Imagine an Ashoka Group at ned.com and 60 (or more) Ashoka Fellows each with a thread dedicated to their own project. (I've been thinking about that since the day ned.com launched)

Definitely. I recall taking a swipe at the Omidyar Network when they sent around that questionnaire on improvements last year.

Instead of simply throwing grant money at Ashoka, my 2 cents was that they should have tried harder. Like introducing some robust some technology infrastructure, run a program training all the staffers and Fellows in the potential of online collaboration, and chucked a media party publicising the unique collaboration between some silicon valley techy do-gooders and the founders of social entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship 2.0 etc etc.

I'm paraphrasing (poorly I'm sure) Tom Munnecke here, but he has a vision where there is an Ashoka Fellows-like program more like Stanford Fellows. It gives the people a box of business cards and the reputation of being a fellow, with no cash attached. Then rather than 3,000 you find the change agents in the smallest of villages and hamlets around the globe and recognize 3 million of them.

I dig your tech infrastructure/collaboration training idea too. Let's do it here. I bet between the 60 you know and some that Christina know...we could get quite an interesting mix of people doing some incredible things.

here's our collaboration interview with bill - it is a year old, and it had a very short word format that made sense when pictures were designed into it - many thans to ill for open sourcing it ... other open source collaboration guides at http://valuetrue.com/home/galler y.cfm

The first ever travel guide interview was gifted to the open source world by Bill Drayton, founder of social entrepreneur movements and co-host of such webs as http://www.ashoka.org, http://www.changemakers.net, http://youthventure.org , and partner of Jeff Skoll at their world championships which we report out of http://oxbridge.tv

Spirit Preview:

Ashoka updates the familiar adage that teaching a man to fish is better than giving him a fish. “We say: ‘Aim higher. Transform the entire fishing industry – make it fairer and better for everyone!’ The key is to find individuals in every corner of the world with the insight and the entrepreneurial drive to apply those skills that were once the exclusive domain of business to the design of solutions to society’s problems. People ask: ‘What’s the ultimate vision?’ Simply this: a world in which everyone is a changemaker.”

What was your turning point? One summer during college I drove to India to walk with Vinoba Bhave, one of Gandhi’s closest disciples. Armed with the principles of nonviolence, Bhave asked thousands of villagers to transfer land titles to a cooperative to support the landless and untouchables. Watching him, I saw the very heart of Gandhi’s principles: effective action based on ethics informed by empathy not rules. I realized that great leaders create great change by paying utterly close attention to detail, because it is the details that add up to success and impact. Those lessons about life, change and leadership still resonate.

What is your Creation? My creation Ashoka was founded in 1980. Our organization is a collaboration with 2,000 Ashoka Fellows working in 70 countries, all-volunteer board members and advisors, 300 employees in 35 offices worldwide, 500 nominators searching for social innovators able to transform their fields, and countless volunteers who sustain every aspect of Ashoka’s work. From the outset, Ashoka’s signature product – social entrepreneurship – has represented the key to generating innovation and competition in the citizen sector, matching and often exceeding the historical breakthroughs of business in production and distribution.

What Tips have you for us? Listen. It’s the fastest, most efficient, and empathetic track to learning, knowledge, and know-how, strong relationships, and success worth having.

Engage Youth. If young people extensively practice being powerful, including the underlying skills of applied empathy, teamwork, and leadership, they will become changemakers as adults.

Imagine. There are connections, associations, partnerships, and common ground that you probably have not begun to imagine, much less explore. They are all crucial to success.

Generate Network Effect. Building a community of changemakers around principles and good practices ensures far greater impact in solving the problems we all face.

Play. Believe Plato’s words: you learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. Implement that principle to inspire initiative, risk-taking and high spirits.

What Collaboration wishes do you have? Ashoka needs 120 new staff members for responsible positions all over the world if the organization is to meet demand. We need nominators in every country to be the organization’s eyes and ears, identifying potential staff and Fellow candidates.

We want opportunities with major media outlets to put our social change ‘products’ on display. For example, film producers, distributors, or exhibitors could develop five-minute film shorts on social entrepreneurs’ lives and work to screen at least once before every showing of the main feature.

The entire social sector needs financial institutions and financial products that can serve its particular needs for credit and borrowing that are entirely different from those in the business sector.

The print and broadcast media reporters could scoop the greatest story of their generation if they were to assign writers and photographers to cover Ashoka and the entire citizen sector on regularly assigned ‘social change’ beats, uncovering the news and developments that are occurring daily. This is the storytelling that will change the world.

Nine or ten cities around the world to adopt David Bornstein’s book ‘How to Change the World’ as the citywide reading book for all citizens young and old alike, facilitated by library and school discussion groups, film and media events, social-business forums, young entrepreneurship clubs, and more.

Your Inspirations? My parents and their values. Gandhi, his life, ideas, and methods. Adventure, wilderness, excellence, hopefulness, fairness, gentleness, music, humor, commitment, innovation, attention, curiosity, friendship, history, love, the Ashoka Family.

Your Legacy? Universal understanding of Ashoka’s vision of ‘Everyone a changemaker’, and of the irresistible power of innovative ideas in the hands of social entrepreneurs to solve complex, entrenched problems.

My Links http://www.ashoka.org http://www.changemakers.net http://www.youthventure.org http://www.getamericaworking.org http://www.communitygreens.org http://www.dvd.ashoka.org (click any video’s picture to see free sample) http://video.google.com/videosea rch?q=%22bill+drayton%22 http://www.usnews.com/usnews/new s/articles/051031/31drayton.htm http://www.ashoka.org/node/3959 http://www.howtochangetheworld.o rg

I think that using Ned as a collaborative forum -- either in a private group or open to the public -- for ashoka fellows is a great idea. Greg, do I remember you saying at one time that you've got connections to Drayton or some folk over at ashoka? It sounds like a smart idea to initiate this discussion and consider some kind of a partnership/linkage. Maybe Christina, as our local fellow, could chime in about the needs of fellows and how receptive they'd be about collaboration via a site like ned.com.

I support Ashoka Fellow, Emmanuel Nehemiah, in all of his projects in Nigeria. I don't think it's valuable to critique Ashoka right now. They are expanding with new fellows every month or so and I suspect Ashoka subscribe to the view that the more social entrepreneurs there are the better, although of course not all can be Ashoka fellows.

You are probably right that the Fellows don't cross-fertilise enough (and to a greater or lesser extent, clearly), but most are nose to the grindstone focusing on their idea.

If you were interested in featuring Emmanuel Nehemiah's work on this site, amongst other Ashoka fellows, then just say the word, let me know what you want said and where you want it said!

I agree that it's not really useful to criticize Ashoka - it is what it is, it's evolving too, and like any community it is not perfect. So I think the question really is about how can we attract, encourage and keep Ashoka fellows engaged here (who we know are actively engaged in the cutting edge kind of social exchange stuff we all dig).

We've got to answer the basic question - WIIFM: What's in it for me? Yes, even an Ashoka fellow will ask that because their every moment is devoted to pushing their own visions forward. Many do want to engage more with other fellows; many want to but do not have time; many are working in remote areas and simply cannot. And surprisingly, many Ashoka Fellows are actually not very internet literate, and may not immediately understand why or how they should engage a significant amount of their time here - or anywhere - online.

My guess here is that the best way to attract and engage Ashoka Fellows and/or other more high profile participants here will depend on how we package the invitation to speak to what every professional, mission driven social entrepreneur might want/need.

• we have a great set of collaborative tools to offer, with different privacy levels to facilitate intranet-like collaboration between social entrepreneurs and/or with their own stakeholders.
• right now we are a dynamic network; a trust-based community of active changemakers, many who have met each other face to face - from all over the world.
• we have a lot of collective experience in navigating the world online, and (like Ashoka) would like to help social entrepreneurs find and/or develop the right financial and collaborative resources they need to be able to move their visions forward.
• we have an online profile building system that enables them to easily change their own profile and preferences (which the Ashoka interface does not allow) and document/link to anything anything about their work that's already online.
• we have regular offline events (we will continue those wont we??!)
• member benefits (what are those?) at any offline ned location in the world.

What else do we offer to an individual social entrepreneur who sits on the fence of webbed engagement?

No criticisms of Ashoka ?

Lots of changes happening at Ashoka right now, actually. I don't feel it's the appropriate time to criticize on things I actually see some improvements on.

But I'm editing to add that I really think inviting Ashoka fellows to ned shouldn't be about what Ashoka is not, but about what ned is

Christina, I understand what you're saying but Greg started this thread asking for constructive criticism so that's what this thread was supposed to be about.

I accept that you are offering suggestions for a new initiative on <Ned> without being led into any explicit criticisms of Ashoka but I get very nervous when I detect the steely glint of devotees blocking criticisms from 'outsiders'.

Both yourself and Ben have said that it's not appropriate or valuable to criticise Ashoka right now and quite frankly that sounds spooky to me. Looks like wagons circling.

Hmm. I can indeed see where you might get that impression John. If it makes you feel any better, I'm actually not at all a devotee and could write books on all the ups and downs & frustrations I've had with Ashoka over the years. But the truth is that Ashoka really is changing a lot right now in some of the directions I've always thought they needed to.

• the changemakers site is pretty active now
• the E. Africa office has made some major organizational changes
• a couple of fellows mail-lists have started within the past month
• alot more fellows have joined the network in Africa over the past couple years
• i've started to hear about a lot more investor-sponsored collaboration happening through Ashoka of late. Nike is doing some great facilitation of collaboration between Ashoka youth sports programs, for example.

I was one of the very first fellows in E. Africa, when the network didn't exist here at all. Back then there was a lot that I thought Ashoka should be doing that I didn't see evidence of. (I think I may have got a reputation in the Ashoka office as a troublemaker, actually.) I wanted more, and so did others. Today I actually do see evidence of the kind of changes toward increased collaboration between fellows that I'd always wanted to see. So it feels right now like somebody has been listening to the main criticisms that many of us have had, and that Greg articulated in the intro to this post.

btw greg and others - sorry to run off topic with what ned has to offer to ashoka fellows. I think I posted here right after posting in the ned elevator pitch thread, and got carried away :P

Thanks for that Christina - at least you've elevated me ! ;)

Christina, I am heartened to hear that you think that the organisation is on the up, and increasing support to its members.

Obviously you would have a closer perspective on things - my comments are more relating to a series of inter-connected observations talking to Fellows like yourself all around the world.

Constructive criticism is necessary to draw out these viewpoints, and help me meld my own observations with those of people whose opinion I value. I'd stress again that I have an on-going love affair with Ashoka, which is why I am interested in helping it.

Very interesting point re: "packaging the pitch" of what <ned> could offer to a time-poor Fellow. A couple of years back, I tried a variety of different approaches to seducing people onto o-net. Some worked, some didn't.

People needed to see how this slightly messy and not-too-user-friendly site was worth the significant investment of their time. Unless you had a solid day or two to play with it, and came across some interesting people and topics early on in your play, it generally didn't stick.

One of the things that I believe would be most helpful for different Fellows is the ability to have a team of researchers and creative thinkers at their disposal. As you said, many are not literate, and whilst they might be able to get some rudimentary googling done, they often don't get much past their emailing before "turning off the blasted computer and re-engaging with the real world."

Post a concern/question/thought/issue and BANG, you have a team of smart people, who admire what you are doing, ready to put in some hours to help you get some different perspectives on the issue from around the world.

That's powerful medicine, especially for the less computer literate.

Another very direct and helpful initiative for Ashoka is being run by Nathan and his team in Delhi on 17th and 18th Sep.

http://www.globalgain.org/index. php?option=com_content&task= view&id=86&Itemid=1215

Apologies for my original slightly ill-considered post, which was simply a gut response about an organisation that I see developing and evolving, where I see such rigidity and "stick in the mud" attitudes from the majority of organisations working in the field we are involved with.

I am certainly no expert on Ashoka, but was glad that Christina was able to put some meat on the bones on what my instinct was.

Its worth recalling that ashoka born 1978 started in India and Asia, then South America; I dont know when it started having numerous fellows in Africa -would calling it a 10 year old in africa be about right?

More puzzling across the world of ashoka is that largely speaking it was only when Jeff Skoll really started helping ashoka that replicability across its "mosaics" started being searched with a lot of energy. Since my entrepreneurial friends' worlds have always been the other way round - having worked out a service franchise in one place how replicable is it? I find this relatively late innovation still to be where ashoka could do with help- whether it wants outside help of sorts we could very well offer is a different -and perhaps political- question

Interesting article on Ashoka in this week's Time Magazine -

...The program supports ambitious advocates not just with funding but also with a network of fellow do-gooders to call on for help as the entrepreneurs transform their initial work into large-scale movements.

Mark Grimes said:

Imagine an Ashoka Group at ned.com and 60 (or more) Ashoka Fellows each with a thread dedicated to their own project. (I've been thinking about that since the day ned.com launched)

Mark, who do you think would ideally start that group?

You, Christina???? ;-)

I'd say you, but if being an Ashoka fellow somehow makes that feel strange to you, I'd love to do it as well.

I'd sponsor and participate, but not sure I'd have the time to moderate it and do the work to get other fellows engaged.

Ummmm, I just went for the shortcut. Here's the group, could rename it something more interesting too like: Ashoka Fellows Hangout.

http://www.ned.com/group/ashokaf ellows/

Also a typo in your brief intro Mark.

Just one ;-) I'll fix it, thnx