Pellizzari briefly describes her journey along the path of social entrepreneurship, and how entrepreneurial activities, joy, and happiness go hand-in-hand.

Lucky Chhetri came up with a plan to help tourists and improve the lives of Nepalese women at the same time, after hearing numerous stories from female trekkers who'd had uncomfortable -- or worse -- experiences with their male guides.