Invention and social entrepreneurship can align in powerful ways, enabling individuals to be change-makers who ameliorate the world's most pressing problems.

In 2007, the Lemelson Foundation partnered with Ashoka, the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs, on a three-year effort to build a critical mass of 100 inventor-entrepreneurs.

The Ashoka-Lemelson Fellowship Program:

• Identifies, supports, and celebrates social innovators whose technologies offer fresh, effective approaches to advancing social change.
• Builds resources for peer mentoring, financing, R&D testing and refinement, and delivering technologies that generate income and improve lives.

In its first two years, the Program identified and supported 67 fellows, leading to the creation of 138 new technology manufacturing or distribution enterprises and 328 new jobs. Today, technologies developed through the work of Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows are:

• Being used by over 6,100 entrepreneurs to generate income
• Benefitting nearly 600,000 households.

Read about the system-changing work of three featured Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows:

• Tri Mumpuni
• José Roberto
• Heike Schettler

Read More: Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows

Go to Resources Page for a list of all Programs and Grants that receive our support.