For more than three decades, Virginia-based Ashoka has been investing in social entrepreneurs with innovative, replicable solutions to the world’s gnarliest social and environmental problems.

Now an Ashoka insider, Beverly Schwartz, has written a book that aims to inspire others with some of their fellows’ amazing stories.
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RIPPLING: How Social Entrepreneurs Spread Innovation Throughout the World
Author Beverly Schwartz will be speaking at the Ivy Bookshop
6080 Falls Rd., Baltimore
March 12, 7 – 8:30 pm
410-377-2966
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They include: an Indian video gaming technologist using telephones to create awareness of social issues in India and East Africa,  an Argentinean psychiatrist turned radio producer, an Indian veterinarian turned “Rickshaw Bank” owner, and a Nigerian security guard turned toilet, sanitation and bio-gas entrepreneur.

In “Rippling: How Social Entrepreneurs Spread Innovation Throughout the World,” Schwartz also attempts to spell out just what these “change-makers” do that allows them to come up with solutions that are both possible and sustainable.

Ashoka’s vice president of global marketing, Schwartz offers “a model for change based on five proven principles that any individual leader or organization can apply to bring about deep, lasting and systematic change.”

These five paths include “restructuring institutional norms,” “changing market dynamics,” “using market forces to create social value,” “advancing full citizenship” and “cultivating empathy.”

In each of these sections, Schwartz presents examples from among Ashoka’s growing network of fellows and lays out the commonalities and differences among them.

In an Ashoka video made to promote the book, Schwartz describes them as “amazing individuals who innovated and built systemic solutions to social problems by creating virtual cycles of action and implementation that attracted multitudes of people, organizations, donors and businesses who also passionately believed they could make the world better for themselves their family their neighbors and their community.”

One more reason to check out the book is an introduction by “the godfather of social entrepreneurship,” Ashoka founder and chairman Bill Drayton. The group, by the way, is named to honor Ashoka, the Indian leader who unified the Indian subcontinent in the 3rd century BC, renouncing violence and dedicating his life to social welfare and economic development.