Vinoba’s stupendous Bhoodaan effort was drawing attention in the west. In the United States, major articles on Vinoba appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker and on the cover of Time as well. If it was Gandhi who influenced Vinoba as a 20 year old, little did anyone know that Vinoba was going to inspire another 20 year old, albeit, on the other side of the world.
In 1963, Bill Drayton, a 20 year old student from Harvard was spending his summer break at Munich, Germany when he first heard of Vinoba's Bhoodaan. He was so inspired by Vinoba's simple idea that he decided to drive his red and white Volkswagen van from Munich to India to join him. Bill joined Vinoba on his foot march and witnessed the power of a simple idea by a single person to bring out a massive social change. This experience left a mark on him.
Back to Harvard, Bill started an inter-disciplinary forum called "Ashoka Table" where students could interact with officials from the government and the industry. It was here that he nurtured a greater vision. Following his studies at Harvard, Yale and Oxford and working at McKinsey and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in 1980 Bill formed "Ashoka", his dream venture to create real change worldwide. Ashoka was named after the visionary and benovolent Indian emperor of 3rd century BC.
Bill Drayton's idea was simple, yet pathbreaking. He knew that throughout the world, while governments were inefficient in their working to bring social changes, and private sector was motivated only by profit, real social change had to come from the "Citizen Sector". His idea was to model what he called "Social Entrepreneurship" which would combine the pragmatic and results-oriented methods of a business entrepreneur with the goals of a social reformer.
Imagine a social Enterpreneur in a remote village in Bangladesh being assisted by McKinsey in management consulting, Hill & Knowlton in public relations expertise, and by the International Senior Lawyers Project in legal support. This is not a utopian tale but how an "Ashoka fellow" works. Entrepreneurs funded by Ashoka, known as Fellows, are given financial support, are connected to its vast network of other Fellows, and are provided with the expertise and advice of firms in partnership with Ashoka.
The term "Social Enterpreneurship", that Bill Drayton coined 20 years ago is a buzz word today in B-Schools like Harvard, Yale and Oxford. Almost all top B-Schools have now courses on Social Enterpreneurship. More importantly, the 1500 odd Ashoka fellows spread throughout the world have become effective changemakers in bringing a positive change to the world.
Bill Drayton was named in 2005 by the Center for Public Leadership, Harvard University as one of “America’s Best Leaders” along with other luminaries like Bill and Melinda Gates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs and Oprah Winfrey.
References:
--> Video - Bill Drayton speaks at Google (Must Watch!)
--> Center for Public Leadership, Harvard University
--> US News interview with Bill Drayton
10 comments:
A single good deed creates ripples..some that change the waters forever.. boy! aap tho kaafi research kar rahe ho beta?!
really nice article! the previous article on vinoba bhave too was great. Enjoyed reading them both. But doubts still linger on how pragmatic this vision of social entrepreneurship really has been and how much progress has actually been made. I will poke around asoka.org and try to learn something.
And about the wordpress blog, I am just dry testing it before I make the actual jump from blogger to wordpress :-)
@dilip,
Thanks for stopping by. What is critical about the fellows that Ashoka selects and supports is that it is not supporting yet another NGO which is fighting for a cause. Nothing wrong about such organizations except that their effects in bringing change is minimal in most cases as you doubted. Ashoka adopts an extremely rigorous selection process to make sure that the idea is innovative as well as replicable. Most Ashoka fellows have gone on to effect policy making at national levels which is probably "the critical factor" in any country to bring social change. and another point which I haven't mentioned in the post is that Ashoka is developing a network of social enterpreneurs. So essentially, if there is a brilliant idea working on a social problem which has been succesful in brazil in south america, another enterpreneur in srilanka working on the same problem has complete access to this fellow. This is where the "replicability" aspect of selection process that I mentioned comes into play.
David Bornstein's book on "How to change the World" is all about social innovation. It is not surprising to see that most ideas in that book are developed by Ashoka Fellows. The book has some great examples of social enterpreneurs who have gone on to make a significant impact. Try that book if you get a chance.
that was a good read. ashoka seems to be the utopian setup! curious what the ashoka fellows are achieving in india...will go thro the links.
@Deepthi nija.
research enilla, happens to be a topic of interest.
@ShubhaIndia probably provides the best platform for such a model, because of the complexity in society structure, it's problems and also the democratic setup.
Utopia, yes by design. But the challenge is huge. The question still remains: you can effect policy making to a certain extent, but how much can you effect the policy maker's intent. It ain't tough for a single decision to ruin years of individual/collective effort in the social domain.
But certainly, it is a step in the right direction.
good one and thank you, quite inspirational
@advocatus thanks for stopping by.
very interesting!
This was a great article. I have been thinking of starting my own business. Who would have thought that one good deed would have ended that way. I am actually looking forward to taking the risks that come along with this new business. I already started looking into ppc management for my existing website. Thanks so much for this great article.
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