Global Trends in Social Entrepreneurship: Developments in a COVID-19 World

Three years after collaborating to publish "From Social Entrepreneurship to Everyone a Changemaker – 40 Years of Social Innovation,” Social Innovations Journal has partnered once more with Ashoka to release a new collection of articles "Global Trends in Social Entrepreneurship - Developments in a COVID-19 World." This issue builds a narrative thread of how social entrepreneurs have managed to achieve systemic changes at local, national, and international levels since 2018.

"Everyone a changemaker," the belief that empathy and changemaking are the building blocks for a society where solutions outrun problems, has had a global stress-test in response to the pandemic. The severity, scale and simultaneity of the challenge was unprecedented, and it shook the field of social entrepreneurship, much like every other field.

This edition draws upon a global study comprising of a survey of more than 800 fellows across 81 countries (conducted in partnership with the Business School of the Politecnico di Milan), as well as 32 in-depth interviews of various Fellows from a wide scope of fields, geographic locations, and backgrounds.

The study revealed that Ashoka Fellows are realizing systems change and mindset change in their various endeavors. Through their work, Ashoka Fellows are multiplying the number of changemakers and equipping each of them with the skills to contribute and collaborate towards resolving complex social issues together – factors that further accelerate “an everyone a changemaker” world.

Taken all together, the collection offers powerful insights for the business sector, tech, young people, women social entrepreneurs, diversity equity and inclusion (DEI), as well as social entrepreneurs and those who support them.