Ashoka Fellow Roshaneh Zafar and Kashf Foundation's work will be featured on Amanpour on CNN International today! (Thursday, March 18th, 2010). Kashf's mission is to alleviate poverty by providing quality and cost effective microfinance services to low income households, especially women, in order to enhance their economic role and decision-making capacity.

This story was written by Andrea Boston and originally posted on Changemakers.com.

About 1 year ago, some colleagues from graduate school and I had the privelage to work with DataDyne for our final project for our studies. We had the opportunity to work with Dr. Joel Selanikio, the co-founder, and evaluate user adoption of DataDyne's EpiSurveyor in Kenya.

Priya Parker has worked in India, Africa and the US on peace-building and social-innovation.

I received this by email recently:

Tia Johnston Brown, Director for Ashoka's Youth Venture initiative, on ‘creating an “everyone a changemaker” world’:

South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) is currently happening in Austin, overwhelming the Twitter accounts of many of us left behind with the #sxsw hashtag. SXSWi is a huge collection of panels, workshops and venders promoting the latest in social technologies.

Good Capitalist Party at SXSWi reaches 1500 registrations
Ashoka’s Changemakers, along with Acumen Fund and the Social Capital Markets Conference is a sponsor of what looks to be one of the biggest parties at this year’s South by Southwest Interactive Conference. If you’re in Austin don’t miss it!

Ashoka Peace contributor Rebecca Sargent recently wrote a post on rebuilding efforts in disaster zones. In her post she makes the important connection between reconstruction efforts and building peace throughout the affected communities: "Without proper rebuilding, the potential for violence in the region grows, as people are forced into alternative choices to feed, shelter and support themselves and their families. Peace can only truly begin to be built when people have access to their basic needs.

On the 27th of February Chile was hit with an 8.8 magnitude earthquake, the fifth most powerful earthquake in history. Moments after the earthquake, Ashoka’s staff in the Southern Cone were in contact with the 34 Ashoka Fellows residing in Chile to offer them psychological support and appraise their needs. Ashoka has now been able to communicate with nearly all of them, and although the material losses are great, the Fellows, their families and constituents are accounted for and safe.
 

On this week’s episode of the AshokaTECH Podcast, host Alex Budak interviews the co-founder and CEO of Kiva.org Matt Flannery.