Ashoka's Changemakers

Problem: Attaining --and maintaining-- financial stability is very difficult for grassroots civic groups/projects; more generally, the world faces a Democracy Deficit. Our world, increasingly globalized, hightech, fast-paced, accelerating, faces unprecedented challenges from Climate Destabilization to Peak Oil; yet the internet has been underutilized as a means for facilitating bottom-up, decentralized, yet coordinated actions. Both principle and pragmatism argue in favor of harnessing the fuller pote...

Action: Thresholdware is software which allows citizens to coordinate intentions and actions on a mass scale. It works by securely and privately storing individual commitments, and then putting the aggregate of those individual commitments into coordinated action when a specific critical mass or threshold has been reached. These can include financial transactions, such as fundraising commitments, or "action transactions'" such as strike votes, product boycotts, civil disobedience, provisionally joini...

Problem: It is widely held that Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) do not always have the time, expertise and training to carry out the necessary business planning and market research, that is a vital part of ensuring the success and continuity of any business. Most rural enterprises lack the skills to prepare business plans or to present themselves to secure potential funders. Furthermore, SMEs often lack suitable capital or collateral, and are often unwilling to let others take a share in their ent...

Action: The Darwin Initiative wishes to strengthen the quality of applications for funding that make claims to create, develop or maintain some form of enterprise, relating to the use of natural resources. This  toolkit aims to address some of these issues and help SMEs have direct access to a selection of resources that aim to help them plan and market their enterprises more effectively.

Problem: The Problem Arizona’s juvenile corrections system, behavioral health services, and educational environments are lacking successful programs to meet the needs for at-risk or challenged youth across all ethnic groups. It is likely that this situation can be applied nationally. Patterns of abuse continue to plague our society in growing numbers. Emotionally and physically jailed juveniles are simply not available to learn coping skills that help them survive and thrive as community member...

Action: The Solution The analogy of taking a fish out of a dirty fish tank, cleaning it off, and throwing it back in with expectations of survival and success applies here. We need more than a clean fish tank, we need a new aquarium. Spectrum Academy is that new aquarium, equipped to meet the needs of habilitating at-hope youth with skill and precision for the 21st Century, by harvesting historical values and restoring cultural and traditional foundations. 21st Century youth need 21st Century ...