The Feast social innovation conference and Nokia are excited to introduce Change Connections, an online open innovation platform and initiative around the potential of new connections for social good. Change Connections is a place to collectively exchange, connect and collaborate for social good and to foster new thinking on groundbreaking social innovation. A website [...]
Entrepreneurship Ten years ago Ewa Wojkowska arrived in East Timor with her sleeves rolled up as an Australian volunteer for an NGO. Today she works behind a computer in Brooklyn. It might sound sexier, but she’s working just as hard to deliver aid to people who need it. Last month social entrepreneur Ewa and her [...]
Almost two weeks ago, I had the privilege of sitting down with some of the Microsoft Community Affairs team in Redmond, WA. The small group I met with focuses primarily on the company’s Strengthening NGOs Through IT program, which is led by Jane Meseck, a non-profit technology and public policy expert who has been with [...]
I had the chance to jump on a conference call on Friday that brought bloggers together to discuss the Ashoka Tech4Society conference in Hyderabad, India. Due to some technical difficulties, we were unable to connect with two of the 106 social entrepreneurs who had planned to join us in the discussion. However, we learned of [...]
The social entrepreneurship crew generally likes to poo poo traditional development. And why not? It is an easy target given the widely held belief that aid doesn’t work and evidence showing the wholesale ineffectiveness of many development projects. We are increasingly convinced that aid donors – institutional and individual – have dumped incalculable sums down [...]
Road to Hyderabad Lesson 17: A Few Logistical Tips This post is part of an ongoing series from Ashoka Tech about the journey from international social entrepreneurship event planning to completion. You can check out past Road to Hyderabad posts here. Hello again! I hope you’ve had as wonderful holiday season as we did here. [...]
The Christmas shopping season is here and we wanted to help you share in the spirit of the season by thinking twice about where you shop and what you give this holiday season. iGiveTwice is a recently launched online campaign to encourage all of us to give gifts with social and environmental benefits. Led by [...]
It seems that there’s a search on right now in our field for the holy grail of tech tools that are simple, attractive, affordable, easy to operate, and just so filled with awesomeness that their use spreads “social change” like wildfire, with minimal work or engagement required. As a blogger for Ashoka Tech, I read [...]
If you’ve been following the news over on Social Earth and Ashoka Tech, you know that we are running a blogger’s competition to find our official blogger for the Ashoka Tech 4 Society event happening in Hyderabad, India, February 11-13, 2010. We are half-way to our November 30th deadline and that means we want YOU [...]
Richard Branson, Founder and CEO of Virgin Mobile, never ceases to amaze me in his ability to fuse business with pleasure in a way that advances his brand and positively affects the world. His latest endeavor, the Virgin Mobile Freefest is yet another example of his dedication to making a difference. Not only did Branson’s [...]
Timbuk2 Solar Bags at Daraja Academy from Mark Lukach on Vimeo. Imagine a world where instead of functioning as a black hole that eats your keys, your wallet, and everything you own – your handbag not only carried what you needed, it actually created something new for you. What if your handbag was suddenly so [...]
Google loves all things scalable. So it comes as no surprise that the Second Annual Project 10^100 seeks to exponentialize ideas which can change the lives of millions. The basic premise behind Project 10^100 is to find ideas to some of the biggest challenges our world faces and scale those ideas for social good. In their [...]
Clicking for a cause is nothing new. Online change-makers have been using Care2.com as their “free click to donate” source for quite some time. What is new is this: A Squidoo page dedicated to listing all “click for a cause” Web sites. If you aren’t familiar with “click for a cause” initiatives, follow me. “Click [...]
