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KENNY LOW
The proprietor of not one but two social enterprises, Kenny Low
(recipient of the Social Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2007)
began his journey in youth services, volunteering at local
community services agency and coordinating tuition services, before
starting City College and O School. Driven by a need for
transformation in the education system for public school dropouts
he began City College, an alternative path for high school
education in Singapore. Meanwhile his love for dance since his
schooling days prompted him to set up O School, an institution that
promotes dance as an outlet of expression while also creating job
opportunities for talented dancers.
ANSHU GUPTA
Widely known as the Clothing Man, Gupta found Goonj in 1999 in
an effort to build an economic bridge between the urban affluent
and the rural underprivileged in India by sharing the excess of
wealth. Educated in mass communication and economics, Anshu worked
as a freelance journalist for many years before leaving the
corporate world to start the social organisation. Goonj collects,
sorts, repurposes and distributes surplus of clothing from well-off
households to the poorer rural ones where poverty is at its worst.
In 2013, Anshu was awarded the Social Entrepreneur of the Year
award for his continuous contributions to shrink the rural-urban
divide.
ASHER HASAN
UK-born, Pakistani-raised and American-educated Asher Hasan
provides high quality, private health insurance to low income
workers in developing economies through his social enterprise, Naya
Jeevan (which means new life in Urdu and Hindi). This initiative by
Asher is the emerging worlds first health maintenance organisation
specifically dedicated for the urban working poor. A trained
surgeon, Naya Jeevan is his solution against dysfunctional
healthcare systems that often work against the interests and
welfare of patients. For its approach of distributing cost and
social responsibility among large citizen organisations to finance
low-cost, private health insurances of the urban working class
poor, the social organisation won the NYU Social Entrepreneurship
Business Plan competition in 2008.
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Kenny Low
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ASHOK KHOSLA
A PhD holder in Experimental Physics from Harvard University,
Ashok Khosla left the scientific life behind for a more social one
when he began focusing on issues of environment and development. A
former founder and director of the environment policy unit for the
Indian government, he then went on to work for the UN Environmental
Programme (UNEP) in Kenya before officially initiating his own
social enterprise in 1983. Development Alternatives, as its name
suggests, provides innovative technologies and methodologies that
function as an alternative to the damaging traditional ways of
progress by combining the dual goals of creating livelihoods for
the poor and rejuvenating the environment.
DEBBIE AUNG DIN TAYLOR
Currently based in one of the poorest countries in Southeast
Asia, Debbie Taylor received her higher education in the United
States before accumulating more than 26 years of experience in
design and execution of rural development programmes. Her
non-profit social enterprise, Proximity Designs, which she co-found
with Jim Taylor, works to help reduce poverty of rural families in
Myanmar by designing and marketing products and services that
low-income farmers are able to purchase and use to increase their
incomes. Developing an extensive distribution network to reach
thousands of rural villages across the country, Proximity Designs
success garnered Debbie the Social Entrepreneur of the Year award
in 2012.
MARK RUIZ
The corporate sector was where this young social entrepreneur
first started, working his way up in a multinational company to be
part of the senior management only to leave it all behind to be his
own boss. Armed with a degree from Ateneo
de Manila and the passion to contribute, Mark started Hapinoy, a
social business enterprise focused on microenterprise development.
A portmanteau of the words happy and Pinoy, the organisation
strives to create prosperity in communities by setting up sari-sari
or small neighbourhood convenience stores in local homes to be run
by homemakers in Philippines. Empowering women throughout the
country, Hapinoy also teaches them the basics of
micro-financing.
MASA KOGURE
The founder of Table For Two International and the author of
Connecting the World with Twenty Yen hails from Japan, with a
Bachelors degree from Tokyo and a Masters from Melbourne. The
recipient of Asias Social Entrepreneur of Year award in 2011, Masa
was first inspired by the suffering of a relative with heart
disease to delve in deeper into the world of healthcare and
commercial markets. His international group Table For Two aims to
eradicate the inequality in food access and distribution by
transferring excess calories from the developed to the developing
world via participation of corporate canteens and restaurants to
serve healthy meals while donating for free school lunches in
African villages.
MEERA BHATTARAI
Beginning her career in the Nepal Womens Organisation, Meera
Bhattarai has been heavily involved in womens skill development
from early on. Now she runs one of the oldest and largest
non-profit handicraft organisations in Nepal, the Association for
Craft Producers, a social venture committed to improve the
livelihood of low-income women artisans of Nepal. An idea that came
out of Meeras frustration over the corruption and mistreatment by
government staff towards poverty-stricken women, ACP provides
design, marketing, management
and technical services to female craft workers of the country
while effectively ensuring production of high margined handicrafts
to be sold both domestically and internationally.
SANJIT BUNKER ROY
One of Indias leading social entrepreneurs in current times,
Sanjit Roy or more affectionately known as Bunker Roy, was once the
nations squash champion in the 1960s, representing his country in
three world championships besides being selected as the National
Runner Up for squash in 1964. Well-known throughout the world as
the founder of the Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC) or known
more prominently as Barefoot College, Sanjit has received numerous
awards throughout his career including the Clinton Global Citizen
Award in 2013 for his contributions to education, drinking water,
woman empowerment and upliftment of rural people in India through
his voluntary organisation.
WU QING
A celebrated role model for women in both her country and around
the world, the Chinese visionary began her quest to fulfil her
personal mission of empowering women and improving the law
governing them in her nation. In an effort to change the system
from within, Wu Qing began her political career as a legislator in
1984 and has worked tirelessly since then for more than 30 years
for the peoples rights in general and womens in particular. The
Beijing Cultural Development Centre for Rural Women, founded by Wu
in 1993, serves to support the social development of rural Chinese
women via practical skills training among many which significantly
boosts their economic independence and political empowerment.
S P E C I A L S T O R Y
