Welcome Ashoka Fellows Selected in 2021-2022

About Rebekka

Rebekka Dober, following the motto “if it is about them, don’t do it without them,” is bringing Austrian youth’s voices into the spaces where decisions are made about their future. Besides following a very methodological process of youth participation, she is shifting mindsets amongst decision makers on what real participation means, whilst empowering youth to better understand democratic processes and their own role in the political ecosystem, with the goal of providing youth the opportunity to experience self-efficacy in society.  

Impact

• Since its inception, YEP has involved more than 10,000 young people in participatory processes while building a network of 500 schools and social organizations that are acting as multipliers. 

• Together with the Ministry of Education, YEP will rework the curriculum for all trade schools in Austria, which serve about 100,000 students. In this process, more than 10.000 students will be engaged to provide their feedback on the current curriculum and will help build an ideal curriculum adapted to the needs of youth that will then be included in the legislative process. 

Systems Change: 

About Laurent

Laurent is inventing a new way of safeguarding press freedom by helping journalists all over the world to self-organize and use their collective strength as a deterrent to attacks. He coordinates an international collaborative journalism network that can easily and powerfully take up the torch on an investigation when a journalist holding sensitive information is threatened, making any reporter’s intimidation, captivity or even assassination counterproductive 

Impact

• Five major collaborative investigations related to corruption, environmental crimes and drug trafficking have been published after the journalists working on these projects were threatened or killed, with tremendous impact on the judicial progresses and advances of the cases. 

• 45 journalists from 18 news organizations worked in secret to complete and publish the investigations of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia after she was assassinated for her investigations into corruption by government officials, revealing what people who tried to silence her wanted to hide, having an international echo way further than the small Mediterranean island: 74 millions people have heard about “the Daphne project” 

• In only 5 years, Forbidden Stories has profoundly changed the way press freedom is tackled, inspiring institutions like UNESCO to launch a global fund to support collaborative journalism initiatives. Organic replications have already started, with groups of journalists joining forces at regional levels to pursue the investigations of colleagues. 

Systems Change: Relationships, Rules, and Roles

Laurent’s work redefines relationships between journalists since he is helping journalists all over the world use their collective strength as a deterrent against attacks. Laurent has understood that fighting against these reporters’ isolation is key to render useless any attempt of intimidation. He also addresses the issue of the rules of investigative journalism, since making it publicly known that the story is in the hands of hundreds of peers works as a shield. Forbidden Stories is increasingly becoming a threat for the threateners. Through this simple yet powerful idea, Laurent is reversing power dynamics, profoundly changing the way press freedom is tackled, and enabling journalists to keep playing a key role in the fight for democracy and the disclosure of crimes. 

Activation of Changemakers

Laurent is activating others as changemakers as he empowers every journalist to become a safeguard and carrier of the message of journalists in danger. All these journalists become guardians of the safety of others, and of press freedom in the world. Forbidden Stories’ role is to coordinate their work; making sure advances are made, facilitating communication between journalists, and guaranteeing the coherence of the whole project. 

About Tessy

Tessy is creating social cohesion in communities by ensuring that neighbourhoods have the social infrastructure for participation, collaborative living and relationship building. Every One Every Day is making it simple for residents to start or take part in local projects by forming a dense network of communal practical spaces that are accessible and inclusive to all.  

Impact

• In Barking and Dagenham, where the idea has been successfully piloted, neighbours were able to create 21,000 new participation opportunities for community members (in year 2) and over 14,000 attendees spent 19,000 hours on peer-to-peer learning. 

• 1/3 of the neighbourhood projects have focused on ecology and as a result 6.300 m2 of public green space is now in cultivation. Within this space, there are now 14 bee colonies and 41 composting bins set up. 

• It was found that on average people were more likely to speak with other individuals from different cultures within each session. Additionally, 8 out of 10 people said that their trust in their neighbours grew as a result of participation.  

• In 2021 Every One Every Day was prototyped in Halifax (Kji'puktuk), Nova Scotia, Canada and in 2022 it will be initiated in Scotland.  

Systems Change: Relationships

Tessy is building relationships by making cities less isolating. Every One Every Day is transforming social infrastructure by building practical participation into the fabric of everyday life in neighbourhoods. Through Every One Every Day, Tessy is creating dense networks of opportunities and shared, communal, practical spaces that are as easily accessible as a public library for people from all walks of life to come together.  By building new types of participatory systems that centre co-creation and inclusivity, Tessy is forming the space for communities to build and learn from each other, creating environments for long-term relationships to grow and breaking down barriers that normally exist between communities.  

Activation of Changemakers

Tessy is currently building the Here&Now School of participatory systems and design, an online space with learning campuses rooted in the communities they serve. This project allows Tessy and her expert team to process community inputs into knowledge and share it. The Here&Now School is creating a space for new cities and communities to leverage knowledge and apply it to their local context - building capacity for systems change.  

About Rodrigo

Rodrigo is reconnecting people and organizations around social and environmental challenges in their communities, using collaborative technologies and methods. By disseminating his methodology in diverse settings, Rodrigo is promoting the rebuilding of bottom-up civil participation for lasting, systemic results. 

Impact

• Rodrigo selected and supported 13 citizen innovation prototypes in Santos and activated the local network of civil society organizations, public agencies, private companies, donors, social workers, and community leaders in the territory. The methodology brought together elements of technology to promote self-organization and connection; affection and collaboration; and knowledge creation, valuing both traditional, empirical and scientific knowledge.  

• In 2022, the Procomum Institute held 90 mentoring sessions, over 206 hours in trainings, and over 100 projects were collaboratively developed. In addition, 199 grants were given to Procomum collectives, individuals, and project initiatives.   

Systems Change: Relationships

Driven by the fact that citizen engagement has changed dramatically, especially in Brazil, Rodrigo creates conditions to engage people and promotes collective intelligence at the local level to create ideas to solve contemporary problems: the incubators of citizen innovation. He nurtures a collective sense of belonging, caring, and common good that reconnects people's commitment and desire to become agents of change using collaborative technologies and methodologies he has created. 

Activation of Changemakers

Rodrigo's vision is that implementing these incubators in multiple points, especially with people who are often marginalized and excluded from participatory and decision-making spaces, will activate a new governance system of civic participation that is not dependent on institutional and formal spaces. The incubators will strengthen formal spaces for participation and, where they don't exist, support local people to promote change and question local public power. Through this strategy, Rodrigo rebuilds and expands the network of bottom-up citizen innovators working to protect, recognize, and create solutions by and for the community.  

About Nalini

Nalini Shekar is tackling the systemic problem of waste management in India by facilitating the provision of employment ID cards and forming collectives of waste pickers that run decentralized waste management centers, resulting in improved social rights and dignity of labor for waste pickers, increased livelihood opportunity within the sector, better gender equity among the workforce, and widespread adoption of environmentally sustainable waste management practices. 

Impact

• Under Hasiru Dala, over 10,000 waste pickers have been formed into collectives. Through a “training the trainer” approach and forming strategic partnerships through the Alliance of Indian Waste Pickers, the impact and reach go beyond 100,000 waste pickers. 

• Between 2015 to 2017, Hasiru Dala pioneered major shifts in government policy: waste pickers were given full operational ownership of waste management in Karnataka. Amendments to the Solid Waste Management rules were passed in 2016 requiring household waste segregation, and door to door collection rules were passed in 2017 by the DWCC. 

Systems Change: Results, Relationships, and Resources

Nalini believes that the power to facilitate transformation in the waste management sector is held within the community. In this case, waste pickers have been the community that implements and runs waste management operations in India. As they have been historically marginalized, waste management systems have not adapted to the rapid increase in population, urbanization, and waste generation. Hasiru Dala is working to rebuild this ecosystem where the community can be provided a platform to solve these waste management problems, and receive the social rights and access they deserve. Hasiru Dala started off in 2011 advocating for every waste picker in Bengaluru to be issued an occupation identity card where they can now have access to social security benefits, as a first step to them being an active citizen that is integrated with the larger society. 

Activation of Changemakers

In order for waste pickers to become changemakers in the ecosystem, Nalini realized that occupational cards were only a first step. Moving towards increasing the scope of livelihoods, she began to train and facilitate sessions for waste pickers, in most cases women, in the environmental and business best practices of waste collection and treatment. These women became skilled in the segregation of waste, formed into decentralized collectives of waste management units within the city, and then began to advocate within the city zones on best practices of waste segregation and waste management. 

About Nikita

Around 60 million people in India are deemed ‘criminal by birth’ and subsequently subjected to surveillance, unlawful detention, and custodial violence. Nikita Sonavane is building checks and balances in the policing system that targets this population and is enabling affected communities along with the wider public to access data on these arrests. She is doing so by introducing a culture of transparency and accountability and challenging long-held beliefs about De-notified Tribes. 

Impact

• Providing DNTs with the language, narrative, and data, Nikita equips them with daily negotiation skills to cope with systemic violence. Moreover, she has captured a sizeable amount of ‘criminal’ data since 2019 in her dashboard, in addition to representing over 50 individuals and securing bail for more than 40 people till date. 

• Further, in 2020, her organization has supported the legal education of two law students from the DNT community in order to directly mobilize the community. These students are members of a budding network of community-based law students and paralegals preparing to represent and advocate for themselves. 

Systems Change: Rules, Relationships, and Resources

Nikita’s consistent attempts to build legal and paralegal leadership within the DNT communities is enabling the community to access internal litigation support. There has been a significant change owing to Nikita’s litigation and capacity-building intervention – the police have stopped making “preventative” arrests within a specific DNT community in Madhya Pradesh. This change has resulted in a marginal reduction in the number of petty arrests since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Nikita’s goal is to eventually assume an advisory role, merely guiding DNT community members in their own emancipation. She is also looking to partner with organizations such as IDIA, founded by Shamnad Basheer, that have established networks and work towards a vision of democratizing access to legal education to under presented communities. 

Activation of Changemakers

Nikita’s evidence-based approach of documenting systemic violence and surveillance helps decriminalize DNTs' image in the public arena. It also allows other stakeholders to push for policy-level reforms in the legal justice system. For instance, using the data procured by CPAP, organizations involved in providing livelihoods, housing etc., gain practical tools to demonstrate DNTs' loss of employment and housing due to their ‘criminal’ status in society. By mobilizing multiple stakeholders, Nikita coordinates an ecosystem fostering decriminalization and subsequent rehabilitation of DNTs. 

About Uma

Uma Chatterjee is putting survivors of trafficking at the center of India’s anti-trafficking movement. She is catalyzing them to become first-generation leaders, entrepreneurs and policy advocates who change the narratives and practices of their sector. These ‘survivor-changemakers’ are setting up their own organizations, businesses, and advocacy platforms, from where they collaborate directly with governments, markets and society, as powerful representatives of their field. By doing so, they are building new livelihoods and laws that will restore their lost dreams, dignity, and citizenship. 

Impact

• Over five years, Uma and her team have facilitated 5000 survivors of trafficking to form and lead 26 collectives of their own. Uma is scaffolding these survivor groups and organizations with an enabling eco-system of grassroots non-profits. 13 partner organizations are replicating Uma’s model across 10 states. 

• Sanjog’s 13 partners in trafficking hotbeds across 11 states build the ground for survivor-led groups to thrive. Uma and her team run parallel capacity-building, peer learning and cross-pollination programs for partner organizations. 

• The non-profit partners are coached to be the ‘guide on the side’ for survivor collectives. They are trained to facilitate survivor organizations, while providing stimulus to local communities and stakeholders to become allies. 

Systems Change: Rules, Relationships, and Resources

Through a unique, ‘trauma-informed’ livelihoods and entrepreneurship training program, Uma is opening the pathways for survivors to become entrepreneurs. She is giving them the knowledge and skills to engage confidently with markets, customers, finance, and regulators. For a community that has only witnessed a brutal and exploitative world of work, Uma’s approach enables survivors to see micro-businesses as a tool for self-reliance and empowerment. In the last three years, 200 women from 15 Self Help Groups have gone on to set up individual and group businesses. These first-generation women micro-entrepreneurs have forged a partnership with the State Rural Livelihoods Mission of West Bengal. They have received start up seed capital and small loans from local banks and organizations. 

Activation of Changemakers

Uma galvanizes survivor collectives from across India into a collective of collectives- ILFAT (Indian Leaders Forum Against Trafficking). This national platform for survivors is rich with membership from multiple and diverse survivor collectives. With 2,500 members, ILFAT is working with media, academics, and experts to conduct policy research. Its members track the effectiveness of the government’s district-level Anti Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs). The goal of ILFAT is to pass India’s first broad-spectrum, anti-trafficking legislation – legislation that is inspired and influenced by the survivor community themselves. 

<p><strong>About Elyes</strong></p>

<p>Elyes is countering the widespread culture of violence and youth civic apathy in Tunisia and Jordan by using informal debate as a tool to give voice to the voiceless and allow disenfranchised, vulnerable communities to be local actors of change. &nbsp;</p>

<p>&nbsp;</p>

<p><strong>Impact</strong></p>

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    <p paraeid="{cac789a1-8a01-4699-9f66-7901cf0a710d}{72}" paraid="1969513680">20,000+ participants have been engaged and mobilized through 2000+ trainers and ambassadors in 6 chapters and hundreds of debate clubs across all 24 regions of Tunisia (public cafés, remote neighborhoods, public schools, four universities, and ten cultural and youth centers)&nbsp;</p>
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    <p paraeid="{cac789a1-8a01-4699-9f66-7901cf0a710d}{119}" paraid="342589157">Prison Talks have been implemented in 10 Tunisian prisons with prisoners’ proposals of change being implemented by prison management.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
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    <p paraeid="{cac789a1-8a01-4699-9f66-7901cf0a710d}{132}" paraid="1178687430">100 Café Talks alumni spread informal debating techniques and discussed their initiatives for local change through radio shows and podcasts powered by iiDebate’s Media Academy. Café Talks model has been&nbsp;replicated in Jordan, activating 5,000+ people, and negotiations are ongoing for its implementation in three Arab countries. 30% of local initiatives are implemented by their initiators with the support of iiDebate’s Innovation Research Centers (IRCs).&nbsp;</p>
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</ul>

<p paraeid="{cac789a1-8a01-4699-9f66-7901cf0a710d}{132}" paraid="1178687430">&nbsp;</p>

<p><strong>Systems Change: Roles and Resources</strong></p>

<p>Elyes is democratizing the use of debating as a systematized and accessible tool for marginalized groups to (1) express themselves objectively and peacefully, (2) discuss sociopolitical topics, and (3) devise and implement local solutions to local problems. He is transforming marginalized populations (rural youth, women, prisoners, refugees) from passive citizens to local change leaders and policy makers. His flagship program, Café Talks is a valuable open source to citizens, as well as development practitioners, policymakers, local officials, and prison managers.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>

<p>&nbsp;</p>

<p><strong>Activation of Changemakers</strong></p>

<p>Elyes’ creative approach reaches and empowers many of the most disadvantaged to become givers; to imagine, argue for, and then organize for changes for the better. This is a part of the “Everyone A Changemaker” revolution that Elyes has pioneered in cafés, prisons and in different parts of Tunisia and Jordan. Embedded in his strategy is the capacity building of master trainers and empowered agents that are responsible for spreading the model beyond iiDebate’s physical reach. He was able to activate students, local officials, prison guards, and governmental functionaries to enable local change to take place within their area of power.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
 

About Ali

NeedsMap creates online and offline communities to disrupt the power dynamics in the aid sector by (1) creating transparent exchange processes through technology, (2) bringing together the benefactors and the potential donors in a peer-to-peer solidarity system, (3) activating local changemakers such as youth volunteers, dedicated teachers, hospital workers, village leaders to take their first step into tackling a social problem they face. 

Impact

• Since their establishment in 2015, 10 million items were listed as a need on the online platform. 8.4 million of these were covered, the total worth of these donations estimated to be around 20 milllion EUR.  

• Partnerships were built with 350 non-profits to run specific campaigns on education, health, and poverty alleviation needs.  

• The total number of volunteers connected to NeedsMap projects exceeded 10,000 in 2021.  

Systems Change: Relationships

NeedsMap is changing the relationship between the donors and the benefactors in a way that the system is no longer hierarchical, but peer to peer. Rather than traditional relationships, in which donors exert more control over what the benefactors receive, NeedsMap transforms the donation economy into one in which benefactors take control of their own destiny. The tool mobilizes community members, encourages transparency, and builds close relationships between stakeholders.

Activation of Changemakers

Young volunteers are a crucial part of the strategy as they are the ones approaching the potential users for the first time, conducting their onboarding, and connecting them with the rest of the network. These volunteers could also refer the benefactor to a local organization which may cover their need immediately. Overall, NeedsMap mobilizes community members, who are often only seem as benefactors, to take control of their own destiny in relationships surrounding donations.

About Mert

NeedsMap creates online and offline communities to disrupt the power dynamics in the aid sector by (1) creating transparent exchange processes through technology, (2) bringing together the benefactors and the potential donors in a peer-to-peer solidarity system, (3) activating local changemakers such as youth volunteers, dedicated teachers, hospital workers, village leaders to take their first step into tackling a social problem they face. 

Impact

• Since their establishment in 2015, 10 million items were listed as a need on the online platform. 8.4 million of these were covered, the total worth of these donations estimated to be around 20 milllion EUR.  

• Partnerships were built with 350 non-profits to run specific campaigns on education, health, and poverty alleviation needs.  

• The total number of volunteers connected to NeedsMap projects exceeded 10,000 in 2021.  

Systems Change: Relationships

NeedsMap is changing the relationship between the donors and the benefactors in a way that the system is no longer hierarchical, but peer to peer. Rather than traditional relationships, in which donors exert more control over what the benefactors receive, NeedsMap transforms the donation economy into one in which benefactors take control of their own destiny. The tool mobilizes community members, encourages transparency, and builds close relationships between stakeholders.

Activation of Changemakers

Young volunteers are a crucial part of the strategy as they are the ones approaching the potential users for the first time, conducting their onboarding, and connecting them with the rest of the network. These volunteers could also refer the benefactor to a local organization which may cover their need immediately. Overall, NeedsMap mobilizes community members, who are often only seem as benefactors, to take control of their own destiny in relationships surrounding donations.

About Sarphan

Sarphan aims to raise a new network of micro influencers in media whose awareness of political and societal issues is sharpened. Focusing on tools of digital media and encouraging all individuals in their network to build sustainable models, the team aims to start a long-term improvement journey for Turkish media.

Impact

• 144 new media enthusiasts in Turkey have been trained by NewsLab Turkey in the last 4 years.  

• 42 local media networks have attended the workshops of NewsLab Turkey team. Another 94 individuals are still getting consultancy from the NewsLab Turkey network depending on their needs.  

• Mentoring processes for 85 emerging leaders in the Turkish journalism landscape have been successfully completed.   

Systems Change: Rules and Relationships

The resources going into Turkish media sector shrink day by day and because of this, the industry is drastically losing quality.  To fix this urgent issue, Sarphan changes the rules of the sector, by giving power to smaller players and local journalists. Relationships between big media institutions and the micro-influencers also change day by day as micro-influencers reclaim their space in the system. 

Activation of Changemakers

Three of the projects created by NewsLab Turkey have caught special attention in the sector. 
First, the Mental Klitoris podcast hosted by Hazal Sipahi is the very first podcast in Turkish to talk about female sexuality and health. Now, there are dozens of other podcasts, aiming at different target groups, talking about issues on sexuality, pleasure, consent, and so on. Meanwhile, Gamified news by Çiğdem Özkan thinks of ways to attract more youth into the daily news. Finally, the Medyapod Podcast Network by Tunca Öğreten is the first podcast producers’ network of Turkey. It creates resources and peer-to-peer learning mechanisms for producers to create more insightful, creative content without auto-censoring themselves. 

About Maximilian

Maximilian Oehl is anchoring a significant and timely cultural shift in Germany’s multi-party political system; that breaks down hierarchical, closed, and top-down thinking in formal political institutions; and builds trust amongst political stakeholders. To achieve this goal, Max creates new pathways for talented, passionate young political leaders to reform old structures and modes of thinking by building and empowering cross-party political alliances.  

Impact

• Max has built a volunteer-led organization that supported ten selected BNB candidates during the German Federal election with around 200 volunteers. Three of the ten candidates made it all the way into office. This has been a great success, given that these candidates had never run for office before. All three candidates represent marginalized groups in German society. 

• Since the successful implementation of the BNB talent scout model during the German Federal election in 2021, Max has scaled nationally. The model is now replicated at federal, state, and local levels to support and connect political candidates in elections. 

Systems Change: Roles and Relationships

BNB candidates act as role models, ensuring young people from similar backgrounds feel encouraged to participate in political life. Overall, this will strengthen democratic processes as politics become more accessible, transparent, participatory, and diverse. Max also works on building bridges across political parties to counter polarization. Aiming to break down the barriers between opposing politicians and civil actors, Max creates an extensive network across Germany to support change-minded politicians. This step also increases trust between politicians and other sectoral agents, so that they can work on their shared agendas.

Activation of Changemakers

Max is creating a strong volunteer network of young people aged 18-30 years who organize and conduct election campaigns for BNB candidates. By participating in BNB, young people are offered a new, low-threshold form of political engagement which not only gets them interested in politics but enables them to actively influence political processes.

About Stefan

Stefan is driving a cultural shift towards open government in Germany by changing the power dynamics between the citizen sector and the government. With FragDenStaat, he combines an easy-to-use tech platform to file freedom of information (FOI) requests with lobbying, awareness, and political campaigns to make government more transparent and thus strengthen democracy.  

Impact

• FragDenStaat serves more than two-thirds of all FOI requests in Germany. Successes in one federal state can be replicated in the other 15 federal states in Germany. Lighthouse projects, like the first successful passing of a transparency law in Hamburg, are used as blueprints for other states on how transparency laws can be implemented.  

• Stefan has made his software behind the platform open source, and it has already been taken up by other European countries like Austria and Finland. Furthermore, a new addition of staff in Brussels shows Stefan’s vision to create European-wide change on the level of state transparency.  

Systems Change: Relationships

By combining individuals’ requests with campaigns from NGOs, FragDenStaat becomes a powerful new tool that enables actors to jointly hold the state accountable and change the relationship and underlying power dynamics between citizens and government.  These successes show that with access to information, power dynamics are shifting between citizens and government.   

Activation of Changemakers

Citizens feel empowered to be a part of identifying deficiencies and contributing to better solutions for a more equitable future. The process of leaking information that had been in the hands of a few investigative journalists has become a mainstream act every citizen can be part of. New independent civil society projects build on the success of FragDenStaat advancing the field of FOI in Germany.  

About Mimoun

Being a second generation immigrant himself, Mimoun recognizes that solutions to migrants’ problems should emerge within their own communities. By organizing a grassroots movement across Germany, Mimoun recruits young people with an urge to contribute to society and then helps them help others by organizing activities that tackle the most urgent issues in their communities.  

Impact

• Mimoun is generating social impact by leveraging the network effect created through deploying his strategy at three levels: giving young people a new role to play, getting institutions to accept and enable youth leadership, and growing organically through communities.   

• 180 Grad Wende is currently present in 30 cities and smaller towns in Germany. They have reached more than 100.000 people, educated more than 500 multipliers and 100 coaches, and helped more than 350 youth with labor market integration and educational guidance. 

Systems Change: Roles and Relationships

 Mimoun creates a positive cycle for these youngsters to lead their communities’ healing journey and in the process, breaks down negative stereotypes of immigrant youth. 180 Grad Wende also supports these emerging leaders with a strong network of allies. Once the police, teachers, and judges of a town are aware of the 180 Grad Wende youth, they do not only know who to reach out to when they see a kid at risk, but they also realize the power of these young people to create positive change when given the opportunity. 

Activation of Changemakers

180 Grad Wende also supports these emerging leaders with a strong network of allies. Once the police, teachers, and judges of a town are aware of the 180 Grad Wende youth, they do not only know who to reach out to when they see a kid at risk, but they also realize the power of these young people to create positive change when given the opportunity. 

About Laetitia

Laetitia makes planned obsolescence of technology and consumer goods a critical topic around which France is pioneering solutions. Through her organization HOP, she is acting as an ecosystem builder; enacting dialogue between public institutions, consumers, companies, and environmental NGOs

Impact

• Laetitia has influenced the creation of regulatory framework with a new legal obligations for companies producing TVs, smartphones, washing machines, lawn mowers, and laptops to display repairability and durability indexes on their product. She has also created a Repair Fund financed by companies to reduce repair costs for consumers 

• Thanks to HOP's efforts, France has become a pioneer in terms of the fight against premature obsolescence, and is now seen as such by the European Commission which has committed to adopt repairability and durability indexes 

Systems Change: Rules and Relationships

Laetitia has influenced rhe rules of her field as a pioneering voice in the adoption of planned obsolescence laws. She is setting up the conditions for the implementation of a powerful regulatory framework that urges companies to change their manufacturing and distribution practices.

To do so, she builds novel relationships between experts, NGOs, public agencies, consumers, and companies themselves with the aim of making ambitious yet applicable laws to incentivize behavioral and framework change.

Activation of Changemakers

Laetitia has built a platform that connects consumers and gives them access to tips about sustainable consumption. It also provides a space for users to give feedback about misfunctioning devices. Laetitia frequently consults users about their consumer experience to document reports and analyze data. Additionally, Laetitia relies on this user base to put pressure on companies. 

Recognizing the potential influence of companies that are willing to progress in their standards, Laetitia has created a network that HOP supports in their durability journey by organizing common reflection and best practices exchanges. 

About Anna-Lena

Anna-Lena is combatting the widespread problem of internet hate. Understanding that open, unfettered dialogue can only happen if people are able to effectively protect themselves from online attacks, Anna-Lena has developed the first national scale support infrastructure for victims of digital violence. With her organization HateAid, she aims to relieve the burden of the victims of attacks, enforce their rights, deter the perpetrators, and overall strengthen our democracy and society. 

Impact

• Anna-Lena and HateAid have supported more than 2000 victims of online violence, of which 700 initiated civil action and managed to land cases that have generated significant public attention. One of these is the high-profile case of a Green parliamentarian, Renate Künast, a former German minister  who with the help of HateAid successfully filed a motion against Facebook.  

• Law enforcement training on the implementation of specialized prosecution services has led to four public prosecution offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Saxony establishing reporting platforms for online hate incidents 

• HateAid’s practices are being replicated throughout Germany, as demonstrated by another victims' organization’s adoption of their counseling model after HateAid training. 

Systems Change: Resources, Relationships, and Rules

For anyone threatened by or subjected to digital hate, HateAid provides novel resources such as a free of charge emergency support service where affected people receive practical help and emotional support in person or remotely. Thanks to these easily accessible, safe, and specialized support mechanisms, victims learn their rights and are enabled to report crimes to the relevant authorities. Publicly showing that online hate speech is a criminal act that will be prosecuted sends strong signals towards perpetrators that deter potential and repeat offenders. Anna-Lena has also scaled her work to Brussels to directly shape the implementation of the Digital Service Act – an effort to create European-wide rules to address online hate speech. 

Activation of Changemakers

In order to bring about changes in the criminal justice system, Anna-Lena is educating judges, lawyers and law enforcement officials as well as policymakers on necessary mechanisms to counter hate speech. By creating public awareness of the ways to fight back against hate speech, Anna-Lena and HateAid also activate bystanders to take a stand in solidarity with victims of hate speech, enabling them to identify inappropriate situations and react appropriately by reporting incidents through HateAid’s reporting platform. 

About Hadi

Hadi leverages the value of open-source digital information as a resource to promote and enforce human rights in fragile or politically repressive contexts. He does so by introducing new methods of preservation, verification and investigation, which allows for digital information to become proof for human rights investigations.  

Impact

• Hadi has trained and supported over one thousand human rights defenders and journalists on the ground in gathering content, archiving, and investigating.  

• Hadi has been able to push for the first ever criminal complaint filed in relation to chemical weapons attacks in Syria leading to the conviction of three Belgian firms for violating European Union sanctions, and the opening of additional investigations in Germany and the Netherlands related to shipments of chemicals directly or indirectly to Syria.  

• Mnemonic has been able to archive over ten million records from over nine thousand sources across various social media platforms. Engaging directly with platforms allows Mnenomic to reinstate 650.000 videos documenting human rights violations that had inadvertently been removed. 

Systems Change: Resourses, Rules, and Relationships

By introducing new methods of preservation, verification and investigation, digital information becomes complementary proof for human rights investigations. This new resource comes along with a change in the role of evidence providers in ensuring accountability in human rights violations: it is the citizens and civil society organizations who take on a critical role in providing digital information in areas inaccessible for on-the-ground investigations. 

Activation of Changemakers

Through training, Hadi equips and empowers human rights groups on the ground to use archival and open-source investigative tools and techniques. In doing so, affected groups will be able to create and own the narrative of incidents for which they are seeking justice.

About Nani

As daily life increasingly occurs online, Nani Jansen Reventlow is ensuring that our fundamental human rights in the digital sphere are robustly protected and advanced through the court system. By establishing collaborative strategic litigation and building a knowledgeable and interconnected field of stakeholders, she lays ground for leveraged and highly impactful work in the digital human rights field. 

Impact

• Digital Freedom Fund (DFF) activities have already noticeably shifted the way the digital human rights field organizes and intervenes towards more strategically aligned legal interventions that use collective cases as a norm.
• Thanks to DFF there is now a broadened base of actors in the digital human rights field that have agreed on priority areas for digital rights in Europe. 

Systems Change: Resources and Relationships

Nani works towards transforming both the orientation and effectiveness of the digital human rights landscape in Europe by ensuring that actors in the field are better equipped with necessary resources for their work and empowered in their efforts to advance human rights, online and offline. Furthermore, she is shifting the power balance both in the digital rights field specifically and the human rights field as a whole. 

Activation of Changemakers

Beyond increasing the digital human rights field's ability to litigate strategically, Nani opens a space for coordination and collaboration that enables digital rights actors to fully benefit from the diversity of the field. By bringing together experts, digital human rights activists, and relevant organizational representations, alongside inviting others working on related rights issues, DFF seeks to make digital rights work more accessible, thereby changing dynamics in the field. In doing so, the DFF takes a unique role as a connector and facilitator between issues, actors and fields.

About Sonja

Sonja has developed a new framework to ensure that local experts across Latin America, Asia, Africa and beyond have the know-how and power to drive technology-rich solutions to the developmental challenges their local communities care about most. This Inclusive Network model intentionally limits the power footprint of international NGOs (iNGOs) by cultivating respect for the ‘power of local’. 

Impact

• Sonja launched her model’s first iteration, the Flying Labs Network, in 2016. More than 30 Flying Labs are now operational and enable local experts across Asia, Africa and Latin America to use drones and AI technology to design solutions to local problems. 

• Over 220 local experts and 175 local partners across this Network are now engaging both private and public sector organizations to implement locally generated and/or administered projects.  

• The Flying Labs themselves have hosted 60 in-country knowledge-sharing events to strengthen local ecosystems and train more than 2,500 professionals locally on integrating drones in their own work.  

Systems Change: Rules, Roles, Relationships, and Resources

The Inclusive Network model followed by WeRobotics ensures that solutions to developmental challenges are generated and administered locally, and that resource-rich iNGOs commit to an ‘end game’, or eventual exit from in-country projects, fundamentally shifting their relationships with these countries. For example, WeRobotics will leave the Flying Labs Network altogether, handing over all decision-making roles to in-country teams. A number of iNGOs are in ongoing conversations with WeRobotics about how to transition to an Inclusive Network approach, and WeRobotics’ Shift the Power Strategy is engaging them in conversation about how best to measure just how much they can reduce their power footprints and transfer resources across the Majority World. 

Activation of Changemakers

Between 2019 and 2021, Sonja’s model enabled the transfer of more than 340 project opportunities from iNGOs and international companies to locally led Flying Labs. More than 200 Flying Labs leaders are also using their expertise to lead more than 100 technology-driven projects that they themselves have designed and chosen to implement. Additionally, women make up 26% of this Network – double the industry average.  

About Mariana

Mariana is tackling human trafficking by making it so unprofitable and risky that it becomes rare. She is engaging businesses in key industries like tourism, transportation, and technology to inhibit traffickers’ movements, train front-line actors for effective response and prevention, and generate data to inform policies.  

Impact

• More than 250,000 people in strategic roles in the tourism and transportation sectors have been trained to detect, report, and prevent human trafficking. 

• Mariana has partnered with multinational companies to implement anti-trafficking strategies in their internal policies, such as Marriot International, Uber, Facebook, and Telefónica Movistar.  

• SINTRATA’s partnership with Uber has reached 1 million drivers across 5 countries. They designed a security program that leverages Uber’s existing digital infrastructure to get information into the hands of the right people at critical times: using real-time data to tailor campaigns, drivers in priority areas have been trained to identify suspected victims. They can use a new in-app button to safely and anonymously report cases to authorities.

Systems Change: Resources and Roles

SINTRATA collaborates with businesses in strategic industries to collect more accurate, detailed, and timely data on trafficking operations, which is stored in a regional database as a vital resource that can be leveraged by researchers and decisionmakers. Mariana is also encouraging businesses in strategic sectors to recognize their impact on human trafficking, and to use that position to be part of the solution. She helps workers in key touchpoints such as transport and hotels to see their role in a new light, arming them with tools and knowledge to act as frontline responders. 

Activation of Changemakers

Businesses and workers in key sectors understand the important role they can play and are motivated to become part of the solution. Engaging frontline responders allows SINTRATA to have “eyes everywhere” and generate a continuous stream of crowdsourced information about how trafficking functions on the ground. Meanwhile, industry leaders use their influence to establish best practices that ripple across the sector and collaborate with NGOs, public institutions, and researchers to generate solutions. Mariana also promotes recognizing trafficking survivors as key contributors who can share valuable knowledge of how trafficking operates on the ground and how to safely provide support.  

About Hera

Recognizing that the web is a powerful tool for vulnerable women who may have nowhere else to turn, Hera Hussain has created Chayn, a new kind of online space for victims of gender-based violence that honors their agency and context by connecting them with inclusively curated support and mobilizing them to act.   

Impact

• Chayn has reached more than 500,000 unique users. The Good Friend Guide, one of the site’s most popular resources, has been viewed more than 18,000 times in the last two years alone, and in 2020, Chayn’s how-to guides were altogether viewed more than 43,000 times by 14,416 unique users.   

• In the tech sector, Hera has become a respected expert in helping organizations understand how their architecture and design enables harassment online and offline and is equipping them to becoming part of the solution.  

• Working with Bumble to provide support services to users who have faced harassment, Chayn has become a leader in the tech and online dating space for helping companies think through trauma informed design to prevent abuse and harassment online.   

Systems Change: Resources

Chayn addresses gender-based violence in a way that combines trauma informed design, survivor-led resources and technology to meet survivors where they are. Hera’s approach has become the model for best practice in terms of using design and language that makes the resources and support feel more accessible to survivors of GBV. Soft, non-diagnostic, comforting language to help survivors come to terms with their experiences, together with visually welcoming web design and content written in over 14 languages means that users can access and benefit from Chayn’s resources wherever they are in their healing journey. 

Activation of Changemakers

Chayn’s survivor-volunteer led model enables survivors of gender-based violence and abuse to take the lead in shaping Chayn’s work alongside staff, and enables them to have real decision-making power within the organization. For Chayn’s 400+ strong base of volunteer-survivors, this is often the first time they have experienced this power and agency in their work and this model serves as an invaluable approach to activate survivors as changemakers. Further, Hera’s work in supporting and encouraging other non-profits and the tech sector to take a trauma informed design approach to their services is enabling changemaking amongst these stakeholders too.  

About Rosy

Rosy Russo is creating a movement of responsible digital citizenship in Italy to advocate, provide tools, and normalize behavior online that is responsible, tolerant, and inclusive. In doing so, she is reversing the course that the digital world is currently manifesting, from being a place where hate speech, division and prejudice are common to a world where communication online is defined by sensitivity, awareness, and critical thinking.

Impact

• Rosy has created a manifesto of rules that has been translated in more than 25 languages. So far over 25,000 organizations have become signatories of the manifesto along with hundreds of thousands of other individuals. Many of the signatories include local city councils all over Italy and other major organizations, which are investing their own money and resources to push this agenda forward now.
• According to independent impact data collected, high schools where the program has been implemented for at least 5 years have decreased digital incidents of hate speech and discrimination. Rosy is continuing to track granular level data by partnering with the government and academic institutions so that there can be course correction where impact is not as strong, while strengthening programs that are working.

Systems Change: Rules

Rosy is changing the rules that determine online behavior. Her engagement so far with 850,000 students and 170,000 teachers in combating hate speech has had significant impact on reducing incidents online. Meanwhile, the vast number of signatories to her manifesto demonstrates the wide reach of Parole OStili’s programs.

Activation of Changemakers

Moving forward, Rosy is continuing to look to innovate methods to further her reach and activate digital citizenship. Most recently, she has curated an online competition for citizens to come up with new ideas on how this agenda can be pushed further and the awareness raised because of this led to 100,000 new individual signatories and participants in certification.

About Jacek

More and more aspects of our lives are impacted by technology. Jacek is establishing a self-sustaining ecosystem to ensure tech works for the common good and empowers everyone. This mission has been particularly visible in the aftermath of the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

Impact

• More than 1100 companies and 560 social organizations cooperate with TTTR, which in a year and a half has collaboratively implemented projects that affect the lives of over three million people in twenty-five countries.  

• In the wake of the crisis in Ukraine, TTTR enabled humanitarian players to individualize support through mapping needs and solutions on the ground. It also created a space for a movement of librarians, archivists, researchers, and developers from different countries, who came together with TTTR support to find and quickly archive content from Ukrainian cultural websites. 

• A group of more than 1,300 cultural heritage professionals, archived more than 25 terabytes of data from over 3,000 websites, with many of the original websites going offline shortly after being backed up.

Systems Change: Resources and Roles

Jacek, convinced that the current siloed structure needed to be broken so resources are unlocked and flow towards activating social change, is continuing to overcome identified barriers. The tech industry needed Jacek to find and explain in a relatively easy and safe way how to get engaged and enables new resources in the ecosystem that allow technology to be used for humanitarian purposes by individuals with a strong understanding of how to get engaged. 

Activation of Changemakers

Jacek also affects roles in the system. Changemakers need to be more tech fluent to be able to compete with changing and more and more digital market and tech-savy people are proudly proclaiming that ‘the tech I know can do good.’ Jacek is ensuring that they understand the opportunities technology provides for humanitarian good and providing the knowledge to make this possible. The massive response in the wake of the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine demonstrates his success in activating tech-savvy Changemakers. 

About Alejandro

Alejandro is transforming relations between indigenous and peasant communities with the state and actors in the hydrocarbon sector, providing these communities with tools and empowering them in financial, technological and legal terms to allow their economic development, the preservation of their cultures and access to markets to sell their products fairly. 

Impact

• To date, Alejandro and Caminnos have registered more than 1,770 families that are direct owners of shares in the rural companies that they have formed with the communities. 

• The communities with which Caminnos works have obtained profits from their undertakings, having reinvested them in social projects such as schools, community centers, tanker trucks for transporting water, water wells, and a car wash center.  

Systems Change: Results and Relationships

Caminnos focuses on increasing the negotiating capacity of rural community actors vis-à-vis the State through projects that articulate community economic entrepreneurship with social development, fundamentally changing the relationships between these parties. It does this through the training of members of rural communities based on a parent project, focused on the sale of fuels, which generates results in the form of financial education, capital to develop community initiatives, and negotiating power with the Bolivian State. 

Activation of Changemakers

Alejandro generates entrepreneurial and innovative capacities in rural communities, which allows the development of community-owned businesses. With his work in vulnerable and marginalized communities, he introduces a change of mentality of a welfare model to a model of community entrepreneurship that transforms the rural economy and allows the community to have negotiating power with the State to improve their quality of life and demand the provision of basic services and the guarantee of their constitutional rights. 

About Sam

Through Communa, Sam Rosenzweig and Maxime Zait are spreading the concept of “Temporary Use with a Social Purpose” across Europe as a new norm of using vacant buildings at the service of local communities and citizen sector organizations. By empowering local communities to blueprint the future function of vacant buildings, they influence the property owner’s mindset to create more resilient, inclusive, and citizen-run cities.  

Impact

• Through its activities on 12 currently active sites, Communa is increasing the demand for more temporary use of vacant spaces with a social purpose by making this model attractive for new actors, such as real estate developers and city governments.  

• Having already achieved regional recognition by the Brussels government, which included the spreading of their TUSP model in their urban planning policies to make it easier for social organizations to use vacant buildings for housing or engagement of their target groups, such as refugees and the homeless, Communa is now working on further collaborations in Belgium and across Europe to spread a new, structured model to support cities.  

Systems Change: Results, Roles, and Resources 

Sam and Maxime have coined the concept of “Temporary Use with a Social Purpose” (TUSP), which consists of temporarily using vacant office or housing buildings to serve local communities’ and especially vulnerable population’s’ needs, thereby fundamentally changing their role. Communa has developed the legal, financial, and technical framework to make TUSP operational and is spreading this model across Europe by organizing a growing international community comprised of citizen sector initiatives from eight different European countries. This community wants to provide social purpose to vacant space and use it as a lever to create new blueprints of urban democracy that results in more inclusive and just cities that function in solidarity

Activation of Changemakers

Through Sam and Maxime’s TUSP model, they are also reinforcing the role of a key, but often neglected stakeholder in the urban planning process – the local communities that are living and working around the vacant buildings. After having signed a legal agreement with the owners, to use the empty buildings free of charge, Communa empowers these communities by giving them the responsibility to decide how to best use the space so that it first serves the needs of the inhabitants. Thanks to this TUSP model, communities can have a say in urban planning activities with support from Communa to create a longer-term impact on the future use of the building. . Temporary use projects show the buildings’ owners the potential of social use, allowing Communa to influence their plans for the space.  

About Maxime

Through Communa, Sam Rosenzweig and Maxime Zait are spreading the concept of “Temporary Use with a Social Purpose” across Europe as a new norm of using vacant buildings at the service of local communities and citizen sector organizations. By empowering local communities to blueprint the future function of vacant buildings, they influence the property owner’s mindset to create more resilient, inclusive, and citizen-run cities.  

Impact

• Through its activities on 12 currently active sites, Communa is increasing the demand for more temporary use of vacant spaces with a social purpose by making this model attractive for new actors, such as real estate developers and city governments.  

• Having already achieved regional recognition by the Brussels government, which included the spreading of their TUSP model in their urban planning policies to make it easier for social organizations to use vacant buildings for housing or engagement of their target groups, such as refugees and the homeless, Communa is now working on further collaborations in Belgium and across Europe to spread a new, structured model to support cities. 

Systems Change: Results, Roles, and Resources 

Sam and Maxime have coined the concept of “Temporary Use with a Social Purpose” (TUSP), which consists of temporarily using vacant office or housing buildings to serve local communities’ and especially vulnerable population’s’ needs, thereby fundamentally changing their role. Communa has developed the legal, financial, and technical framework to make TUSP operational and is spreading this model across Europe by organizing a growing international community comprised of citizen sector initiatives from eight different European countries. This community wants to provide social purpose to vacant space and use it as a lever to create new blueprints of urban democracy that results in more inclusive and just cities that function in solidarity.

Activation of Changemakers

Through Sam and Maxime’s TUSP model, they are also reinforcing the role of a key, but often neglected stakeholder in the urban planning process – the local communities that are living and working around the vacant buildings. After having signed a legal agreement with the owners, to use the empty buildings free of charge, Communa empowers these communities by giving them the responsibility to decide how to best use the space so that it first serves the needs of the inhabitants. Thanks to this TUSP model, communities can have a say in urban planning activities with support from Communa to create a longer-term impact on the future use of the building. . Temporary use projects show the buildings’ owners the potential of social use, allowing Communa to influence their plans for the space.

About Petra

Petra is introducing empathetic restorative processes to the criminal justice system in the Czech Republic by engaging law professionals, key gatekeepers of the system, victims, offenders, their communities, and more to make everyone a part of healing instead of punishing one person and leaving the other actors without support.

Impact

• Over the past two years, the Institute for Restorative Justice has engaged deeply with over 500 professionals either through their “restorative circle” workshops or other key partnerships such as with the Society for Criminology with over 300 members actively supporting the initiative.  

• Petra is also reaching hundreds more professionals every year through courses (over 250 people have gone through restorative justice seminars), workshops, and conferences she and her team participate in regularly.  

• Petra and the Institute for Restorative Justice have also worked with dozens of organizations in the Czech Republic and Slovakia to affect the way they approach crime and possible offenders as well as victims.  

Systems Change: Rules and Relationships

Petra’s strategy revolves around four key areas: changing roles of professionals in criminal justice, creating effective systems and tools for restorative principles to be applied to the system, thereby creating a more empathetic set of rules for it; supporting other organizations to launch their own restorative programs; and galvanizing imaginations in society as a whole to open up to a more responsibility-based, participatory relationship with justice and civic engagement.

Activation of Changemakers

Some judges have committed to speaking differently to victims and families in the courtroom, intentionally asking them about their experience, what they felt (rather than dry facts) or what they would consider helpful for the offender to do in order to repair the damage done (which rarely includes extensive prison time). Others have implemented a restorative circle in their place of work, with colleagues, or a combination of colleagues and the people they serve. Others are testing larger scale changes: one participating judge reported launching a restorative conference where victims and offenders engaged in mediated dialogue around a particular case, and described the creative ways he scheduled the process in between other cases in order to not slow down his resolution rate.

About Moussa

Moussa is disseminating alternative values and skills through the promotion of an entrepreneurial mindset to fight against the disempowerment phenomenon amongst young suburban dwellers. This helps them regain their self-ability to build a better social and economic future. He encourages agency and changemaking skills through either entrepreneurship or employment paths, which increasingly require agility and teamwork.  

Impact

• Moussa has this ability to reach out to  youth that don't feel legitimized by existing mechanisms made to support them, acting as a last mile solution for at-risk communities. 

• 57% of participants have initiated or are about to initiate their own venture, and 33% eventually decided to take the employment path and easily found a job, using the entrepreneurship skills developed through the program in their new roles. 

Systems Change: Resources, Roles, and Relationships

Moussa seeks to activate participants’ resources, especially essential soft skills in the job market as well as self-confidence that many of these populations have lost. Moreover, these entrepreneurs personify an unprecedented type of role model and extol the values conveyed by entrepreneurship: self-determination, problem-solving, proactivity and empathy. This original combination between entrepreneurship and employability programs represents a new, efficient way to support this often-overlooked group. Through his comprehensive action, Moussa is changing the way society and government look at young suburban dwellers, fighting against stigmatization, and building bridges between two divided worlds.

Activation of Changemakers

Moussa’s work is targeted precisely on opening up broad avenues for young people to leapfrog into becoming powerful givers in the world of change and interconnection. Above all, those who follow the training program become role models and ambassadors of this change of mentality to others. They become changemakers through their ability to positively influence others and to spread these values. 

About Eugen

Eugen is a guardian of the local cultural identity. He consolidates the social fiber of local communities, using the process of safeguarding monuments to rekindle an authentic rural identity and bring people back to their roots, customs, and traditions.  

Impact

• Traditional techniques and local materials are reintroduced as participating communities acknowledge them as an essential part of reclaiming their unique local identities, 

• The 20-25 communities per year that go through the process of reconnecting with their identities with help from The Ambulance for Monuments become best practice models for their regions and help citizens to value their heritage. 

• Eugen has increased investment’s efficacy with just 15.000 EUR per intervention from the Ambulance because everyone in the communities with which he works pitch in by providing what they can, such as construction materials, lodging, meals, financial and human resources. 

Systems Change: Relationships

Eugen's breakthrough innovation transforms the relationship rural citizens have with their unique local identity. Eugen turns safeguarding monuments into a new people-powered process that puts rural citizens front and center. Through this mindset, Eugen rekindles the local rural identity of people and brings them closer to their customs, disrupting the current pattern of feeling one has to embrace abroad and city-bred practices and mentalities, and disregarding the potential of communal growth based on local heritage, culture, and crafts

Activation of Changemakers

Working alongside a community of over 500 volunteers and experts connected to the field of safeguarding through fields such as architecture, history, and archaeology, Eugen reshapes the role of these professionals to be more sensitive to the diversity of expressions that exist in rural communities, thereby empowering locals to become guardians of their local heritage. 

About Iarina

Iarina builds autonomous teams of life mentors who offer a vital framework of emotional connection for children in state care. Her teams build on the strengths of these children; eliminating stigma and fostering their growth and wellbeing. 

Impact

• Iarina has changed the mindset of citizens and state care educators regarding the care process for children with trauma; now they create humanized and customized processes for children. 

• Each year, Iarina crafts comprehensive development plans for 3.000 children from 214 states, implementing therapy, vocational courses, and mentoring which helps these children prepare for life as independent citizens,  

• 9,200 volunteers (aged 16 to 65) have been part of Ajungem Mari’s life mentoring program for children, with more than half of them supporting these children until they leave state care protection and continue to keep a valuable connection with them beyond that point.  

Systems Change: Roles and Relationships

Iarina’s main goal is to reshape the role of “carer” into one of “life mentor” for disadvantaged children with trauma. Through working with diverse stakeholders in these children’s wellbeing, from state care employees to citizens, she enables volunteers to reimagine their role beyond simply providing basic needs and toward creating the long-lasting bonds that children need to grow as adults. 

Activation of Changemakers

Volunteers taking part in the life mentoring program become changemakers in their communities. Because the program is partly decentralized, they start realizing how necessary their support is. Their concern for these children mobilizes them into further action: some adopt children and keep supporting youngsters after their leave the care system, others become psychologists or change their profession to a practice related to childcare. The life mentoring program gives participants necessary skills to act on behalf of social issues in their communities beyond those within the program’s reach. 

About Jenny

Jenny is challenging the sense of isolation that families of children with disabilities and diverse abilities often feel due to silos built by specific medical diagnoses and traditional advocacy. Her new methodology enables these families to celebrate their identities, build friendship networks, and exercise their sense of agency to model and scale a more inclusive understanding of ‘normal’ across neighbourhoods and businesses. 

Impact

• Our Normal’s online platform connects families by digitally showcasing their stories about day-to-day life. Nearly 600 registered users have created profiles to date. 

• Our Normal families exercise their changemaking potential by advising companies and developers on how they can ensure their spaces are welcoming to all. Clients have included Sweden’s largest amusement park and Gothenburg’s Daftöland theme park, Passalen community center, and child-friendly Alfons Åberg Kulturhus. 

• Jenny has worked with regional Centers for Rare Disease and a genetic testing clinic to ensure their conversations with clients avoid stigmatizing language when discussing intellectual disabilities with expectant parents. 

Systems Change: Roles and Relationships

Our Normal is breaking down silos that have inadvertently formed around well-established disability rights organisations, forming stronger relationships in the process. The fact that 60 separate diagnoses are currently represented amongst Our Normal users helps to reframe conventional narratives that link one’s identity with the specific disability experienced. And while in-person gatherings are important to the Our Normal model, its robust digital platform offers a more convenient means for connection and support. This provides an important complement to other disability-rights organisations’ emphasis on annual conferences and other in-person programming. 

Activation of Changemakers

The Our Normal site’s Expo page enables families to showcase and recommend local businesses and places for family activities that are suited to children with diverse abilities and special needs. At the same time, families are enabled to assist Jenny in advising organisations on how to make spaces such as theme parks and local businesses more welcoming for children with different abilities and their siblings. 

About Francisca

Francisca is working to change people’s mindsets, awakening them to the many ways in which human trafficking has become deeply entrenched and self-replicating in society. She is empowering and mobilizing formerly trafficked women as community agents to sensitize young women in rural communities on how pervasive the effects of trafficking are, and how close it is to them.  

Impact

• Francisca created the first model of how to deal with trafficking from the root cause in Cameroon by using survivors as the face of the movement going to local communities and getting everyone involved.  

• On account of her work, the Cameroonian immigration agency has boosted vigilance to prevent young single Cameroonian ladies travelling alone to certain countries. 

• Francisca has also set up a tip line for trafficked girls in the gulf region to draw attention to their plight, and working towards helping them return to their homes. 

Systems Change: Roles, Results, and Resources

Through her work focused on roles, results and resources, Francisca is activating community leaders and stakeholders in the communities to take action and ask the relevant questions to prevent further pillaging of their vibrant female population. She is working with international and local partners to identify and provide access to travel funds and documents for trafficked young women who have escaped their captors but are still in their country of captivity. Once the young women return home, she provides shelter for them in her organization’s safe home while she works with them on developing independence skills. 

Activation of Changemakers

Francisca is positioning family homesteads, especially women, rural chiefs, and community heads in Cameroon as agents of change in combating human trafficking and domestic slavery. Through her community approach of sensitization and education, she is holding everyone accountable for the safety of women, girls, and young people in their care. By so doing, she is building a critical mass of people who can respond to the problem.   

About José

José strives to break the vicious cycle of discrimination, exclusion, and vulnerability faced by people with disabilities. He facilitates access to employment and leadership skills that increase their independence, while also engaging businesses, communities, and institutions to ensure effective inclusion at all levels.  

Impact

• More than 650 people with disabilities have found employment across 13 states in Mexico. Juntos functions as a bridge between candidates and employers, guiding both sides through a learning process that ensures that hires will be successful and lasting.  

• More than 120 businesses have changed internal policies and infrastructure to ensure effective inclusion of people with disabilities 

• José’s work has helped to reform the Law for Inclusion of People with Disabilities of the State of San Luis Potosí to include a gender perspective. This change was led by women with disabilities who participated in Juntos’ political participation training program.  

Systems Change: Rules and Relationships

José changes the rules of multiple fields to ensure inclusion of people with disabilities. He helps businesses to ensure that their policies, culture, and infrastructure enable employees with disabilities to thrive; provides training and support for people with disabilities to influence laws and policies; and challenges prejudice against people with disabilities that leads to exclusion, discrimination, and violence. José also supports people with disabilities to exercise their agency. He challenges narratives of dependency, victimization, and limitation to rebalance their relationship with their family and community so they can lead independent lives. He also connects them with employers and policymakers to ensure full economic and political participation. 

Activation of Changemakers

Jose has created a unique space for people with disabilities to grow as leaders. Through Juntos, participants gain new skills and connections that inspire confidence in their ability to be independent and create change. Juntos gives them an opportunity to assume responsibility not only through employment or entrepreneurship, but also as facilitators and mentors for new cohorts or as leaders of disability councils and advocacy groups. These opportunities allow people with disabilities to connect with each other, building up a collaborative network of leaders who mobilize for inclusion and promote new narratives around disability. 

About Temi

Temi is transforming victims of violence and trauma caused by systemic racism into catalysts of positive change by first affirming and amplifying their unique stories and strengths and then catalyzing them to co-lead a movement that builds resilience and new narratives in their communities.  

Impact

• Temi has welcomed more than 150 young black people in North West London as 4Front members and enabled them to tell their stories, build self-esteem, and embrace their agency in making change. She scales this approach by building a national network of organizations similarly committed to transformative justice and helping them apply the 4Front approach. 

• 4Front members have as a result worked with the local council to tackle how police responding to violence treat bystanders as potential suspects rather than victims of trauma. This has led to the creation of a Community Responder Program, which establishes the council as a first responder to incidents of serious violence to ensure bystanders are shown care.  

• 4Front members have also collaborated with two law firms to help judges understand the impact of trauma caused by systemic racism so that compassion might inform judges’ future decisions alongside consideration for the law.  

Systems Change: Roles

Temi’s work and collaborations across citizen, private, and academic sectors have created momentum for a new narrative on what it means to be young and Black in today’s England. Her work explores ways to place the oppressed at the forefront of change and to create community-driven alternatives to respond to trauma and violence. 

Activation of Changemakers

Temi’s approach to working with youth who are subjected to violence and discrimination leverages that shared experience to awaken their changemaker spirit, in a world of perpetual community trauma and recurring tragedies. By putting them in positions of power, she brings forward the set of core capabilities to unfold these young people’s true potential. She gives their stories the power to change the narrative at societal and institutional levels.   

About Francisco

Francisco promotes a process for restoring the dignity of transgender people, which allows them to cross all systemic barriers and think about life prospects beyond marginalization. At the same time, he accompanies key actors in the development of diversity approaches to build a more inclusive and just society.

Impact

• After years of advocacy efforts by Mocha Celis and other organizations, in June 2021 the 1% Trans - Travesti Labor Quota Law was approved. This measure opens a new horizon for the community that allows them to dream of a new life, and Mocha Celis' high school education is a fundamental training step that will help them access those job opportunities in the future. 

• Francisco created the first high school for LGTBQI+ people, from which more than 150 people have graduated and 90% of them have found employment. This project has been replicated and has inspired more than 20 similar initiatives in Chile, Brazil, Costa Rica, Paraguay and locally in the provinces of Tucumán, Santa Fe and Córdoba. 

Systems Change: Rules, Resources, and Roles

Francisco and his team worked on different rules and protocols that allow access to basic rights such as the rights to education, to equal work opportunities, and to express culture. Alongside this, they have created an approach to high school education that brings needs, challenges and expectation of people from the LGTBQI+ community at the center of the learning process. Francisco, together with his team, is creating new knowledge, through the publication of books and research, and the introduction a massive festival that allow people from the LGBTQI+ community to become producers and authors of cultural and social content, rather than the objects of study.

Activation of Changemakers

Since 2021, Mocha Celis launched a consulting and training division that focuses on promotion and training on diversity and inclusion, in key institutions such as government, large and medium-sized companies and social organizations. This work unit supports the change of mindset and practices within institutions while contributing to the financial sustainability of the organization. 

About Manisha

In remote interior villages of India, Manisha Ghule is opening up new jobs and career pathways that enable the most invisible and excluded rural women to earn with dignity, while transforming the agricultural economy and social structures of their regions. Across villages affected by global climate change, migration, declining agriculture, and joblessness, Manisha is shaping a new and sustainable employment model for rural women – one that establishes them as leaders of economic progress and social equity. 

Impact

• Over four years, 1200 rural frontline development professionals have emerged across 300 of the poorest villages of Maharashtra. From earning subsistence wages a mere four years ago, the Sakhis are today clocking a 30-50% increase in annual household incomes. They are also equipped with leadership tools, technical expertise, and the social capital to step into new career pathways. 

• So far, Sakhis have served 15,000 families, incubated 4,500 micro-enterprises, and engaged 3,500 farmers in bio-farming of high-value crops. They have enabled 20,000 women to become joint owners of property and opened up access to social protection schemes for 5,000 women. Riding on the capable shoulders of its Sakhis, villages are now reporting a 60-80% increase in household incomes. As a result, more than 3,500 families have altogether stopped inter-generational migration. 

Systems Change: Roles, Relationships, and Resources

Manisha has developed a one-year Leadership Development Academy; a resource that transforms women with limited formal education into rural frontline development professionals. The leadership academy is a springboard for Sakhis to launch into their change-making journeys. In every village, five frontline development professionals take on the critical roles of village livelihood officer, agriculture service provider, education officer, social entitlements officer, and Police Mitra (or friends of Police). Together, they build new knowledge, practices, and behaviors in their villages, that have otherwise seen little or no development interventions before.

Activation of Changemakers

Hailing from historically marginalized communities, these cadres of frontline professionals are comprised of women between the age of 30-45, who are selected at a lifecycle stage when they have accumulated lived experience and have leverage with their families/communities. Most have built a solid fund of grit and equanimity. Their children are also older – freeing up their time and mind space to focus on a career and embark on their own changemaker journeys.

About Sanjay

By forming a network of women collectives that enable credit access, livelihood support, and leadership development, Sanjay Sharma is creating a platform for women leadership, gender equality, and economic transformation for women across rural districts of North India. 

Impact

• Since its inception in 2015, the Manjari Foundation has enabled a network of 93,000 women in 13 districts across Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttarakhand. Their goal is now to scale to over 700,000 women in federations in the next 5 years. 

• They conduct community mapping and mobilization to reach a “critical mass” (around 30% to 40%) of women from each village. Sanjay envisions building an ecosystem network rather than just many independent support groups. 

• At the heart of the model, Sanjay measures impact through the improved gender index of these regions. The thousands of stories collected of women that have been able to be leaders in their families and community, experience freedom for themselves and their children, and shift the needle on gender inequality in some of the most affected districts in rural India is what Sanjay sees as success.

Systems Change: Results, Roles, and Resources

At the core of this model is the development of women leaders and the innovative strategy of growing the network organically. Women leaders belonging to an existing collective are elected as Community Resource Person (CRPs) who become multipliers for expanding the number of collectives. The idea behind this collectivized network is to build a platform for women to grow in their leadership as they become members at each level, pool resources together to form large market linkages, and finally, to build a movement of women that can challenge the status quo in their villages and address the social issues of these areas. Through the formation of these networks, women from these villages have been able to get access to credit, develop livelihood opportunities at scale and be able to correct market inequalities. 

Activation of Changemakers

Manjari Foundation’s innovation lies in the enablement and replication of these women federations by designing the structure and methodology for these networks, enhancing financial literacy, livelihood development, and access to markets for the collectives. They are providing training resources to women leaders who then deploy them within the network of collectives. Thus, setting up a self-perpetuating cycle of transferring leadership skills through role modeling and handholding to other women in other regions. The Manjari Foundation has local leaders in every village that they work in that are employed by the federations to mobilize, set up and equip new collectives that are formed until they are smoothly running. 

About Anusha

Anusha Bhardwaj is empowering high-risk, rural, and tribal adolescent girls to become first-generation leaders, peer mentors, advocates, and powerful eco-system builders of their own field. As she sets up an India-wide movement of adolescent girls, she is partnering them with young women college students who serve as trainers, role models and allies. 

Impact

• Over 12 years, Anusha’s organization, Voice4Girls (V4G) has launched 106,505 adolescent girl peer mentors across 695 schools. The peer mentors have independently catalyzed an additional 122,500 girls in a cascading model of change. 

• The V4G curriculum has been integrated into the state-wide social welfare and tribal welfare schools as well as in the adolescent girl programs of the Telangana state.  

• Across 695 government schools, Anusha and her team have cumulatively impacted 244,500 adolescent girls. Ninety-eight percent of the girls have pursued their higher education, got recruited into jobs or become self-employed.  

Systems Change: Results, Roles, and Relationships

By setting up self-perpetuating networks of adolescent girls and college women leaders, Anusha is demonstrating that girls can design and scale their own solutions, break barriers to access higher education and experience economic freedom. This ‘girls-for-girls’ model is now being integrated into the government school systems and is being powered by a field force of teacher allies. Impressed by the visible behavior change in the girls at the end of the camps, several government officials have invited Anusha to launch her module in new districts across the country. It is this momentum that Anusha seeks to build with more state and civil society partnerships across India. 

Activation of Changemakers

To add more youth power to the model, Anusha connects adolescent girls with unusual and exceptional partners such as young women students from local city colleges. These young women interns are rigorously trained as leader-trainers, mentors, and role models who take charge of the camps and deliver the transformative leadership curriculum of V4G inside government schools, at scale. In the process, this talent pool experiences leadership and personhood in their own lives, even as they integrate the V4G pedagogy inside the government school systems. Pairing rural, tribal adolescent girls with a field force of 5,000 urban college women leaders has been an impact-multiplying strategy for Anusha. It has enabled her to scale her model widely across seven states while deepening local ecosystems of girl solidarity. 

About Farah

In Jordan, a clan-centric country that lacks resources for children born out of wedlock and orphans once they turn 18, Farah Al-Sayyed and her partner Adham Khader are uprooting systemic discrimination against youth deprived of family ties, while empowering them to transition and fully integrate into society. 

Impact

• Sakeena successfully abolished the derogatory term “laqeet” (Arabic for bastard/foundling) in all official/legal publications and replaced it with “faaqed sanad osari” (deprived from family ties), a term chosen by youth themselves. 

• Farah took to the royal court and enabled youth deprived of family ties to be issued the same ID numbers as other citizens, instead of the easily distinguishable ID000 cards.  

• Sakeena worked with and supported more than 20% of youth who graduated from care centers in Jordan and provided them with a 24/7 emergency program.  

• A trusted partner by UNICEF and the Jordanian Ministry of Social Solidarity, Sakeena is supporting the monitoring of all care centers in Jordan and has set up a case management system so every orphan aging out of care centers gets a tailored transition and integration plan, without needing to change care-centers every two years.  

Systems Change: Rules and Resources

Sakeena is creating critical missing social networks and career opportunities for orphans and youth deprived of family ties. They are incorporating and amplifying their voices in changing unfair laws, policies, practices, norms, and systems of discrimination and abuse within orphanages/care centers, governmental institutions, and beyond. Sakeena supports their social, psychological, and economic development through a multitude of services and programs, as well as the youth-led safe space of Sakeena itself.  

Activation of Changemakers

Sakeena is the vehicle that enables orphans to implement the ‘nothing about us, without us’ approach to empowerment and narrative change. Sakeena actively engages orphans in all its programs and even in decision-making. Youth are at the forefront of the nationwide campaigns, represent their cause in national and regional forums, take part in Sakeena’s operations and social engagement, and contribute to the development of research papers and manuals to advance the understanding of their situation. A true family, successful members of the Sakeena community inspire and activate peers who, statistically, could have found themselves in very dark paths of adult life.  

About Tarek

In a region that highly condemns and criminalizes non-heteronormativity, Tarek Zeidan is working towards social, legal, and economic reform to remove barriers against LGBTQ+ communities and integrates them into mainstream life.  

Impact

• Tarek and Helem are rendering the anti-LGBTQ+ Article 534 impotent by getting the buy-in of Lebanese judges and leading to a tenfold increase in the number of lawyers willing to represent and defend LGBTQ+ individuals in courts. He has also successfully contributed to banning “rectal examinations” in courts and police stations, which were used to determine a person’s sexual orientation for the purposes of their incarceration. 

• The Lebanese Psychiatry Association and Association of Psychologists removed homosexuality from its list of recognized mental disorders as a result of Tarek’s work. 

• 50+ businesses and 4,000+ individuals in the private sector formally committed to non-discrimination against LGBTQ+ in their services, hiring practices, human resource departments, and advertising. 50+ MOUs signed with Lebanese CBOs to protect and support the LGBTQ+ community and include them in all their programming. 

Systems Change: Rules, Relationships, and Resources

Tarek creates jurisprudence surrounding gender and sexuality by engaging judges and lawyers as protectors of minorities. He is also countering discrimination against the queer community in public schools (through national curricula review) and by engaging the private sector to enforce enabling and fair practices. Additionally, Helem developed pioneering reports on labor rights and violations against the LGBTQ+ community in Lebanon as well as the first report studying the economic impact of homophobia on the post-crisis Lebanese economy. Helem's data is open source and their workshops are being turned into accessible online classes. 

Activation of Changemakers

Tarek directly transforms various stakeholders to long-term defenders of minorities in many fields through a series of extensive trainings (e.g., SOGIESC - Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression and Sex Characteristics), workshops, conferences, and formal agreements. Activated allies include lawyers, judges, law professors, students, as well as private business owners and staff who are mainly engaged through Helem’s first LGBTQ+ led business council in Lebanon. Helem’s outreach extends through their leadership academy to activists and CBOs who are countering discrimination and empowering queer people in various Arab countries.  

About Ghida

Using bridge-building rather than an ideological approach, Ghida Anani is putting in place the infrastructure for a sustainable system of protection against gender-based violence (GBV) in Lebanon. Through ABAAD, she focuses on shifting community behavior away from patriarchal practices, changing unfair laws, and providing GBV survivors with previously inexistant, comprehensive, survivor-centered quality care services.

Impact

• #Undress_522 campaign abolished the infamous ‘’rape marriage’’ law from the Lebanese Penal Code. 

• Ghida’s work has led to the development of National Standard Operating Procedures to guide service providers, ministries, the police, NGOs, and front liners involved with GBV survivors. ABAAD is also leading the Clinical Management of Rape taskforce in cooperation with the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health. Meanwhile, officers from the Internal Security Forces in 49 facilities were trained to properly respond to GBV survivors. 

• Seven pioneering shelters are providing women with crisis and legal rights counselling, emergency and psychosocial support, and access to resources and referrals.  

• The Masculinities Program has been implemented in 3 centers, where over 70% of ongoing cases showed improvement when it comes to coping with stress and developing healthy ways of communication and emotional expressions.   

Systems Change: Rules

ABAAD is changing the rules of the gender-equality game by building sustainable system of protection against GBV. Ghida is providing GBV survivors, governmental institutions, development practitioners, and society at large with the needed services, platforms, information, and resources to combat GBV. ABAAD’s awareness campaigns are changing unfair laws, altering procedures, and reaching people in remote areas to change their realities.  

Activation of Changemakers

ABAAD is engaging all stakeholders, even those others tend to avoid or fight, from a position of empathy, not animosity. She is activating men, parliamentarians, governmental officials, religious leaders and police officers as guardians of gender equality and active contributors to ending gender-based violence. Through comprehensive training, workshops, awareness campaigns, regulations, and dedicated rehabilitation centers, she is paving the path for these stakeholders to assume responsibility in building a safer society for women.  

About Maryam

Maryam is overcoming the socio-cultural inequalities that have hindered rural Moroccan girls from being masters of their own destiny. She is bringing girls together in previously non-existent safe supportive spaces where they connect with each other, build their confidence, acquire key skills, and gain access to information to change the status quo.

Impact

• 300+ Soar Facilitators, who come from the communities that they serve, are empowering rural and/or displaced girls in Morocco, Uganda, and Syria. 55 girl-led community dialogues have generated local solutions, and 43 girl-led Soar Clubs were launched to cement the skills they gained from the program. 

• In Morocco, girls in 72 marginalized communities across 10 regions have benefitted from PS programs: 97.57% passed the school year, less than 1% dropped out of school, and less than 1% of married underage (respective national rates = 85%, 26% and 14%). In Uganda, PS expanded to five locations, 100% of PS Girls did not marry underage and 100% of PS Girls stayed in school (respective national rates = 60% and 67%). In Syria, PS expanded to four locations and targets 571,590 internally displaced girls. 

Systems Change: Roles, Resources, and Rules

PS is championing girls’ roles in achieving mindset, behavior, and policy changes. Maryam provides local safe spaces where PS can build girls’ capacities to lead such changes in their own communities. This is done through the innovative Soar Empowerment Curriculum, packed into a low-cost portable and scalable toolkit. Upon completing the program, graduates establish local Soar Clubs to empower more girls and implement local solutions. Maryam has successfully secured the buy-in of local leaders as well as the backing of the Moroccan government who has granted Soar girls free access to their 32 youth centers. Finally, Maryam is leading a grassroots movement to close legal loopholes to end child marriage in Morocco by 2025. 

Activation of Changemakers

Maryam is turning rural and displaced girls into empowered trainers, facilitators, and local leaders; masters of their own destiny. Girls are trained to lead community dialogues to find solutions to their challenges. Graduates establish Soar Clubs that provide a safe space for girls to put their newly acquired skills into practice and engage in a variety of special activities. The clubs are a sustainable mechanism for ongoing leadership and civic engagement for alumni. This is rooted in the organization’s theory of change that empowered teen girls can influence their families, peers, and communities to ultimately alter the gender dynamic.

About Agata

To counteract violence against women and build solidarity among women with different backgrounds, Agata has created a primary prevention system that, through Strength – Courage – Autonomy – Solidarity, enables girls and women to create communities where they are free of violence and discrimination.   

Impact

• Women leaders empowered through Agata’s activities drive more than 300 solidarity-based initiatives in Poland, Czech Republic, Belarus, Ukraine, France, and Germany. They have created a network of Girls Empowerment Centers in Poland, Germany and Belgium. 

• WenDo (self-defence for women) Academy alumni network is spreading from Poland and Lithuania to Belarus, Hungary, Ukraine, and Iceland. 

• The Anti-discrimination Standards for Universities – a set of guidelines supported by the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland – is being implemented as a result of Agata’s work. 

Systems Change: Rules and Relationships

In the system of primary prevention of gender-based violence, Agata changes the rules where women have an active role in shaping the reality rather than one of supporters or victims. She does so by supporting them in discovering their strength and solidarity. Solidarity became also a primary description of the relations between women in the ecosystem. 

About Ewa

There is a widespread belief that men are more likely to be on the autism spectrum. However, in Poland alone, there are 500K women and non-binary people late-diagnosed or not to be diagnosed at all on the autism spectrum. Ewa opens a spectrum of possibilities for diagnosis and full life for girls and LGBT+ people on the autism spectrum. 

Impact

• Ewa conducts a broad media (from Vogue and Newsweek to the oldest Polish weekly magazine and Netflix) campaign to show that women on the autism spectrum are part of society but also universalize self-diagnosis, giving a chance for women to diagnose themselves as a person on the autism spectrum.  

• Girls on the Spectrum runs flagship peer groups that serve as support and growth spaces. People participating in these self-help and development groups have reported that it was the best developmental experience that they had ever experienced. 

• Ewa also creates spaces where women can find female role models on the spectrum to get inspired and broaden their perspectives in professional life. 

Systems Change: Rules

There is an unspoken but very common rule that says, that person on the autism spectrum is a boy with so-called “difficult behaviors.” These perceptions lead to girls going undiagnosed, which in turn creates a multitude of problems for them. Ewa changes this rule by pointing to its root causes and changing them, thereby combatting the reasons why girls and women are misdiagnosed. 

Activation of Changemakers

By creating accreditation for gender-sensitive professionals who work on topics pertaining to the autism spectrum, Ewa is introducing a new role within this field. Special educators, psychologists, and diagnosticians gain access to dedicated publications and workshops that allow them to get accreditation as professionals sensitive to gender differences on the autism spectrum, which in turn closes the discrepencies between the number of boys and girls receiving diagnoses.   

About Isidora

Isidora is building a new feminist movement with and for Romani women across Europe to reclaim history and build a better future. This new movement rewrites history from women’s perspectives and prepares young Roma women for the future by equipping them with the right tools and mentors. Through RomaniPhen, Isidora creates a safe space for Roma women to come together and reclaim their place in society.  

Impact

• With the rise of discussions around racism and diversity, RomaniPhen organizes a timely response to bring citizenship to all Roma women of Europe. Scaling through existing Roma-led groups, Isidora aims to spread this movement throughout the continent, affecting perceptions of the Roma people within both majority populations and Romani communities.   

•  The materials and work results produced by RomaniPhen are requested and used in day-care centers and schools, in political spheres, in academic publications and in teaching.  

• RomnjaPower Month was launched in 2016 by RomaniPhen and has been held as a nationwide event every year since then. In 2019, it was taken up by other European groups of Roma women for the first time.  

Systems Change: Resources, Roles, and Relationships

RomaniPhen works with the most underserved Roma women to give them the vocabulary to speak about their past and current sufferings. As these women learn more about systemic oppression, they acquire tools to break the vicious cycle of knowledge about them that is being produced without their insight. RomaniPhen aims to support younger generations to continue this movement. For this, they provide young Roma girls with stories and role models with the goal of acceptance of their Roma identity. RomaniPhen also reaches out to teachers from schools with high Roma student density. Going through workshops and trainings, these teachers become available to their young Roma women students’ needs of mentorship and coaching.

Activation of Changemakers

Isidora is now working with other organizations and networks representing marginalized populations in Germany, such as the Initiative for Black People in Germany. By providing toolkits and blueprints on establishing and managing community self-organizational structures and networks, she wants to enable them to develop their own community-led responses regarding their exclusion and misrepresentation. 

About Ariel

Ariel Koren is reimagining how we fight for language justice by building a powerful collective of interpreters ready to provide high-quality, trauma-informed translation in urgent situations. Ariel’s collective, Respond Crisis Translation, is creating an ecosystem where speakers of marginalized languages can find equitable, paid work and people seeking asylum, medical care, or otherwise navigating complex systems in their non-native languages will no longer struggle against language violence. 

Impact

• Respond Crisis Translation has a three-pronged strategy for institutionalizing language justice; building a system with the capacity to meet the need, advancing economic justice for translators, and driving legal and policy advocacy.   

• The Respond Crisis Translation collective now includes over 2,500 rapid-response trauma-informed translators and interpreters, who have translated more than 28,000 pages of documents and 135,000 audio minutes.  

• They operate in 108 languages and work with 120 partner organizations, as well as individual clients who reach out directly.  

Systems Change: Roles

Ariel is lifting up and professionalizing the role of translators. By building a platform of professional translators of a vast array of languages, including marginalized and rare languages, she proves that it’s possible for everyone to experience their right to quality translation when interacting with legal, medical, and immigration systems. There are plenty of talented translators out there, but many of them are denied the possibility of working as translators because translation work is underfunded and often even unfunded, and therefore at the systemic level is still not currently a viable career opportunity.  

Activation of Changemakers

Through a global collaboration to eliminate language barriers, Ariel empowers translators as well as the speakers of marginalized languages as changemakers. Respond is partnering with hundreds of collectives, activists, and organizations working across all arenas in which language violence is rampant to build the infrastructure for new systems that fund and prioritize quality interpretation and translation. This ecosystem of funders and partner organizations that understand the importance of translation, and qualified, quality interpreters will eventually weave through all existing systems where language violence currently takes place, promoting and enforcing language justice in its place. 

About Bree

Working with first-time home buyers and an array of city actors, Bree is turning abandoned structures within transforming historically redlined neighborhoods into opportunities for Black homeownership and block-level restoration, reviving once-thriving Black communities. 

Impact

• In January of 2021, Parity received its first seed investment. Along with an attorney specializing in tax sale foreclosure to usher the liens through legal proceedings, they acquired 42 tax liens of abandoned and vacant property in a 12-acre, historically black neighborhood in Baltimore. They are on track to acquire 50 more by the end of 2023, with the first cohort of residents moving into their homes in the fall of 2022, with 60 more future homeowners in queue.  

• In five years, Bree aims to restore 200 homes per year in Baltimore while sharing and witnessing the model be adopted in cities around the country. 

Systems Change: Results and Resources

At a moment when home ownership is increasingly out of reach for many, Bree is connecting families with opportunities to collectively purchase and rehabilitate affordable homes in hyper-vacant neighborhoods and, as a community, revive whole city blocks. Where most developers focus on relatively stabilized neighborhoods to reduce risk, Bree works in the communities deemed “unredeemable” by traditional institutions. And where most development causes displacement, Bree’s approach makes sure that legacy residents stay put. 

Activation of Changemakers

By creating a model for development without displacement, Bree creates pathways for local changemakers to set down roots, build wealth, and transform their neighborhoods. She is proving that people still value these neighborhoods and in doing so, she's prompted a radical revaluing of Black neighborhoods by Black residents themselves (and financial institutions, too). Because it’s not just the bones of a house that give it value, it’s the way in which neighbors and the surrounding community make it a desirable place to live, and now whole groups of new homeowners can benefit from that value they themselves are creating.