Ashoka Innovators for the Public: Celebrating Two Decades of Health and Human Rights Innovations for Disabled Persons

On a global scale, even as economies have slowed down, the citizen sector continues its boom as the fastest growing segment of society.

Individuals are increasingly stepping in to solve today's most pressing social problems, filling gaps where governments and other institutions have failed.   Social entrepreneurs, those who aim to enact system-wide change through creative solutions, are at the forefront of this massive change. Before 1980 hardly a single citizen organization existed in Bangladesh. Today, over 20,000 such groups handle most of the country's development work.   And Bangladesh is no exception.   Even in advanced economies like that of the United States the citizen sector grew by almost 60% between 1989 and 1998.

Ashoka Innovators for the Public was founded more than 20 years ago to help the world's most promising social entrepreneurs succeed in their missions. As of today, the organization based in Washington D.C., has empowered more than 1400 "Ashoka Fellows" in 48 countries to set new milestones in the fields of health care, environmental protection, human rights, education, economic development, and civic participation.   Among these are over 80 individuals who aim to improve the lives of disabled person's through innovative solutions to long-existing problems.  

In February 2004, Oxford University Press officially releases How to Change the World, a book by journalist David Bornstein that traces Ashoka's history and describes the lives of some of the most successful social entrepreneurs that Ashoka has supported. How to Change the World delineates how the power of Ashoka's insight and its fellows' ideas has left a scratch on history, an imprint on the world.

Among those highlighted in the book :

•  Erzébet Szekeres has created a network of twenty-one centers across Hungary that provide vocational training, work opportunities, and assisted living to more than 600 multiply disabled people.  

Other Ashoka Fellows :

•  Javed Abidi of India has organized disability groups across thematic, geographic, and language barriers to set up an informed national lobby while simultaneously establishing partnerships with business and the government to create equitable employment for the disabled.  

•  Iraê Cardoso is leading an effort to have states in Brazil recognize   hearing impaired persons as a cultural and linguistic minority with the same rights as other minority groups.  

•  Tatiana Gómez Dúran of Columbia has opened a center where parents learn how to manage the treatment received by their neurologically impaired children.

Ashoka has 1400 more such stories to tell. Stories that are becoming increasingly important as more and more people feel they want to lead a meaningful life and make a difference in the world.

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