Ashoka Fellows are practical visionaries who introduce, and fully commit themselves to realizing, an important, new idea. They bring to bear on the social problem a fresh analysis and insight about how to fix it. They get systems unstuck and open new opportunities for citizens to be changemakers. With creativity and entrepreneurial skill, they push ahead their idea until it changes a pattern through wide adoption, often over many years.
Ashoka teams use a standard selection criteria to gauge a candidate’s fit with Ashoka as an Ashoka Fellow. Drawing on national and global perspectives, our interview sequence explores a candidate’s life history of entrepreneurship and the idea’s emergence and likelihood for systemic impact.
Ashoka strives to make empathy, teamwork, leadership, and problem-solving (what we call changemaker skills) as valued in education as traditional academic skills so that all students find their voices and can make a positive impact on the world.
In order to achieve this goal, we created the Changemaker Schools Network, a global community of leading schools that serve as models for cultivating these skills in students. Schools in the network share best practices with each other and benefit from opportunities to collaborate with other schools, connect with Ashoka’s partners, present at conferences, and much more.