To leverage the unique business expertise of selected Lenovo Leaders to help Ashoka Fellows address pressing social challenges and strengthen their impact;
Cultivate learning and experiential spaces for Lenovo leaders to develop and practice new leadership behaviors (changemaking) and systemic thinking and deepen their understanding on social innovation and the mindset of a social entrepreneur.
To pilot connections between Lenovo leaders and social entrepreneurs as avenues to engage further in the Lenovo-Ashoka collaboration
Our Journey
The program was built as a combination of learning and action-oriented spaces, where Lenovo Leaders had the opportunity to not only join specific trainings on social innovation/system change topics, but also to connect and collaboratively work with an Ashoka Fellow. These were the different stages of the program:
May 2023
Onboarding workshop for Lenovo Leaders. Introduction to Ashoka, the partnership and the Learning Journey, set expectation on role; meet peers, introduction to social innovation, Q&A space.
June 2023
Discovery Workshop 1 for Lenovo Leaders and Ashoka Fellows: Introduction to Ashoka Fellow, get to know each other, and learn how to best support social entrepreneurs (action plan).
Leadership Workshop 1 for Lenovo Leaders: Topic: What does leading change mean for a business leader?
July-August 2023
Self-organized immersive sessions for Lenovo Leaders and Ashoka Fellows: Leaders work with their local Ashoka Fellows on topics have jointly identified. By conducting interviews, Ashoka periodically monitored the flow of these interactions.
Leadership Workshop 2 for Lenovo Leaders: Share learning and reflect on what they can apply in their lives and work.
October 2023:
Reflection session for Lenovo Leaders and Ashoka Fellows: Closing session to harvest learnings and collectively share what each team has achieved. Each Lenovo team had the opportunity to present a summary of their experience in 5-6 minutes, followed by questions from Lenovo senior leadership. This space gave also Lenovo Leaders and Ashoka Fellows the opportunity to distill their journey's experience and share the program's impact on them.
"This learning journey opened my eyes to the potential of our Ashoka Fellow's vision. If we truly commit our time and dedicate ourselves to help support his cause, it will definitely open a lot of doors for all parties”
Lenovo Leader
"At the beginning the background was not so clear what resources we could use but after 2-3 sessions this became clear and was great to use different strengths, connections and opinions of the team to bring the right people together”
Lenovo Leader
"This experience helped me gain perspective. Ashoka Fellow Pablo and his team inspired us to think about technology as an enabler, as a transformational tool, as a driver for inclusion.”
Lenovo Leader
These are the Ashoka Fellows who participated and were connected with Lenovo Leaders:
Ashoka Fellow: Vincent Lagacé, Mexico. Organization: Nuup: Improving the livelihoods of smallholder producers by involving them, the organizations that serve them, and the corporations that buy their products in a common effort to design better, fairer value chains
Ashoka Fellow: Pablo Lecuona, Argentina. Organization: Tiflonexos: Creating a global community of visually impaired readers which, by using innovative tools supported by technology, is replacing the paradigm of dependency for the one of autonomy of blind people
Ashoka Fellow: Regina Agyare, Ghana. Organization: Soronko Solutions: Bringing women and girls into the Information, Communication and Technology space by providing them with the role models and tools to empower them from consumers to technology creators
Ashoka Fellow: Osama Manzar, India. Organization: Digital Empowerment Foundation: Building community-driven digital infrastructure across rural India, to universalize Internet access as a human right and turn digital consumers into digital citizens.
Ashoka Fellow: Ryan Gersava, Philippines. Organization: Virtualahan: Ensuring that the most excluded populations of society are given equal opportunities for high-level work in the new digital economy using an impact formula that integrates well-being sessions and community-building with digital job skills training.
OUR REPORTS
Ashoka and Lenovo have partnered over the past 2 & 3 years to harness the transformative power of technology for positive social change.
Explore the impact of our collaboration in both reports—and join us in shaping a future powered by technology and social impact. Together, let’s create lasting change!
