History & Numbers

Ashoka’s History

Ashoka is an international community of citizens who are commited to be changemakers. A changemaker is someone who is improving lives in their communities, schools, cities and countries and inspiring communities to also create positive change. We are redefining the global citzen sector by selecting leading social entrepreneurs, creating a collaborative system, building the infrastructure for new ideas and solutions to social problems to scale up from local to global.

Ashoka takes a system-changing approach in all of our programs. All of our activities support efforts to connect the work of individual changemakers to business, policy, academic and public sector partners, thereby generating a network effect that generates new solutions to global problems. Ashoka believes that we need a critical mass of changemakers in the world to create a continous cycle of social innovation and that to achieve this goal we need to create a space for all members of society to interact. We believe in a world where everyone is a changemaker.

Since 1981, when Ashoka started in India, Ashoka has become the global association for the world’s leading social entrepreneurs – individuals with system-changing solutions for the world’s most urgent social problems. Using a cutting edge nominator network, Ashoka has elected more than 2,700 leading social entrepreneurs as Fellows across 72 countries in five continents.

In Canada, 37 Fellows have been elected across the country since 2002. We are working with business entrepreneurs, corporations, government agencies and universities to make Fellows’ new solutions a new reality. Ashoka is commited to make Canada an Everyone a Changemaker country.

Key Dates

Origin of our Name

Named in honour of Ashoka, the great Indian leader who unified the Indian subcontinent in the 3rd century BC. He renounced violence and dedicated his life to social welfare and economic development. For his creativity, global mindedness and tolerance, Ashoka is recognized as the earliest example of a social innovator.

To match the strength of our name, Ashoka is represented by the oak tree. A strong, sturdy tree, the oak represents the power of Ashoka's commitment and contributions to building the profession of social entrepreneurship. A broad-spreading tree, it is symbolic of those dimensions of Ashoka's programs that select, launch and foster collaborations among social entrepreneurs around the world.

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