Participants meet in small groups to establish their initial connection with the larger group.
Todays media rarely engages with social entrepreneurs to go beyond covering ‘stories’ or making hero’s out of changemakers. But how can we shift the focus of discussion to the idea or the solution? What would it take to engage media as mavens towards framework change? Can it play a role in pushing for policy change or advocacy efforts? We will draw from the experiences of Fellows and reflect on other possible strategies.
All too often, we have seen that in the absence of effective assessment tools, we revert to measuring what is easy rather than what is important. We will bring to the fore, Fellows who have chosen to measure key metrics and how that data can be used to inform measurable growth plans.
Historically, social entrepreneurs have been a product of political movements and have created movements that engaged a large number of citizens. As we move towards organizations and social enterprises, what is the role of citizens and what does it take to shift their mindsets and engage them What does it mean to create a movement in today’s context?
Governance structures and processes are culturally still relatively new in India. While the corporate sector has built systems towards defining the role of the Board and other governance processes, such a discussion is only beginning to take shape for the citizen sector. In this session, we discuss its relevance and the strategic role it can play in fueling an organizations growth.
Governance structures and processes are culturally still relatively new in India. While the corporate sector has built systems towards defining the role of the Board and other governance processes, such a discussion is only beginning to take shape for the citizen sector. In this session, we discuss its relevance and the strategic role it can play in fueling an organizations growth.
What practical plug-ins are needed to bring your work swiftly to new areas and institutions? For some, this means rooting a program locally and open sourcing processes for replication. For others, it means building a network of micro-entrepreneurs or piggy backing into existing local networks. In this session, Fellows will share their experiences in creating local demand, equipping teams and partners with an understanding of their role in the context of national-scale change, efficiently mobilizing local resources, including talent and money, challenges of adoption in new locales, including setting core adoption principles and ensuring quality. The group discussion that follows will get at how we – Ashoka and its partners – can more efficiently and imaginatively dot-connect and support the spread of ideas.
As leaders, we are expected to hold the whole: the vision, the strategies, the needs of those we serve, our finances, our Board, our employees. We often feel no one else can share that burden, that if not for our presence, everything would fall apart or even stop altogether. We are indispensable and afraid all at the same time. This view of ourselves is one of the greatest obstacles to the growth of our impact. How do we let go of this fear that if we stop, the work will stop? How do we become a leader that enables other leaders? How do we join forces with people instead of hiring people? In this session, we will explore how the fellows own personal space mirrors the structure of their work and the tools available to transform both.
Confluences is where small groups of participants organize themselves around an idea, which they choose. This is a democratic platform where anyone can initiate a discussion or join one. These sessions are meant to help participants identify people they can align with and/or explore collaborative opportunities.
Creative and fun ways to warm up for the day
Increasingly, innovative leaders see empathy as a critical and foundational skill, allowing people to effectively spot problems and advance ideas that are invisible in traditional hierarchical structures. In particular, as rules are in flux, as people move fluidly in and between formerly homogenous groups, cultures, and societies, and as power is shared by all, every person needs an even higher level of empathetic skill in order to thrive. We forsee a need for applied empathy—the ability to understand what other people are feeling and to act in response in a way that avoids harm and contributes to positive change. While exploring why empathy is now more critical than ever, this session will explore:
The field of news, journalism and access to media information is in a major transformation. We are, slowly but surely, evolving into a everyone-a-publisher world, one that allows people around the world to engage freely and powerfully with information to advance their own lives and society. Citizens are coming into the professional field, changing the composition of newsrooms to change what is reported and how. We are looking at a different way of understanding citizenship--one where efficient access to quality knowledge, freedom of press and expression and the right to privacy and security of information-- become key to understanding who is or isn't a 'knowledge' citizen.
How are we mapping this change in the way citizens consume and share news? And what ultimately is born of this awareness-creation process? What steps do we need to take to ensure such a world comes to pass and who are going to be the stakeholders of this process? And most importantly, how is the role of the citizen, within considerable limits of privacy, security and inclusivity, going to evolve in this information economy?
Over the last few years, we are seeing new actors complementing the efforts of social entrepreneurs. They are bringing new perspectives from different bodies of knowledge - psychology, design thinking and sciences to catalyze change. In some cases, they challenge prevailing approaches and in others they are bringing greater efficiencies to achieving scale and impact. The citizen sector is now garnering new allies – resulting is greater inter-disciplinary thinking and collaboration. Bringing together these new actors and social entrepreneurs, this session will discuss:
"How do we create Changemaking Universities?" To answer the question we are inviting faculty members and youth leaders from around the country to join us in envisioning how can Universities be actively engaged in driving social change.
What are the possibilities working with students or engaging Universities in research. How can social entrepreneurs actively collaborate with Universities in India? This session will help you meet like-minded people among social entrepreneurs and youth leaders, and passionate people from the educational field to collectively imagine possibilities.
How do we create an ecosystem to a) foster job-creating enterprises in rural India, b) develop capabilities of rural young men and women for employability, and c) enable rural populations to demand their rights and become changemakers?
In the Indian context, three regions experience varying degrees of conflict - Maoist-affected areas, Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast. As a result of the ongoing violence these regions remain one of the most backward in terms of economic, social development, and its people continue to live a compromised life. Creating an environment that allows for development to thrive and catalyzing change in socially and politically unstable areas poses a unique set of challenges and dangers. Participants will be invited to explore solutions/ actionable plans to catalyze change in conflict zones.
Social issues and concerns are often unique to a particular geography. And so is the mix of social sector and business leaders, youth and citizen groups who are part of this place. Changemaking Cities is an attempt to bring together key social and business entrepreneurs, academia and youth in a city, to create an ecosystem, where everyone participates in bringing about positive change.
India’s urban population grew from the 290 million reported in the 2001 to an estimated 340 million in 2008. By 2030, a third of Indian population will live in 3 and 4 tier Towns of less than 1 million population.
This is possibly a largest demographic shift in history. In this process rural citizens leave their traditional livelihoods and lifestyle in search of better incomes and higher quality of life. However Indian towns are often unprepared to provide essential infrastructure, services and opportunities needed for these communities to thrive. As a result for many thousands of families become traps of poverty and despair.
The purpose of the session is to design a framework for successful development of these emerging urban spaces.
Policies and regulations need to catch up with the growing number of social businesses that do not fit neatly within the traditional nonprofit or for-profit legal categories. Participants in this make-a-thon will formulate strategies for self-regulation or advocacy that will not only open doors for investment and spur growth, but also enhance credibility for the sector. Specifically, they will explore:
Businesses are beginning to connect their success with social progress. They are looking to move from the "social responsibility" mind-set where social issues are in the periphery to creating shared value which is at its center. To fuel this shift, participants will discuss different strategies and opportunities including collaboration with social entreprenerus and engagement of employees.
Why doesn't awareness or knowledge lead to behavior change- whether that be to improve diets, gender issues or conserving the environment? What explains this Knowing-Doing gap? How do we make decisions and what are the factors that influence our decision-making? Are we fundamentally rational or irrational, risk-takers or conformists? Understanding the true factors that affect decision making becomes central to engineering social change. Advances in Behavioural Economics and Cognitive Neuroscience are questioning long held beliefs and assumptions on human decision making. Join in to gain a glimpse into new insights that can help us effectively change behaviour.
Storytelling is a shared process between the teller and the listener. It can be used for leading and communicating values, insights, call-to-action, or vision and will easily cut across barriers of age, experience, skepticism and ideology. It becomes a personal act and creates this immutable connection with the listener at an emotional level.
Storytelling is an essential skill for every leader. The role of a leader at any given time is not to play the individual instruments but to unify the performance and to shape the sound of the ensemble. Leadership at its core is this ability to inspire, influence and persuade people.
Social Entrepreneurs are always persuading their teams, communities, funders, media and partners. And often to convince people it takes more than facts and figures or an appeal to reason. The best way to engage people with the vision in a profound way is to use the power of stories. This workshop will help you reflect on your storytelling skills and give practical suggestions on how you can become a great storyteller.
