Our next station, was Malatya. In this beautiful city of East Anatolia, we worked with students and teachers of Tecde Anatolian High School (TAH) with the support of Ministry of Education Research and Development Office in Malatya . We were a group of seven students and three teachers. As the - RC SEC student team , we had the opportunity to work with twenty two students from TAH and our teachers worked with approximately twenty teachers from state high schools in Malatya. Our aim was to identify and design a project on a social issue by experiencing design thinking stage by stage with our partners from Tecde. The first day was so much fun. We got out of the school and paced the streets of Malatya. We met with many people and listened to their stories about their lives. Each of them had different things to tell about, different experiences, different memories. Getting to know the merchants in their own shops and trying to learn about their difficulties in life made us to create empathy maps easily. These empathy maps helped us to analyze their lives according to what they mentioned about themselves. With the help of the "empathy maps", we discovered some problems of the people of Malatya. This was the first stage: identifying the problem. In the second stage, we defined these problem by following the steps in -Ashoka Hızlan Fark Yarat booklet on Social Entrepreneurship. After deeply reflecting on these problems, we as groups created our solutions. The groups writes freely on the cards what they think about the problems and possible solutions for 30 minutes. This stage is called divergent thinking. In the end, by decreasing the number of cards, every group had only one card, which means one and the best solution. This stage is called convergent thinking. We defined the solutions according to what is written on the last card. The defined solutions were the most creative ones. Each group made their prototypes, which represented the solutions in the most realistic, hands on way. The participants were really much more careful on this stage of design thinking compared to the others. Creating something tangible and seeing the products were more magical than only dreaming. TAH students -were really excited after seeing their own prototypes. Some of them already e-mailed the experts in the field to ask for their support. This was really empowering for us to see, and as RC SEC students, we understood that working with our friends, visiting Malatya were very meaningful experiences. . The students also presented their prototypes to the headmaster of the school and MEB Research and Innovation Office members. Our teachers also went through the same process. We are so excited that around 50 people in Malatya experienced design thinking to interact with the social issues in Malatya. We discovered the city and tasted every kind of apricot. While we were in the streets, unexceptionally, every merchant who sells apricot made us taste some. In this city, every single thing had a connection with the magical fruit. Even the ATM’s and the things that prevent cars to be parked on sidewalks were shaped like apricots. The city had two big apricot sculptures. The apricotful chocolates, dried layers of apricot pulp, apricot, apricot, and apricot…
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On Tuesday April 10, as the Social Entrepreneurship Club, we had the chance to attend the “Mini” Ashoka Gala at Salt Istanbul, in which the speakers talked about “truth” in 21st century. The event has started with a speech from Itır Erhart, founder of Açık Açık and Adım Adım, who emphasized that our “reality” is not defined by the TV shows we watch and the news we read. Following her, Alexios Mantzarlis, director of International Fact Checking Network, focused on the increasing need to check the information obtained from media. After being inspired by all of these speeches, we were introduced to the new Ashoka fellow Mehmet Atakan Foça, founder of Teyit.org. Teyit.org is an organization that fact-check the news and the information provided in the internet junk to prevent people from being controlled by fake news. Even though it has only been 1.5 years since the organization had started to work, it had a remarkable effect in Turkish social media users and they had lots of positive feedback about their service. Being inspired after this gala, we now plan to continue being in contact with Mehmet Atakan Foça about his works and we aim to propagate the importance of fact-checking, in a way using our muscles for suspicion more against social media, in our school. Geçtiğimiz pazar SUNPO, İmece ve Liseliolyeter’in organize ettiği Co-Discovery etkinliğine katıldık. 14 mentörün gençlerle buluşup sohbet ettiği bu etkinlikten çok keyif aldık. Ömer Erkmen, Sinan Toktay, Eray Erdoğan, Emre Keskin, Ece Altunmaral, Aylin Dilaver, Fikret Adaman, Bihter Çelik, Buğra Çelik, Murat Karademir, Zeynep Delen, Serhat Taşova, Eril Ezerel ve Tuğçe Akbulut 70’in üzerinde öğrencinin mentorleriydi. Hepsi birbirinden ilham verici ve yaptıklari için çok heyecanlıydı. Bize girişimlerini, kurdukları merkezleri, başlattıkları projeleri ve bunlarla dünyayı nasıl daha iyi bir hale getirmeye çalıştıklarını anlattılar. Katılan öğrencilerin de harika projeleri, farklı fikirleri ve içlerinde dünyayı değiştirebileceklerine dair bir inanç vardı. Sırayla 5’er, 6’şar kişilik gruplar halinde 4 farklı mentorle masalarda birebir konuşma fırsatı bulduk. Hepsi bize kendi yaptıklarından ve kendi fikirlerinden bahsetti ve bizlere de aynılarını yapma fırsatı verdi. Daha sonra kendi yaşıtlarımızla uzun bir süre networking yaptık, pizza yedik ve yeni arkadaşlar edindik. Atölye herkesin kendi projelerini, düşüncelerini başkalarıyla paylaşmasına ortam sağlayan, masaların üstüne yazıp çizip silebildiğimiz, üretkenliğin ve yaratıcılığın buluştuğu bir ortamdı ve bu ortamda bizim gibi düşünenlerle bir arada olmak çok güzel bir deneyimdi. Kendimizi keşfettiğimiz, ileride neler yapmak istediğimize yönelik yeni fikirler elde etmemize şans veren ilham verici büyüklerimiz ve yaşıtlarımızla tanıştığımız bir gündü. Diğer etkinliklerden farkı gençlerin yalnızca birilerini dinlemekle kalmayıp soru sorabilmeleri, interaktif olması ve kendi aralarında networking yapabilmeleriydi. Bu güzel etkinlik için SUNPO, İmece ve Liseliolyeter’i tekrar tebrik ediyoruz. Last sunday, we have attended the Co-Discovery event organized by SUNPO, Pike and Liseliolyeter. There were 14 speakers. Omer Erkmen, Sinan Toktay, Eray Erdogan, Emre Keskin, Ece Altunmaral, Aylin Dilaver, Fikret Adaman, Bihter Çelik, Buğra Çelik, Murat Karademir, Zeynep Delen, Serhat Tasova, Eril Ezerel and Tugce Akbulut were mentors of over 70 students. They were all very inspirational and excited about what they were doing. They told us about their enterprises and the projects they launched and how they are trying to make the world a better place. Students who attended also had wonderful projects, different ideas and faith in themselves that they could change the world. We had the opportunity to speak with 4 different mentors in groups of 5 or 6. They all talked about what they had done so far and their own ideas and gave us the opportunity to do the same. Later on, we did peer networking and made friends while eating pizza. Atölye was a place where everyone could share their own projects and ideas, write and draw on tables. It was where productivity and creativity came together and it was a great experience to be together with people who believed in a better world like us. We got the chance to discover outselves and to get new ideas about what we want to do in the future. We were inspired by our mentors and peers. What made this event different from other events was that young people could not only listen to the speakers but could also ask questions, have an interactive conversation and do networking among themselves. We would like to congratulate SUNPO, Imece and Liseliolyeter for this beautiful event. Yesterday, we organized an event called “Screw Up Night” in Robert College. This event was inspired by our alumni Deniz Cengiz, who also organized this in her new school, University of Rochester, and was very happy with the feedbacks. As the Social Entrepreneurship Club, we are in contact with a lot of social entrepreneurs and there is a common message that we have heard from every single one of them: “You will surely fail and a real social entrepreneur will learn to be okay with that. Just don’t give up.” Having the encouragement to fail and learning to cope with ambiguity is a very important skill especially for our student body as we are encouraged to compete with each other and taught that failure is something that we should try to prevent at all costs. There are times when people experience stress because they are afraid to fail, afraid to “screw up”. However, an environment where people can casually share the moments they failed at something will both help people not make the same mistakes and show them that failure is not the end of the world. So, yesterday was the night to embrace failure. We listened to amazing stories from Mr. Welch leaving 1000 people under rain due to his miscalculations to our club member Aybala by accident plagiarising the whole essay that she wrote at 3 am. At the end of the day, having seen we are not alone and everyone can ‘screw up’ sometimes, we knew that everyone was feeling better with their failures, more understanding towards them rather than angry. Today, Hakan Habip visited our club. He talked about his journey and the journey of Bilim Kahramanları Association. After living in America for 12 years and in France for 6 years, Habip observed people that didn’t even know where Turkey was on the map. This led him to think that Turkey shouldn’t wait for help from others, the change needs to come from within. In 2000, he published a report of eight pages, which explained how informatics would be taught to the young generations of Turkey. His report referred to three main messages: Mevlana’s philosophy of “Come, come whoever you are”, Nasreddin Hodja’s “What if it happens?”, and Turkish as a language having less words to use in daily speaking, but meaning lots of things with just one word. But circumstances led him to move on from that project. It was three years later that his wife started a project, and he found himself organising First Lego League (FLL) in Turkey. According to him, this project not only gives a chance to students to access education, not in terms of the education that one would learn in class but the type of education one would need the most in life; but also unites children from different cities in Turkey. He says he had come to realize that there is no prejudice among children, thus we are born without our egos. But later it is being taught to us. That is why he believed that the only way to unite people and create a loyal community that cares for another will be through education. At the end of the day, as we made our closing circle and shared our feelings, we all felt encouraged and inspired by Habip’s speech. Sometimes we get to feel that it is only the people who are on the television, who have lots of power that do something to change the world, but it only takes passion to do so. Tinda: Going out. This was what we did this week. Something different. Something we don’t do usually. Our aim was to asses the needs of “our” community. Maybe the situation is a little bit contradictory because we call the community we never talk, never communicate as our community. Therefore throughout this writing I won’t call them as our community but Arnavutköy community. In our trip we divided into 4-5 groups which consisted of variety of people, walked around the Arnavutköy and visited the places in a normal, daily life attitude. We, with my friend Önder, visited a traditional soup place (işkembeci) and ate some meat. There were three people inside the place, two men which were both old and middle aged and there was a boy who was at our age. Through our conversation, we learned that the men working in the store were too old in Arnavutköy community, one was close to forty years and other middle aged one twenty. Like in many of the traditional talks in Turkey, our conversation came to the question of where are we from Turkey and the middle aged man was from the same city and even same county with my mother. After learning that our talking moved into a point which we were talking about the city of Istanbul and later to Arnavutköy specifically. The first thing I realized about the place was that there were both the photos of Ottoman Empire tughra and also the photos of Atatürk with near the big Turkey’s current flag. As later they started to talk about the community and their problem we realized that they weren’t complaining about any of the economic problems but they were complaining about the attitudes of people toward each other in all Istanbul. Like many of the old people they had issues a lot about new young generation having no respect and getting a lot away from their family. They later specifically complained about something Arnavutköy which they said Muslims are not respecting or even caring about the way Greek people live in Arnavutköy which they accept the fact that Arnavutköy in fact is the hometown of Greek people. It was at first interesting as I was expecting to hear them talking about economical problems more but even they accepted the difficulties they face financially they said as long as we are not hungry we care more about the human relations which affected me a lot. Rabia: On Monday, 14 of December, as Robert College Social Entrepreneurship Club we went to Arnavutköy to discover the struggles of folks. We went to back-alleys of Arnavutköy and talked to people about their life in Arnavutköy. When we were wondering around, we saw an old gentleman playing with a dog at the entrance of the market, waiting for its owner to finish her shopping. We started to play with the dog too, then we talked with the old gentleman. He said that he has been living here for 15 years and then he started to talk about his dog. Then the owner of the dog came out and she joined our conversation. Then, we saw a flower selling lady, who was sitting and waiting for customers. We asked her how things were going for her and she was really pessimistic about her life and she started to smoke. Seeing her cigarettes cut our conversation short and lead us to a diiferent street in Arnavutköy. As a general overview Arnavutköy has many layers, when you look at it. At the seashore there are many cafes and fishers, and it is beautiful but it seemed more like a turistic area. Inside of Arnavutköy was much more crowded, moving with the daily life and it seemed more alive and real. Kerem: In our trip, my friends and I went to the Greek Orthodox Church of Arnavutkoy, and visited the “muhtar.” Firstly, we went to the church. Although there was a person that showed us the church, we weren’t able to gather much information about the neighborhood from him. Then, we decided to visit the muhtar, Sedef İrteş, as she would be the best person to tell us about the neighborhood and its needs. It turned out that we were right. She said that she had been in Arnavutkoy for 50 years, and that she was the muhtar for 17 years. This meant that people liked her, and she knew a lot about the neighborhood. She first gave us a little historical background of the neighborhood. She told us that there were people from many different ethnic backgrounds in the neighborhood, and that was the reason why there was this old church. When we asked about the people, she told us that even if the people of this neighborhood had good education, some lacked proper ethical education. She said that the biggest problem of the neighborhood was pollution. She gave an example she saw just a few days ago. She said that she saw two teenagers spitting their sunflower seed shells to the ground, and even though she warned them, the teenagers didn’t listen to her. At the end, she told us that she was very happy to see us interested in the neighborhood and its problems. She told us that we were welcome to come anytime again. Aylin: As I walked through the streets with my friend Mert, first of all I realized how hospitable Turkish community is, in general. As we entered different stores the people were greeting us happily and they weren’t reluctant at all when it came to talking about their problems. The biggest problem of all was that people working in stores couldn’t find place to park their car, since the location had tiny roads and lots of historical buildings. I really enjoyed the activity in general. Walking and talking with strangers became one of the memories that I will hold through out my life time. Ece: First of all I want to say in the trip we had so much fun. At first we went to church, there was a person who showed us around; but unfortunately we couldn’t get much information about Arnavutköy. Afterwards, we decided to go to the muhtar of Arnavutköy, and I think we made a pretty good decision. She told us that she had been in Arnavutkoy for 50 years, and that she was the muhtar of Arnavuköy for 17 years. Also she was one of our friend’s aunt. After a while we talked about problems in Arnavutköy. She generally talked about education and how uneducated people act in the society. According to her the biggest problem of neighborhood is pollution. She gave us an example that she saw before which is two teenagers probably near to our age, spitting their sunflower seed shells to the ground, and even though she warned them, the teenagers didn’t listen to her. It was very nice to listen and talk with her. I’m glad that we had such an event that we can learn about people that are close to us. Alper: Today we were in Arnavutköy to talk to local people and listen their problems. Our aim was to share something with the tradesmen/artisans and make something different for both them and ourselves. Our group was a little bit crowded so we decided to divide into smaller groups to be more comfortable. My friends and I first talked to a man who was the owner of a fitting shop and he told us that the they were in a economic crisis because of the increase in American dollar. “The increase in dollar affected us directly because our stuff are from America. We are not in a good situation right know and this is same for all the small businesses around here and in Turkey.” Then we stopped by a florist and bought a couple of roses. The woman told us that “In the past everyone used to buy flowers for their valentines but now they have internet and they don’t come to us.” She was really sad about the situation and she thanked us a lot for talking about it. As a result the spirit in the streets are not like the past times. Because of the chaos of the big cities we forget to communicate and share. We shouldn’t forget that a small conservation or a small shopping is enough to put a smile on people’s face. Beste: I talked with a florist and a salesman. My observations made me aware of the people who live near by my house and their problems about the dead marketing in Arnavutköy. A good social entrepreneur should search and analyze the problems around him/her and this activity was the key to do this. I also realized that a social entrepreneur shouldn’t only stay in the office and create projects, a social entrepreneur should determine what is needed and what should he/she create. The salesman was suffering because of the shopping centers and therefore, lack of people on the streets. He said: “Nobody tends to go out in these days. They don’t want to do shopping from a store on the street, they want to do shopping in large shopping centers. And the funny thing is, our product is way better than them. (laughs)” The florist was also feeling the same way: “I don’t see people on the streets, people don’t see me! How can they smell my beautiful flowers then?” Evşen: It was my second time in Arnavutkoy hanging around and talking to the local people. Last year I had a film project in there where I had to film the cultural values in a specific area, and I had to choose Arnavutkoy because it was the closest. At the beginning of that project I assumed that it's a rich area and there wouldn't be any cultural aspects. That was because back then Arnavutkoy was sea, Bodrum Manti, fish restaurants and a link to Bebek to me. The film project was pretty successful, but this time I had the chance to ask about the people's problems. At first we were kind of lost and didn't know how the start the communication. I felt bad at the beginning because I thought no one would talk to us. Then I saw a beautiful dog in front of Bim and went playing with it. The man standing beside the dog started talking to us. We had a small nice talk with him. After that, we talked to a lady who was selling flowers. I asked her about some flowers and then "Teyze isler nasil gidiyor" She said they barely earn ekmek parasi; but while she was saying that she was smoking, which was kind of weird. Zeynep: While we were discovering the backstreets of Arnavutköy, an old looking shop attracted our attention. When we get into the the shop, we met with Canan abla, who is a furniture dealer. She was very kind to us and instinctively, a natural conversation started among us. After a while, she started sharing her problems with us. Years ago, she was able to make enough money but now she doesn’t have enough customers and that’s why she had to sell her house in Ortaköy and move to Göktürk. She said nowadays, people in Arnavutköy don’t really come by her shop. She emphasized the importance of education and said that we are the ones who are going to find solutions for the problems in Turkey. We also went to an art studio and met the owner of it. She was also very kind to us and said that she was so happy to be a part of an art studio. She mentioned how relaxing is being in there and she said running an art studio makes her happy a lot and she hasn’t got any problems. In fact, she was so energetic and cheerful. It was so nice to have an opportunity to also meet with a person who has good life conditions and happy with this. This motivated me and I wanted to help other people to also have good life conditions. Emre: Today we travelled around Arnavutköy in order to see the issues that we can help the community with. After we visited a church, we met Sedef İrteş whose office was near. Sedef İrteş is the mukhtar of Arnavutköy for 17 years. She was a very nice woman and we had a very nice conversation with her. She talked about Arnavutköy’s history and the problems that are encountered. She told us that the biggest issue was the environmental pollution, and the heavy traffic. After this nice talk we thanked her and we went to the meeting place of our club and we had a short discussion on our different experiences. Melisa: We started to walk on Arnavutköy streets to meet with someone that we can talk. We met an old man who has lived in Arnavutköy for fifty years. Our conversation’s starting point was a dog, but we ended up with the fish restaurants. He told us that Arnavutköy’s sea was much cleaner even ten years ago. He feels sorry for the pollution and the local folk think that the restaurants have poured all their trashes into the sea. Then we talked with a flower woman. She was complaining about money problems and she said “If we have enough money to buy bread, we thank God!”. I felt so sorry and I put my hand to get money to buy a bouquet of flowers. At that moment she started to smoking. I suddenly put my money back. These were the remarkable points from the Arnavutköy trip. I felt guilty for not having any idea of the problems in Arnavutköy where we live. Yiğit: Last monday, I’ve gone to Arnavutköy with club and I really enjoyed. We’ve talked to people, asked what they need and how is everthing going and we had different answers. The conversation I had with the stationarist was the most interesting one. He told me that he has lived his whole in Arnavutköy. He was friends with students and even teachers until they put wire fence between the place he lived and our school. He said that those wires were what ended his some friendships. So what I think is we shouldn’t have those wires, those people out there had done nothing bad to us and they won’t. They’re as good as us and maybe even better. They don’t have any bad feeling against us. We shouldn’t have those wires. Delal: On Monday, 14 of December, as Robert College Social Entrepreneurship Club we went to Arnavutköy to discover the struggles of folks. We went to back-alleys of Arnavutköy and talked to people about their life in Arnavutköy. When we were wondering around, we saw an old gentleman playing with a dog at the entrance of the market, waiting for its owner to finish her shopping. We started to play with the dog too, then we talked with the old gentleman. He said that he has been living here for 15 years and then he started to talk about his dog. Then the owner of the dog came out and she joined our conversation. Then, we saw a flower selling lady, who was sitting and waiting for customers. We asked her how things were going for her and she was really pessimistic about her life and she started to smoke. Seeing her cigarettes cut our conversation short and lead us to a diiferent street in Arnavutköy. As a general overview Arnavutköy has many layers, when you look at it. At the seashore there are many cafes and fishers, and it is beautiful but it seemed more like a turistic area. Inside of Arnavutköy was much more crowded, moving with the daily life and it seemed more alive and real. Merve Nur:
My pairs in Arnavutköy trip were Delal and Zeynep. At first, we had difficulties with deciding on which building to get in and whom to talk, but then a woman in her fifties working in a furnishing fabric store caught our attention. We got in and she welcomed us warmly. She asked politely “I know you’re students, what do you want?” so we explained her that we wanted to get to know Arnavutköy, and learn about the social problems in our community. She said okay and started to tell about herself. We learned that she had been working in the same store for 40 years and was living in Göktürk because sold her house in Ortaköy due to financial problems. As we expected, she also told about things related to politics. These are the sentences of hers that left with me: “Everyday I read 30 or 40 verses of Koran but I wear my bikinis and go to swimming as well. I don’t wear turban but I start everything with the name of Allah. Girls you should believe in Allah no matter what your religion is. And you should learn how to stand on your legs as young ladies.” She was so warm that the way she talked was so similar to our mothers. She even gave her phone number and said that we could call her anytime we’re working on something in Arnavutköy. How do you empathize with the “others”? With the people who you never see the world like the way they see? I don’t expect you to answer this so perfectly, because I know that it’s very difficult to find an answer. But at least we know that weneed to try to find a way. People always say that we need to empathize with the others but they never say how to. The founder of The Dialogue in The Dark, Andreas Heinecke helped us about the “how to” part and started this project.
When I first went to the dialogue, I had no idea about what was in there. I only knew that it was going to be a dark journey. Before going to the dialogue, my opinion about the blind people was familiar with the other’s: “Poor people, I wish I could help them, I’m glad that I see the world…” now when I think about my old thought, I say, “I’m the poor one to think that they can’t do anything.” I really am. We are the ones who see them as disabled. When we all were under the same conditions in the dark, I saw that they have a thousand times better senses than us. Before the dialogue, I never exactly felt like the way the blind people feel. But in there, in the dark, everything was so different. It was like living in another world, in a world that no one judges you by how expensive your clothes are or how beautiful you are… It was the world of my dreams: a world with no bias in it. Our tour guide (which is also a blind person) helped us in the dark and with his instructions; living in the dark became a normal thing after half an hour. We got used to it and our reflexes, senses got stronger. At the end of one hour, we were totally impressed. When we see our tour guide when the lights were on, he was the first person that I met in the dark without seeing. During the one hour, we shared our thoughts and we just listened each other very carefully. It was one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had. I want to go to the dialogue in every month. I think that all the people need to have a chance to have this amazing experience. I wish any bias would be this much easy to break down. I wish all the people would empathize with each other. But I’m not hopeless, I believe in the world that I’m living in and I believe in the people that I’m living with. Some day the people will see that none of us is different from each other. “Dialogue in the Dark” is one of the most effective examples of awareness raising social enterprises. Participants are trying to find their way and identify objects by scent and sound with a blind tour guide in fully dark rooms, which are modelled as a plane, car or tramway. The aim is to enlighten people about blindness and specially show the real obstacle: society.
Personally, after being a participant, I observed that blind people don’t think they are disabled, as our guide said “It is a privilege to not judge people by how they look, but who they are”. But they do think they are ostracized not because of their handicap, but because of the prejudice of the society. After this experience I agree, because I would feel in danger if our guide were not with us, and trying to comfort us by showing his being. It is easy to adapt to this situation to our daily life in aspect of blind people after being a participant. And see how they are excluded by society because of the society itself, but not because of themselves having difficulties due to blindness. For us, it might seem impossible to move without being able to see, but unlike our thoughts blind people are as capable as us. It becomes more obvious after participating “Dialogue in the Dark”, and seeing how comfortable the guide is when he is walking without sticks and touching walls to find his or her way. Also disabled people have specific abilities, for example, if we get on with blind people, they can sense breast cancer better than any doctor. “Dialogue in the Dark” is a great experience to get rid of our prejudice and to realize the importance of diversity. Diversity is not for separating but for developing ourselves by using different abilities. This shows that blind people are not different than the society and the only obstacle is prejudice in our minds. Our Mentee, Mert Özbay, did a little research on the name behind Ashoka! On October 13th, Nick Mcgirl visited us and talked about social entrepreneurship, Ashoka and Ashoka fellows. As fellow SEC members told, it was a great visit and we learned a lot about what qualities social entrepreneurs should have and the different areas they work on. We also learned a little about Ashoka and several Ashoka Fellows. However, there was a little question in my mind: Where did the name "Ashoka" come from? Turns out, Ashoka was a legendary Indian Emperor of the Maurya Empire. He controlled almost all of India. One of the symbols associated with him, the Ashoka Chakra, can actually be seen on the Indian flag. He is known for his legend, which is also the reason his name was chosen for the initiative. Ashoka used to be a bad tempered emperor, also a cruel one. He was called "Ashoka the Fierce" during those times, and he is even known to have built a torture chamber. As the emperor, he wanted to make his empire larger. He went on and made many conquests, the bloodiest of them all being the Kalinga War. Conquest of Kalinga was a total destruction. There were hundreds of thousands of dead people, including many innocent mothers and children. However, in this war, he also saw the mass killing made just because of his selfish desire to conquest. He felt quite guilty. He realized he didn't want to be this vengeful and feared emperor, but a peaceful and loved one instead. He converted to Buddhism shortly after, and dedicated the rest of his life to spreading Buddhism, culture, and love throughout his empire and hopefully, the rest of the world. Ashoka was probably one of the oldest social entrepreneurs in a sense. He, like the Ashoka Fellows, realized that there is a lot more to the world than earning things for yourself or "winning". Most of the time, the real victory is helping others and changing the world in a positive way. There are now many Ashoka Fellows who are going on the same path Ashoka went, and I personally am quite happy to have the chance to do the same thing. Simay Yıldız, one of our Mentees, went in and searched for young social entrepreneurs!
2 weeks ago in our club we had the opportunity to discuss about social entrepreneurs around the world, where I was amazed by the ideas. We talked about 5 different social entrepreneurs, but for sure the brand “Toms” was the most popular one. Toms being popular as well as helpful to people made me want to research about how much the world really cared. I came cross this article about a week ago, and a couple of them amazed me just like Toms and other 4 projects we discussed. Here is one example: “The Global Poverty Project” was founded by Simon Moss and Hugh Evans (CEO) in 2008. Their mission is – in their own words – "growing the number and effectiveness of Global Citizens to achieve the public, business and political commitment and action to end extreme poverty." Their mission is to end extreme poverty by the year 2030 (The World Bank defines extreme poverty as $1.25 per day). So far they have launched numerous projects like “1.4 Billion Reasons”, a presentation explaining why it is possible to end extreme poverty, “Live Below the Line”, a campaign which challenges people to feed themselves with the equal amount of food as the extreme poverty line, and “The End of Polio”, which aims to build public support against polio. Hugh Evans is only 29 years old and has huge projects. These projects are all hopes to a new better world. If you are interested in the article and the projects the links are below: Global Poverty Project Forbes' 30 Under 30 http://www.globalpovertyproject.com/ |
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April 2018
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