The Environmental Innovations Initiative (EII) applies the tools of social entrepreneurship to help refine, accelerate, and showcase innovative new solutions for tackling the world's most pressing environmental problems.

EII works with partner organizations and over 350 leading social entrepreneurs who are already improving the relationship between humans and the natural world.  EII identifies underlying principles in successful environmental innovations and then promotes those back to the Ashoka community of Fellows and programs for direct implementation, to the broader environment and development community, and to leading educational institutions. The end result is spread of powerful actions and knowledge which is built on the real world successes of these enviromental innovators.

EII activities include:

• The Ashoka Water Innovations work, which is collaborating now with 33 leading social entrepreneurs in India, Africa, Asia, and Latin America to surface and spread powerful new knowledge and action opportunities in water and sanitation management. EII selected this topic because the Ashoka Fellows predicted its emergence as a global priority over five years ago.
• The launch of Community Greens, which is one example of a program built to demonstrate the principles EII work has deveoped.
• Additional workshops and collaborations where environmental leaders discuss and articulate key principles, as summarized in several EII publications.
• Developing case studies which demonstrate some of the EII principles by exploring the work of individual Ashoka Fellows.
• Publication and archiving of periodic EII Newsletters.
• Dissemination of the results from all these activities into other programs at Ashoka and to other organizations interested in the lessons of social entrepreneurship for water and sanitation management worldwide.  For example, as insights and action opportunities surface around financial services or technological innovations related to the environment, EII works with other teams at Ashoka and elsewhere that focus on those topics.

For more information about EII, contact David Strelneck at .