Ashoka Canada

Elisha Muskat, Executive Director
canadainfo@ashoka.org
416-646-2333
Charitable number: 86193 8736 RR0001

About this organization

Mission

Ashoka strives to shape a global, entrepreneurial, competitive citizen sector: one that allows social entrepreneurs to thrive and enables the world’s citizens to think and act as changemakers. Changemakers are individuals who effectively and quickly respond to the world’s most pressing challenges. Ashoka is committed to make Canada a country where everyone can be a changemaker.

History of Organization

In 1981, Bill Drayton founded Ashoka, and selected our first Ashoka Fellow. Since its inception, Ashoka has been the leading global association of social entrepreneurs – individuals with system-changing solutions for the world’s most urgent social problems. Through a robust selection process, Ashoka has elected nearly 3,000 leading social entrepreneurs as Fellows in 72 countries on five continents. In 2002, Ashoka launched in Canada. Ashoka is building a Canada in which everyone has the freedom, resources and societal support to be changemakers. To date, 40 Canadian Fellows are changing systems and spreading their impact nationally and globally.

Accolades and Accomplishments

Since 2002, Ashoka Canada has elected 40 Fellows across the country. These Fellows have mobilized hundreds of thousands of people around them to address issues in education, human rights, environment, health, economic development and civic participation.

In the fall of 2011, Ashoka Canada launched the Changemakers Initiative Inspiring Approaches to First Nations, Métis and Inuit Learning.

We have developed a business plan (with McKinsey & Co.) to launch a university program, inviting Canadian post-secondary institutions to join Changemaker Campuses across the USA as hubs of changemaking. It’s our vision to create a new generation of changemakers with skills in empathy, teamwork, leadership and changemaking.

In October 2011, Ashoka founder, Bill Drayton, received the Prince of Asturias Prize in International Cooperation. He joined the ranks of past recipients including Nelson Mandela, Bill and Melinda Gates, and Al Gore. A week later, he received the John W. Gardner Leadership Award in Chicago. The Award honours outstanding Americans whose leadership in the non-profit community has been transformative and who have mobilized and unified people, institutions, or causes that improve people’s lives. Bill was also honoured in Singapore by the World Entrepreneurship Forum as the winner of the annual Social Entrepreneur Award.

Programs

>Ashoka Canada's Empathy Tour

Ashoka Canada runs the following programs:

Ashoka’s Venture & Fellowship program identifies and elects leading social entrepreneurs into our global Ashoka Fellowship and provides strategic support, collaboration opportunities, a community of like-minded individuals, recognition and possible financial support.

Youth Venture inspires and invests in teams of young people who design and launch their own lasting social ventures, enabling them to have the transformative experience of leading positive social change.

The Ashoka Support Network (ASN) is a global community of successful business leaders and philanthropists who engage with Ashoka, committing time and resources to support the work of Ashoka Fellows.

Changemakers® is a community of action where we all have the opportunity to collaborate on solutions. Changemakers® competitions bring people together from across the globe to address issues and turn our old systems upside down. Participants submit ideas, collectively identify the best social solutions, and then collaborate to refine, enrich, and implement those solutions.

Ashoka’s University Program fosters, incubates, and accelerates new and effective approaches to high quality social entrepreneurship teaching, research, and action in universities and across campuses.

Social Financial Services (SFS) improves access to financing and sustainable capital for the citizen sector, addressing the lack of financial support necessary for social ventures to succeed.

Ashoka Canada's Empathy Tour

Building on Ashoka’s global leadership in accelerating Empathy, Ashoka Canada’s Empathy Tour will invite Torontonians to participate in an event showcasing how empathy is at the core of world changing solutions; thus engaging Toronto in a global movement of ‘empathy for social change’.

Scheduled for the Fall of 2012, this 2 day tour will build on three principles: Practice: Treat empathy as a skill; Culture: Create conditions for open exchange; Economy and Ecosystem: Establish incentives and platforms to propel action.

Empathy is a key skill that must be mastered at a young age, yet, is embedded in solutions for all ages. Young people, who understand and practice empathy, will likely continue demonstrating empathy as adults. Empathy is at the core of our humanity, relevant to people of all ages and backgrounds. Mastering empathy will change our city and our world for the better.

The two day tour will have three streams: Childhood Learning, Business, and The Justice System. It will engage students, educators, policymakers, business and community leaders to understand how to integrate empathy into their centres of influence.

Held at a downtown Toronto university; Fellows will demonstrate their models while participants “tour” the campus to view each of the models.

Funding and Program Partners

Partners:

• Canadian Ashoka Fellows: Fellows are key partners to ensure the success of this Tour. We will create an advisory committee made up of Ashoka Fellows based in Toronto, thought leaders in each of the streams

• We are in discussions with several Toronto based educational institutions about participating in the Tour and have a strong indication from one school that they are interested in hosting the Tour on their campus.

Funding:

Ashoka Canada conintues to recieve positive feedback about the Tour, we are currently fundraising for this event.

Program Impact

In 2009, Ashoka conducted a study on how Fellows are changing systems around the world. Integrating marginalized populations (developing citizenship and empathetic ethics) was one of five trends that emerged. Ashoka Canada is the ideal organization to accelerate the work of leading social entrepreneurs and strengthen a community of empathetic practice. Toronto is the ideal city to launch a tour that creates an eco-system of empathy that can be replicated gloabally.

Toronto's Vital Signs® indicator(s) addressed by Program

“…we must recognize what makes our city great and build upon it. Collaboration, compassion, compromise - these are the values that build the trust that binds us and make us a magnet for the world.”

(Toronto’s Vital Signs® 2011)

This quote resonates with the objective of the Empathy Tour and is just the beginning of a movement that will encourage the mainstream public to practice empathy as a way to break down barriers. In addition, we want to gather leaders across sectors to work together to make empathy a tool in everyday business practices.

Our vision is to get empathy “into the drinking water” of Toronto and Canada. We want to build a cross-sector movement to enable and catalyze individuals to understand, identify and master empathy in every aspect of their lives.

Giving Opportunity

Activities a donation will support

With your donation we will be able to:

Collect leading solutions using empathy to address urgent social problems in Canada and globally
Distill best practices in empathy as a means for social change
Map key trends, systemic solutions and systemic barriers (in partnership with global team, volunteers and entrepreneurial partners and thought-leaders)

You Donation will also help us promote the tour and contribute to the work of those Ashoka Fellows highlighted within the tour.

Donation impact

The funds will be strategically allocated to get this initiative off the ground in Toronto. We will work with our global and local teams and Ashoka Fellows to design a strong event, build other key partnerships and raise further funds to launch in fall 2012. We are dedicated to leveraging existing relationships with strategic partners who could give in-kind support to bring policy makers, stakeholders and educators in to Toronto from across Canada.

This tour will spark a national movement around empathy. In order to create a ripple effect, we will open source our best practices through our web site for other interested groups to replicate in other Vital Signs cities. We will also leverage our global network of business and social entrepreneurs in 72 countries to bring empathy awareness and practice to them. We envision the practice of empathy becoming a global priority with Toronto being a catalyst and model city.

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