Welcome Change

All over the world, women face astounding rates of sexual harassment on public transport. In Kenya, this issue affects 88 percent of women. What if we could redesign public transport systems to fundamentally improve safety for women and other vulnerable groups? This is the question social entrepreneur Naomi Mwaura is answering with FLONE Initiative – the organization she founded in 2013. Listen in...

Ashoka Fellow Laura Zommer is a fact-checking pioneer from Argentina who founded Chequeado and co-founded FactChequeado to combat Spanish-language disinformation across 17 Latin American countries and the U.S. While several of the large platforms, from Meta to Google and Twitter, make efforts to combat misinformation in English, their investments in other languages, including Spanish, is dismal in...

From his global headquarters in Kampala, Uganda, Ashoka Fellow Solomon King is on track to deliver hands-on science and technology education to one million African children by 2030. On the youthful African continent - where 60% of the population is under 25 - Solomon believes that building robots, learning to code, and working with AI is the best way to equip young folks with world-class science a...

Starting in Baltimore, Ashoka Fellow Bree Jones sees an opportunity to restore neighborhoods that have rich histories but are experiencing hyper-vacancy due to decades of disinvestment and systemic inequities. Working with first-time home buyers and an array of city actors, she is catalyzing block-level restoration and building the wealth of Black residents – without displacing legacy neighbors. L...

Armin believes that everyone of all ages and across all socio-economic groups should have access to legal knowledge and services. By launching the first legal clinic in the U.S. staffed by young people (and supervised by a licensed attorney), Armin has proven that it is possible to simultaneously harness the untapped power of young people, reimagine high school legal education, extend community ac...

On this episode of Welcome Change, we heard from Mark Campanale to explore how climate change impacts financial markets, and how investors can support a sustainable future. Ashoka Fellow Mark Campanale (UK) started the Carbon Tracker Initiative in 2009 that ended up placing terms like “carbon bubble”, “unburnable carbon” and “stranded assets” into the financial and environmental lexicon. More rece...

Nigeria instituted a Twitter ban nation-wide on June 4, threatening "prosecution of offenders," after Twitter deleted a violence-inciting tweet by Nigerian President Buhari. Some believe this most recent move could be a precursor to further democratic clampdowns and an internet shutdown - a practice used in 29 countries last year to silence protests, sway elections or hide human rights v...

Come learn about the Built for Zero movement of 100+ communities across the U.S. committed to ending chronic homelessness. We'll hear from Ashoka Fellow Rosanne Haggerty, founder of Community Solutions/Built for Zero, about how participating communities work together to make homelessness, when it happens, rare and brief. So far, 14 communities have achieved "functional zero" homeles...