Ashoka gathers its World’s Fellows, partners, peers in social event

CAIRO – 31 May 2018: Ashoka Arab World, the platform for social entrepreneurship and innovation in the Arab world, hosted an iftar event on Sunday in which its World’s fellows, partners, and peers in the social and business sectors gathered.

The event aimed to foster new connections, recognize local progress in innovation, and celebrate their positive social impact over the past year.

As a part of Ashoka Arab World’s mission to support and empower social entrepreneurs to solve the region’s most pressing social issues, Ashoka Arab World is committed to convening, connecting, and strengthening the rich ecosystem that surrounds social innovators and their initiatives.

"Our mission is to support and empower social entrepreneurs to solve the region’s most pressing social issues," Iman Bibars, vice president of Ashoka Global and regional director of Ashoka Arab World said during the event.

“Every year, we select fellows who are really socially innovative; we have 1400 fellows around the Arab world,” Bibars said to Egypt Today.

Recognizing children’s role in Arab communities, Ashoka has the Collaborative Platform for Street Children and the Lead Young Program where they work with children to become leaders in the future by organizing campaigns in public and private schools aiming to encourage the young generations to think outside the box, according to Bibars.

Bibars declared a new program for women entrepreneurs called Women’s Initiative for Social Entrepreneurship (WISE), “ We try to meet women who have new ideas and work on overcoming the challenges that they face,” She concluded.

Ashoka is an established community of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs - men and women with system-changing solutions to global social ills. Since 1981, Ashoka sourced the best social innovations, supporting over 3,000 entrepreneurs through the provision of technical assistance, financial stipends, and professional support, mobilized thousands of people to create change, and enabled businesses, media, policy makers and “change makers” to work together to help contribute to the eradication of the world’s most pressing social challenges.

Ashoka Arab World (AAW) is a regional branch of Ashoka. Established in 2003, AAW has, to date, elected 90 leading social entrepreneurs in 11 Arab countries into the Global Fellowship Program. These social entrepreneurs (Ashoka Fellows) work in various sectors, including environmental conservation, urban planning, health service accessibility, child and youth empowerment, civic engagement, women’s empowerment, education, income generation and plenty more.