29 Mar 2009
Becoming a 2009 Ashoka Fellow
I am delighted to be able to announce that I recently became a Fellow of Ashoka, the international organisation that supports social entrepreneurs. There are over 2000 Ashoka fellows around the world, doing amazing work. I had never thought of myself as being a social entrepreneur, indeed I am still trying to work out quite what the term means, but it is a great honour to receive the support of this organisation, and what they can bring to the Transition Network is potentially fantastic.
I was in London the other day for the inauguration of the 3 new 2009 Ashoka Fellows, Tom Steinberg, Junior Smart and myself. Both Tom and Junior are doing amazing things. Becoming an Ashoka Fellow brings some great resource to Transition. It brings a stipend, which means for the first time I can be paid fulltime for the work I do, it also brings some amazing project support, both from Ashoka itself and from the range of organisations that offer pro bono work to them. It also brings some funding for a project yet to be agreed on. One of the first things they are working on is a paper exploring, both for Transition Network, and for individual initiatives, of crowd funding and social lending.
It is still early days of figuring exactly how they can support our work, but it has huge potential for really supporting and accelarating the rapid growth of the Transition movement. My deep thanks go to the folks at Ashoka for seeing some kind of potential in what we are doing, and for their support. For the inauguration, a short film was made about each Fellow. Here is mine, filmed when I was recently in Minchinhampton to give a talk, with cameos from some good people from Transition Stroud. My thanks to them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojqbXqCrfgI
Josef Davies-Coates
29 Mar 10:47pm
Congratulation Rob, well deserved! 🙂
“One of the first things they are working on is a paper exploring, both for Transition Network, and for individual initiatives, of crowd funding and social lending.” is VERY interesting to me. Would love to get involved someone.
My main focus at present is trying to take forward my dream p2p/ crowdfund for eco land and infrastructure projects.
I should have a video of me waffling on about my plans up somewhere later this week, but essentially the idea is that everyone agree to contribute a minimum of 1% of their income and time into a pot to a) buy land, and b) loan existing community land projects money to invest in new infrastructure. Essentially and Resilient Communities Fund. Or Transition Pension scheme! 🙂
Whilst doing my Sustainable Land Use course at Ragman’s Lane I chatted briefly with Matt Dunwell about the idea and how it could tie in well with Tudor Trust’s Community Land Trust fund…
Let get our heads together and make it happen 🙂
Smiles,
Josef.
joseph
30 Mar 4:50am
Gday Rob Congratulations on such a magnificent achievement-it makes effort seem all worthwile.I am a new convert to this ‘transient pathway’and am keen to learn more. I was also interested in Josef’s comment and would like to know where to find out more of his work. Cheers Joe
Josef Davies-Coates
30 Mar 2:19pm
PS have a read of my friend Vinay’s recent piece on a Global Village Development Bank…
“basically a sketch of the deep structural fit between distributed infrastructure, ICT and crowdsourced financing”:
http://vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/hexayurt/my-latest-piece-the-global-village-development-bank-1348
Enjoy!
Josef.
Kamil Pachalko
31 Mar 4:36am
congratulations, I knew they will finally find you:)
Josef Davies-Coates
31 Mar 1:22pm
Joseph, an old write up of the broad idea can be read here: http://uniteddiversity.com/commons-creation/
Probably most relevant are the .pdf presentation at the top and my most recent 5 comments at the bottom.
Love to hear people’s feedback.
Cheers,
Josef.
Mike Grenville
31 Mar 2:04pm
congratulations – very well deserved
Josef Davies-Coates
31 Mar 3:07pm
Just actually watched the video.
Rob: interesting that you mention the “3 things” of Peak Oil, Climate Change, AND Global Economic Issues as opposed to the former “2 things” of just Peak Oil and Climate Change elaborated in the Handbook. Nice. 🙂
Josef Davies-Coates
31 Mar 3:10pm
Actually hadn’t even finished watching the video before posting above comment! Its a great little video 🙂
Mike Collins
31 Mar 9:10pm
Rob – well done! That’s great recognition for all of your work. On the subject of “Social Entrepreneur” – I realise that it may sound like a businessy back-hand compliment. However, I always saw you as an “entreprenuerial” type. Putting energy, vision and commitment behind a cause that provides for a real need in the community. Whether that be an entrepreneur for profit or a social entrepreneur – if it’s in your nature, that’s how you’ll end up approaching most problems and challenges in life.
Well done again – Mike.
Shane Hughes
31 Mar 9:24pm
Nice one Rob!!! You most certainly are the right person for the job, balancing the positive outlook for the future and the practical aspects of the day.
Josef, i think i’m a signed up semi-member of the infrastructure/land project? you’ve got my support.
Greenpa
1 Apr 5:02pm
I’m absolutely delighted for you. Excellent! 🙂
Bev Doherty
2 Apr 2:37pm
Well done, Rob. So pleased for you. Transition Inishowen Initiative here in Ireland is showing your inauguration film at an event here on Sat. Hope you don’t mind!
Manohari
8 Aug 10:44am
Hi Rob,
Congrats on becoming Ashoka fellow. I am from India. Ijust found this link while browsing in google for Ashoka fellowship. Few months back, I wrote to them regarding the details of application. There was no response. Do you mind sending me few lines about the procedure to apply etc I have great passion to be in this field. I would like to know your experiences too if you don’t mind to share.
shanttal asha
11 Sep 2:38pm
hi we really want o know abau the transtion culture becouse it is so intresting please we need your corporation
we are in uganda and we need the feedback
thanks iremain as shantal nd solomon