Social Entrepreneurs: Doing Sustainable Development - Ashoka

Social Entrepreneurs: Doing
Sustainable Development
The Ashoka Green Paper for the WSSD

A
shoka: Innovators for the Public is an Arlington VA-based international development organization with a mission
to advance social entrepreneurs. Founded in 1980, Ashoka has invested in and supported over 1,200
social entrepreneurs in 43 countries. Ashoka's Environmental Innovations Initiative works to distill the insights
and best practices of the more than 300 social entrepreneurs Ashoka has elected working on environmental
issues and to feed this knowledge back to environmental practitioners globally.
Since January of 2002, 47 Ashoka Fellows from 24 countries have been engaged in an on-line discussion on
issues related to this August's World Summit on Sustainable Development. This discussion has included six
working groups on water, farms, energy, cities, people and the environment and partnerships across sectors.
This paper is intended to introduce those interested in sustainable development to social entrepreneurs and to
share some of the insights of this on-line conversation. See the Appendix for a list of contributors to this paper.
Top: Gambian Fellow
Yusupha Kujabi; Middle:
Medicinal and edible plants
at Fellow Paul Cohen’s
Tlholego ecovillage, South
Africa; Bottom: Fitzroy
Range, Patagonia, Chile
Prologue
We, children of the earth, recognize the perfection of life that is housed in biodiversity,
sustaining the tapestry of life. We are a collective mind creating new paradigms
that open doors to reconciliation with the earth and each other. We are the tools that
crystallize creativity, love, joy and, above all, a great passion to apply common sense
solutions.
Ashoka Fellows, Tlholego Ecovillage, South Africa
A note from the artist
Rhetoric without action is pointless. The cut up words, which make up the outskirts of
the cover, represent the current trend in sustainable development. Moving inwards,
through the circle of stylized people, the image begins to move away from rhetoric
toward a state of action. Thus the circle of people symbolizes both Ashoka as an institution
and the communities with which Ashoka is associated. This movement from
rhetoric to action is also visually depicted by the tree, which forms the focus of the
image.
Jason Theron

Quick and dirty summary
The legacy of the 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development
has been mixed: strong on PR and institutional development, but weak on
results. Thus, moving forward from the WSSD in Jo'burg, the emphasis must
be on implementation and results. Social entrepreneurs, including those
elected as Ashoka Fellows, have already had significant experience transforming
sustainable development from an engaging concept into a reality onthe-ground.
This paper shares several narratives of the work of Ashoka's
social entrepreneurs on sustainable development along with some of their
common characteristics and challenges.
The key characteristics that differentiate Ashoka's best social entrepreneurs
working on sustainable development from the rest are seemingly opposed at
first glance. Much of the success of leading social entrepreneurs stems from
the ability to balance and exploit these forces.
Dispassionate analyzes drive passionate bets. Leading social entrepreneurs
have the ability to evaluate the system dispassionately and the vision to
make a passionate bet on a strategy to change the system.
The community is the compass, but a compass without a map is pretty useless.
Community needs and preferences must fundamentally drive social
entrepreneurial efforts. But these efforts must also be pragmatic and opportunistic
about external realities.
Capacitate citizens to take charge. A key to long-term sustainability is community
control over natural resources.
Adaptive discipline. Leading social entrepreneurs are focused, disciplined,
and unrelenting, yet simultaneously adaptive to changing circumstances and
new information.
Equity needs ecology and ecology needs equity. Ashoka Fellows working on
sustainable development recognize the fundamentally interconnected relationship
between ecology and equity-one cannot flourish without the other.
Integrating these insights more fully into the work of social entrepreneurs will
result in incremental progress. But there are nevertheless tremendous challenges
Ashoka Fellows face that dampen their effectiveness. It is here where
the stakeholders in Jo'burg can best support social entrepreneurs.

page two
Top: Jumping rope at an
after-school program in
South Africa; Middle:
Waste collectors in
Mumbai; Bottom: Fair
Trade products, a niche
market for many Ashoka
Fellows
More investment or fuel will incubate and grow social entrepreneurial innovations.
Policy changes that internalize external costs and benefits will buttress
existing social entrepreneurial efforts and unearth new opportunities
for social entrepreneurs to exploit. Better information and the capacity to
use this data intelligently will allow social entrepreneurs to make smarter
decisions. Similarly, better cooperation and coordination both among social
entrepreneurs and across sectors will improve impact at a low cost. Finally,
increased visibility will encourage new entrants that will, in turn, lead to more
and more effective social entrepreneurial efforts globally.
Rio: its successes and its discontents
Amid much fanfare, the 1992 Conference on Environment and Development
in Rio boosted the environment's profile and elevated the term "sustainable
development" into common parlance. Since then, Rio's immediate legacy
has been strong on PR and institutional development, but weak on results.
Inspect the deliverables from Rio and the reality on the ground. Though the
Convention on Biological Diversity represents a significant step forward in
rhetoric, rates of extinction remain at 100 to 1,000 times the natural background
rate while community rights to these biological resources remain at
issue. Similarly with climate change, despite the tremendous expenditure of
diplomatic effort on the Kyoto Protocol, global emissions of carbon dioxide
increased by more than 9% over the last decade and the Protocol itself has
been left to flounder, handicapped by the non-participation of the world's
most prolific polluter.
The development dimension looks similarly bleak. Even with recent
improvements, approximately 1.3 billion people, one quarter of the world's
population, still live on under $1 a day, and 14% of the world's children still
do not receive a primary education.
The hope is that Jo'burg will focus on implementation and that its legacy will
actually be sustainable development-as opposed to merely image and institutional
development-measured in terms of increased equity and a cleaner
environment.
Now we need results -- so how do we get there?
The fashionable strategies to move forward on sustainable development
emerging before Jo'burg include mechanisms to ensure corporate accountability,
increased overseas development aid, and partnerships among businesses,
governments, and NGOs. Certainly these tacks are promising and
worth pushing forward, but there is an essential and often overlooked set of
actors with unique skills and dispositions that is key to the success of any of
these strategies-actors who will produce results whether working in a relatively
enabling or disabling environment.
Much of the phenomenal growth in economic activity over the past 300 years
can be linked to a personality type, the entrepreneur, innovating, adapting,

and, of course, relentlessly pursuing his or her vision of a better good or service.
Imagine if this power was redirected for the common good? At Ashoka,
we call these individuals social entrepreneurs. People, who like their counterparts
in the business world, use their creativity, pragmatism, dogged commitment,
and vision to tackle the full gamut of the world's social and environmental
challenges.
Since it's founding in 1980, Ashoka has elected over 1200 leading social
entrepreneurs as "Fellows" in 43 countries, 300 of whom work on sustainable
development in its strictest sense-finding development paths that sustain
and restore ecological and human systems. All 1,200+ of our Fellows
work on building a more robust and effective civil society, an integral dimension
of sustainable development, by tackling issues ranging from disability
rights and health care to early childhood education and small business development.
This paper is intended to share with you several narratives about the work of
social entrepreneurs on sustainable development along with some of their
successes, insights, and challenges. The hope is that this paper will give you
a sense of the potential of these individuals to transform sustainable development
from an engaging concept into a reality in communities around the
world.
Social entrepreneurs short circuit the system
You find yourself in Delhi, amid the whiz of three-wheeled taxis and the blackened
remnants of more than one by-gone empire. Ashoka Fellow Ravi
Agarwal approaches. He could pass as an up-and-coming Indian businessman
from a technology center like Bangalore or Palo Alto. Dressed in the
international uniform of the post-industrial professional,
business casual, and holding a sleek new Nokia mobile, you
meet him as he navigates his way to work through the traffic
snarls and particulate hotspots of the bustling metropolis.
Probe a little deeper and the snap impression holds: an
engineering degree and an MBA from one of India's top universities,
a professional history as a corporate executive and
a successful business entrepreneur.
Together you arrive at his start-up, and the dissonance
starts to kick in. Instead of building a better optical switch
or consulting on supply chain management, ToxicsLink is short-circuiting the
system in India that creates toxic pollution and disproportionately burdens
the poor with its health impacts. "Everyone in India contributes to the generation
of toxins like industrial pollution and medical waste," says Ravi.
"Unfortunately, the burdens of living and working around these environmental
hazards fall disproportionately on the poorest and lowest caste communities.
These are the people least likely to have the ears of government officials
or the information to recognize and minimize these dangers. This
Catch-22 gets worse as often these communities are dependent upon
income from scavenging through hazardous garbage to afford the most basic
necessities."
Recognizing the lack of adequate regulation, enforcement mechanisms, rep-
Ravi Agarwal
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Jadwiga Lopata
utable information, co-ordination among environmental NGOs, and organization
of affected communities, ToxicsLink has positioned itself in the center of
this box. ToxicsLink starts with ensuring that data is reliable and irrefutable
with professional monitoring and analysis. From this base, the various constituencies
are engaged. It shares this information with the most at-risk communities,
so that they can organize and develop preferences about how best
to address the problem. It feeds this knowledge into a network, initiated by
ToxicsLink, of over 350 NGOs so the public interest community can select the
most leveraged opportunities for protection and deploy its efforts most efficiently
and effectively. Finally it uses this data as the basis for its advocacy
efforts with the government and businesses.
Still early on, ToxicsLink is beginning to get traction. An integrated community-based
waste management system using the ToxicsLink model has been
replicated across 8 of India's most populous cities. Ravi and ToxicsLink have
also been instrumental in the development of landmark policies including a
1998 law regulating medical waste and a 2000 statute governing all waste
management activities. "The most at-risk communities are beginning to
understand how to protect themselves while making a living," says Ravi. "It
is still taking its first steps, but the system is turning and the playing field is
becoming more fair."
Resurrecting the family farm
Fly half way around the world, to Kracow, Poland. Rent a car
and drive 80 kilometers into the countryside. Around you
are family farms, the kind of farms that hark back to Grant
Wood paintings, not the colossal agribusiness and collective
operations that have spread from the Central Valley of
California to the rice fields of Indonesia thanks to the Green
Revolution.
Livestock mill about, farmhouses face the country road
proudly, stout-looking farmers tend to their crops. It is a
lifestyle that is slowly disappearing throughout the world, as the process of
feeding the world has become more mechanized, pesticide-reliant, and capital-intensive.
Bucking this trend, these family farms in southern Poland are
thriving.
At the center of this backlash is growing demand for organic produce and
dairy goods, a former software engineer and current Ashoka Fellow named
Jadwiga Lopata, and a simple but ingenious new set of farm products. Like
many disaffected urbanites, Jadwiga was drawn to rural Poland by the lure of
a simpler and healthier lifestyle made possible by the small-to-medium scale
family farm. Unfortunately, the viability of the Polish family farm was, as it
still is in most of the world, threatened by roll-ups into larger farms that deliver
economies of scale at some cost to society: pesticides polluting air and
water, monoculture replacing a more diverse variety of crops, and the underlying
unit of the family farm getting squeezed from all sides.
Despite growing demand for organic products, many family farmers cannot
afford the transition costs of "going organic"-the cost of certification itself and
3 years of reduced earnings, the usual waiting period before products can be
marketed as such for premium prices. Furthermore, some farmers cannot

justify the switch based upon the risk that growth projections for organic
products will prove less optimistic. Recognizing these hurdles and the aesthetic
appeal of the family farm, Jadwiga started pushing agro-tourism.
She formed an organization called ECEAT-Poland to accredit and catalogue
organic (and soon-to-be organic) family farms and to market this network of
farms to leverage points in the tourism industry. Today, there are over 130
organic farms in the network collectively hosting over 5,000 agro-tourists per
year. The supplemental income from tourism, roughly 20% of typical farm
revenues, allows farmers to cover some of the transition costs to organic
and, over the longer run, to hedge against fluctuations in the organic food
market. With Ashoka support, this agro-tourism model has gained beachheads
in South America and elsewhere in Europe.
Ironically, the success of ECEAT's work has taken Jadwiga away from the simpler
life she was trying to carve out for herself in the first place. Flying to
London one week to promote agro-tourism to key actors like tour operators,
travel writers, and travel agents and to San Francisco the next to collect a
prestigious award like the Goldman Prize can extract a toll on the psyche.
But Jadwiga, dressed as always in her oddly fashionable Polish peasant
frock, rolls with it, "The airplane food is horrendous, but once I started packaging
my own delicious and nutritious snacks, I was able to gain some perspective
on the sacrifice."
When buffalo get in the way of conservation perfection
Take another set of flights. Across the Atlantic and south to Sao Paulo, a
sprawling megacity in the heart of the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. The Mata
Atlantica is one of the most biodiverse regions in the world-home to wildlife
ranging from the roseate spoonbill (if flamingos and cranes could reproduce
together) to the pygmy tiger like margays, and also to over 65 million
Brazilians. Being some of the most easily accessible lands to early European
settlers and rich in natural resources, the Atlantic Forest has been reduced
to 7% of its former range. Some people, however, are starting to push that
percentage back up in a way that captures the essence of sustainable development.
Clovis Borges and Fabio Rosa, both Ashoka Fellows, both working on sustainable
development, could not be more dissimilar in many ways. Clovis is
tall and lanky. Fabio is short and stout. Clovis is a veterinarian turned director
of one of Brazil's most prominent NGOs working on biodiversity protection,
SPVS. Fabio is an engineer turned development consultant who has spent
most of his professional life bringing electricity to rural communities and
adapting holistic range management techniques pioneered by the likes of
Allan Savory to Brazilian pasturelands.
Almost two years ago, Clovis began implementing a cutting-edge carbon
sequestration program in Guaraquecaba, a region of partially denuded and
partially intact Atlantic Forest south of Sao Paulo in Parana State. With a 40
year timeline and some $15 million from American supporters like GM and
the American Electric Power Company looking to hedge their PR and Kyoto
risks by locking up carbon credits, Clovis had the perfect conservation project.
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Clovis Borges
His plan was simple. Purchase land, protect intact areas, reforest denuded
areas with native species, and then count up the carbon credits. It appeared
to be a win-win-win-win-win situation: the Atlantic Forests would regain
ground; communities would be fairly compensated for their land; American
super-consumers would have their guilty consciences eased; an example of
ecosystem services being sold would be functioning for the rest of the world
to replicate; and carbon dioxide equivalent to 2.25 million cars driving for a
year would be sequestered in the trees of Guaraquecaba rather than trapping
heat high in the atmosphere. "It was one of the most elegant conservation
programs I had ever laid eyes upon," says Clovis.
Of course, plans, however perfect at first blush, rarely follow
the script verbatim. Clovis soon ran up against an
unforeseen brick wall. A local community grazed buffalo
for milk and meat on a vital patch of land Clovis had purchased
for reforestation. Despite having title in hand,
Clovis and SPVS knew that simply evicting the buffalo
would not ensure long-term conservation interests. This
action would threaten the viability of the community by
reducing a vital source of income and nutrition and precipitate a potentially
disastrous public relations firefight. Through the Ashoka network, Clovis
knew that the Porto Allegre-based Fabio had significant experience managing
grazing animals. Perhaps Fabio could be of help.
Fabio quickly surveyed the community and the rangeland in question to
assess the situation. A list of community preferences and tools was compiled.
Fencing could be improved, riparian areas could be better protected,
particularly sensitive areas could be guarded with solar-powered electrified
barriers, milking techniques could be modified, and products could be produced
organically to demand higher prices at market. The best ideas were
implemented with effort and resources from both the community and SPVS.
In the end, a real win-win scenario emerged. The grazing land was reduced
by over 20%, allowing for Clovis's conservation priorities to move forward.
Simultaneously, buffalo milk production (yes there is a market for this)
increased by 50% by volume and should warrant higher prices due to its now
organic process. As Clovis says in retrospect, "sustainable development may
sound like having one's cake and eating it too, but it can be done, successfully
and smartly."
What’s buzzing in Mezquitoland
Your last flight sends you back across the Atlantic to Jo'burg, the site of the
WSSD. After two long days of jeep rides up the coast of East Africa and into
flood stricken Mozambique, you arrive in Mezimbite, a small village that
Ashoka Fellow Allan Schwarz fondly calls "Mezquitoland" for its popularity with
local insects. Mezimbite is at the edge of the Miombo bioregion-a 5 million
square kilometer landscape sprawled across 11 southern African countries. It
is home to the largest contiguous patch of deciduous tropical forests in the
world and roughly 100 million people.

Stricken by civil wars and devoid of educational and economic opportunities,
Mezimbite is emblematic of the world's toughest sustainable development
challenges. A primary education is a luxury. The surest form of communication
is a messenger. Employment, not unemployment, stands at 6%. Slash
and burn agriculture and household energy needs account for more than 80%
of the deforestation. And the rate of deforestation is at levels well above what
one might term sustainable which, in turn, has been the dominant driver of
the floods.
Allan walked into this scene after a successful career as an architect that had
brought him to a teaching post at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and a lucrative partnership at an architectural firm. But something attracted
him back to his native southern Africa. "Pure madness," he scoffs.
In reality, the most seemingly intractable problems are not altogether hopeless
when a social entrepreneur makes a bet on a strategy to turn things
around. That's precisely what Allan has done in Mezimbite. Reforestation
efforts have been supplemented by a cluster of forest-based value-added
businesses including the manufacture of heirloom-quality furniture crafted
from sustainably harvested wood. Part genius, part madness might be fair.
The project began with dreaming. "I know it sounds corny," says Allan, "but to
be driven you need to start with your feet firmly planted in the clouds." Yet
dreams-however visual and evocative-need structure, so the next step for
Allan was planning. Allan helped the community identify forests that were still
intact and then formed a joint venture in the name of a local partner to secure
property rights. During the next three years, Allan and the people of Mezimbite
conducted an inventory of forest resources and developed a management
plan that limited harvests of trees and other products to the maximum sustainable
yield while continuously reforesting denuded areas.
Today, following this plan, harvested trees are cut into planks by a project
sawmill. A small amount of this harvest is reserved for sale at cost to local
craftspeople while the rest is transported to the project's workshop, where
woodworkers and apprentices trained by Allan craft furniture and other wood
products. End products range from heirloom-quality armories and dinning
tables sold in high-end stores in Jo'burg and London to doors and
window frames purchased by the government of Mozambique for hospitals.
Prior to Allan's arrival in Mezimbite in 1994, there were no reforestry
initiatives in Mozambique. Today he directs 6 tree planting operations
that together plant and care for roughly 25,000 trees per year.
Products that have been approved for use in government hospitals are
displacing imports and thus cycling more value through the local economy.
The sawmills and the furniture factory employ directly and indirectly over 300
people. His apprenticeship program, "basically the same one Jesus probably
did 2,000 years ago" he quips, intentionally trains more apprentices than the
project itself can handle to distribute these skills more widely throughout the
community. Skilled workers earn incomes 12 times higher than before Allan's
intervention, while the community as a whole has nudged past the poverty line
on a per capita basis.
"What can I say, just being able to eat regularly in this part of the world is a
Allan Schwarz
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Key characteristics
of the Ashoka social
entrepreneur
Dispassionate
analyzes drive
passionate bets
The community is
the compass, but a
compass without a
map is pretty useless
Capacitate citizens
to take charge
Adaptive discipline
Equity needs
ecology and ecology
needs equity
win," says Allan. And this success may spread far beyond the town with the
swarming mosquitoes. Through Allan's influence, the Provincial Governor has
banned the export of raw logs until better monitoring systems are in place.
What is driving the social entrepreneur?
The basic model of the social entrepreneur working in sustainable development
is fairly simple. Assess a problem, understand the environmental,
social, and economic dimensions. Figure out the leverage points, then execute
like a pit bull being told to eat every T-bone steak in a butcher's shop,
that is relentlessly and efficiently. Not quite as easy as it sounds, but not
rocket science either.
This having been said, there are some at first contradictory characteristics
that crosscut leading social entrepreneurial efforts in sustainable development
that appear to be distinctive traits. Part of what differentiates the
social entrepreneurial project from your garden-variety sustainable development
effort is the ability to balance and harness a set of these potentially
opposed notions to drive better and better results.
Dispassionate analyzes drive passionate bets
Leading social entrepreneurs have the ability to evaluate the system dispassionately,
but then have the vision to make a passionate bet on a leverage
point and a strategy to tip that leverage point. Allan's project frontloads
tremendous energy into mapping the ecosystem and identifying what the
maximum sustainable yield will be before venturing into the harvesting and
manufacturing stages-all this while keeping his boots firmly planted in the
clouds.
The community is the compass, but a compass without a map is pretty useless
Community needs and preferences must fundamentally drive social entrepreneurial
efforts. But these efforts must also be pragmatic and opportunistic
about external realities. A classic example is Jadwiga, driven by the
desire to preserve the institution of the traditional Polish family farm, yet
quick to capitalize on an emerging taste among urban professionals for
alternative forms of tourism.
Capacitate citizens to take charge
A key to long-term sustainability is community control over natural resources.
However, a reality faced by many communities is that traditional control and
decision making systems may need to be revived or may be strained when
encountering previously non-existent threats. Therefore intervention is
sometimes necessary. But the intervention, to be lasting, must be aimed at
capacitating local control as opposed to simply solving the problem at hand.
ToxicsLink puts not only data in the hands of communities impacted by toxic
pollution, but also the knowledge and ability to continue monitoring, to
assess the resulting data, and to identify the most promising strategies to
address future problems.
Adaptive discipline
The protagonists you have met are focused, disciplined, and unrelenting, yet
simultaneously adaptive to changing circumstances and new information. It
is a unique temperament that allows one to be single minded without being
narrow minded. Clovis, in his decision to engage Fabio with his buffalo chal-

lenge, embodies this ability to be fixated on conservation yet ready to switch
gears and bring in a community development expert when faced with an
unforeseen challenge without losing sight of the original conservation goals.
Equity needs ecology and ecology needs equity
Ravi, Jadwiga, Clovis, Fabio, and Allan all implicitly recognize the transitive
and fundamentally interconnected relationship between ecology and equityone
cannot flourish without the other and development cannot truly be sustainable
unless these twin pillars are structurally sound. Equity includes
race, class, nationality, and gender. Ecology includes everything. As the
Heinrich Boll Foundation pithily articulated in its Jo'burg Memo "there cannot
be ecology without equity and there cannot be equity without ecology." The
work of Allan Schwartz in Mozambique perhaps best illustrates this phenomenon.
The conservation gains from reforestation will not be lasting without
local industries that provide economic incentives to move away from slash
and burn agriculture and logging for household fuels; and furniture factories
that squander the natural resource base will only serve to diminish future
revenues and the future of the community. Incidentally, the double entendre
that ecology also needs investment is intended.
What do social entrepreneurs still need?
Integrating these insights more fully into the work of social entrepreneurs will
kick the ball toward the goal of sustainable development. Similarly, the positive
feedback loop of success and attention will naturally encourage new
entrants, driving more and more effective social entrepreneurial initiatives.
But there are nevertheless tremendous hurdles and challenges that Ashoka
Fellows face that dampen the effectiveness of their efforts. It is here where
the stakeholders in Jo'burg can best support this emerging class of social
entrepreneurs.
Investment
More fuel is needed for social entrepreneurship to drive sustainable development
on the ground. Ashoka provides funding for a small number of leading
social entrepreneurs at an early stage, but the need is much more broad
and deep than what Ashoka can satisfy. Stakeholders can and should allocate
more resources (both financial and non-financial) for social entrepreneurs,
as they will deliver tremendous bang for the sustainable development
buck and spur innovations that may lead to exponential returns on investment.
As Mexican Fellow Pati Ruiz, a former music teacher now leading a
GEF-funded grassroots environmental education and sustainable development
program in the Sierra Gorda, says: "The greatest idea without sustained
operating resources may never have the chance to leap from a small and
successful local project, to one of national or international significance."
Policy environment
Social entrepreneurs will see their efforts buttressed and will find more promising
opportunities to exploit as the rules of the game tilt in their favor.
Perverse incentives in policy and regulatory structures that encourage environmental
harms and do not encourage environmental benefits must be
addressed. Slovak Fellow and water management entrepreneur Michal
Kravcik notes, "the right legislation can make the difference between a social
entrepreneur working alone and one who is copied a thousand times over
Ashoka Fellows still
need
Investment
Improved policy
environments
Better information
Better cooperation
and coordination
Increased recognition
and visibility
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Top: Indian Fellow Laxman
Singh’s improved water
management has brought
growth to previously
barren land; Middle:
Ashoka Fellow Paul Cohen
in Tlholego ecovillage;
Bottom: Nhama Bhoomi
resource center in India
provides training for exchild
workers
because the incentives are right." At the most macro level, steps must be
taken toward a global agreement on climate change with key players including
the United States and China signing and ratifying such an agreement. At
the national level, subsidies to environmentally harmful industries and
processes must be phased out and incentives for environmentally positive
innovations phased in-the costs to the environment and the benefits from
environmental protection must be hardwired into policy frameworks. Finally,
at the most micro level, ensuring that communities have clear rights over
their natural resources is a vital starting point for the type of just and lasting
change implicit in sustainable development.
Better information
Better environmental data and the capacity to use this data intelligently at
the community level are both essential. Social entrepreneurs, like business
entrepreneurs, need the best information to make smart strategic and operational
choices. Often Ashoka's leading social entrepreneurs, like Ravi, are
working directly on these issues. More often, however, the technological and
capital hurdles are too high for grassroots social entrepreneurs to clear. Anil
Singh, an Indian Fellow and a veteran of many community development projects,
says: "access to information creates decision making power, a fundamental
livelihood right." Commitments from governments, businesses, and
NGOs to empower communities with good data and the capacity to understand
this information are vital pieces of the puzzle.
Better cooperation and coordination
Along with better information, social entrepreneurs also need to establish
better synapses with other sectors and other social entrepreneurs. Certainly,
many Ashoka Fellows like Clovis and Fabio are doing this both within the
Fellowship and cross sectorally, but developing greater opportunities for partnership
and coordination remains low-hanging fruit. The decision makers in
Jo'burg appear to have realized this and we hope that new opportunities to
cooperate and coordinate our work effectively will be realized.
Recognition and visibility
Social entrepreneurs need recognition and visibility. For the best ideas coming
from social entrepreneurs to be replicated, for the best people to enter
this profession, and for the most pressing challenges in sustainable development
to attract new social entrepreneurial entrants, profile for this profession
and confidence in their abilities is essential. Too often, social entrepreneurs
are dismissed for having wacky ideas or insufficient experience on a
given issue. This is especially the case with social entrepreneurs from communities
and doubly so for those working in so-called developing countries.
A healthy dose of skepticism is probably a good thing, but as Zimbabwean
Ashoka Fellow Esinet Mapondera says, “poverty doesn’t mean a lack of ideas
or capability. In our work with the poor we often get brilliant ideas and
unearth remarkable capability.”

Looking ahead
Social entrepreneurs like Ravi, Jadwiga, Clovis, Fabio, and Allan are helping
to develop communities in a way that protects ecological resources for
future generations while ensuring that these solutions are sustainable.
They will do this work by balancing and harnessing the paradoxical qualities
of the leading social entrepreneur. They will do this good work regardless
of whether or not the perfect enabling environment is established. They will
go ahead missing key pieces, constantly adapting, and rolling with the
punches.
But despite the tremendous potential of these change agents, their impact
will remain greatly muted without government, multilateral, business, and
NGO commitments for action realized. Ashoka Fellows are the leading edge
of a burgeoning class of social entrepreneurs who will play a vital, community-centered
role in sustainable development. Today, they are delivering
remarkable results despite the often disabling environments in which they
work. It is the hope of Ashoka Fellows globally that Jo'burg's emphasis on
implementation will translate into a future in which social entrepreneurship
is recognized as an indispensable catalyst for sustainable development and
that driving this recognition will be the information, relationships, policies,
and cash to make just and lasting change happen.
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appendix
Contributors
Ravi Agarwal, India, SRISHTI and ToxicsLink
Edinéa Alcântara, Brazil, PHYSIS-Centro de Crescimento Integral
Juan Carlos Antezana, Bolivia, Inti Yassi Wara
Oscar Arruda, Brazil, Instituto Sertão
Flick Asvat, South Africa, BUGRADO EDUTRADE
Gustavo Candia, Paraguay, Eco-GLOBAL
Mauricio Canedo, Bolivia, Creación
Anil Chitrakar, Nepal, Environmental Camps for Conservation Awareness
Paul Cohen, South Africa, Tlholego Development Project
Iftekhar Enayetullah, Bangladesh, Waste Concern
Victor Fodeke, Nigeria, African Environmental Action Network (EANet-Africa)
Maria Elena Foronda, Peru, Instituto Ambientalista Natura
Bablu Ganguly, India, The Timbaktu Collective
Oswaldo Granda, Ecuador, AGFUM-Agro-forestería Urbano-Marginal
Marie Haisova, Czech Republic, Gaia
Jacek Jakubiec, Poland, Fundacja Kultury Ekologicznej
Nancy Kgengwenyane, Botswana, Tika-Tikwe Bio Resources Trust
Michal Kravcik, Slovakia, People and Water
Yusupha Kujabi, Gambia, Partners for Self-Help to Self-Help
Kiran Kulkarni, India, Institute for Rural Credit and Enterprise Development
Jadwiga Lopata, Poland, Stowarzyszenie ECEAT Polska
Esinet Mapondera, Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Women Finance Trust
Mario Mejia Gutierrez, Colombia
Jyoti Mhapsekar, India, Stree Mukti Sanghatana
Dinesh Mishra, India, Barh Mukti Abhiyan
Jacob Moatshe, South Africa, Oukasie Development Trust
Beverly Moodie, South Africa, Business Outreach
Osmond Mugweni, Zimbabwe
Kalyan Paul, India, Pan Himalayan Grassroots Development Foundation
Herlambang Perdana, Indonesia, LBH Surabaya
Miklos Persayni, Hungary, Budapest Zoo
Diana Pombo, Colombia, Instituto de Gestion Ambiental
Pati Ruiz, Mexico, Grupo Ecológico Sierra Gorda IAP
Rosa Maria Ruiz, Bolivia, Eco-Bolivia
Albina Ruiz, Peru
Cadudzzi Salas, Chile
Jacek Schindler, Poland, Ekoidea
Allan Schwarz, Mozambique
Pedro Serrano, Chile, Fundacion TERRAM
Sudhirendar Sharma, India, Energy Environment Group
B.R Shrestha, Nepal, BMC-Silt Environmental Services Pvt. Ltd
Anil Singh, India, NEED
Maqsood Sinha, Bangladesh, Waste Concern
Payong Srithong, Thailand, Project for Agroecology Development and Plant
Genetic Resource Conservation (AGRECO/PGRC)
Mark Swilling, South Africa, Spier Leadership Institute
Anna Zucchetti, Peru, OACA-Oficina de Asesoria y Consultoria Ambiental
To contact any of the above, please e-mail: fss@shoka.org
Editing & research, Anamaria Aristizabal, Njogu Morgan, Stanley Yung
Page layout & design, Thomas Cortese
Photos, Janet Jarman

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public
The Environmental Innovations Initiative
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