Europe faces increasingly complex social challenges. They require continuous reassessment of underlying causes, potential approaches and emerging stakeholders that can effectively solve them. Social entrepreneurs all over Europe are the innovative pioneers from civil society that address these challenges.
For the past 38 years, Ashoka has been committed to identifying the most innovative ideas and dedicated social entrepreneurs and organizations that address social problems. Ashoka Fellows go beyond tackling symptoms and aim at underlying systemic causes of social challenges. In the last five years, Ashoka has elected 194 Fellows that are active in Europe.
This study features Europe’s most crucial social challenges and it reflects the ways in which the Ashoka social entrepreneurs approach them. It also details the patterns of innovation that these different approaches highlight and their relevance for the broader European public agenda.
The motivation for the study comes from the need to better coordinate the work of Ashoka with external stakeholders and Ashoka Fellows at a European level in order to support systemic changes necessary for solving the complex challenges society is facing today.
