This is a CTP of initiative: Ashoka Poland
This CTP details the initial struggles and innovative solutions of AP regarding establishing the Ashoka office in Poland and finding eligible Fellows in remote areas across the country. According to the interviewee, the development of Ashoka CEE has been rather different from that of Western Europe. In Poland, they experienced it as a discontinuous process, “not a continuity but a jump”, due to the systemic changes. In the initial stages of the organization, there was much “attraction and bonds” with the solidarity movement. However, it was more characterized by the birth of a “new civil society”, and new initiatives springing up “than a political movement”. The main initial challenge, and turning point, in AP's history, was finding "social entrepreneurs in remote areas”. Although they had access to “smart, city guys”, it was very difficult to reach innovators in remote areas as due to lack of education, connections and/or information, “they would never find out about Ashoka”. Nevertheless, the first country representative of AP had a strong motivation to do so. He wanted to find the “the gems of society” who even though were acting with the “same spirit”, were doing so alone, in remote areas and were in need of support. Besides the notion of solidarity, he was motivated by the belief that these individuals were “the best lever to bring change in society”, and they could “bring the impact much more than the other guys who already have access to resources in big cities”. The interviewee called this the period of the “MAP torture”. At the time his office was his bedroom and he pinned Fellows on a map on the wall: “each morning I was waking up and looking at the blank spots, and torturing myself with the blanks spots”. This determination enabled him to find innovative solutions for locating fellows, such as utilizing the press clipping services, offices for business, where they provided clippings from the press. “If you’d tell them what entries, e.g. innovation, activism, local – they looked for the local magazines that were not available in Warsaw, cut out clippings and sent them in an envelope.” So instead of personally going around the country, he received once a week clippings and news from very remote areas. This was the way he was able to learn about fascinating stories or projects that were developing as bottom-up initiatives in remote areas, such as sharing goat with neighbours. Nevertheless, he found it challenging that most of the Fellows coming from remote areas were not “speaking the same business language, they couldn’t express themselves in our way”. “I had to pull out the stories, or gems”. They were “instinctually doing those things”.
In the initial years of AP, it was very much “one-man organization”. However, the country representative was also supported by nominators, coming from various fields. “They were the resources for me to understand the field”. RP was able to reach all these expert by actively reaching out via “making millions of telephone calls”, while also using his personal network from the former underground movements he used to be involved in.
The interviewee, similarly to other European country offices, recounted following the notion of “It is easier to get forgiveness than permission”, regarding the initiative. Nevertheless, within Ashoka Global, the initiative to find Fellows in remote areas was very well received due to its measurable success. “Those days in Poland [AP] elected many more Fellows, relatively, in capita than other countries in the world, so they were fascinated". At the same time, however, due to the recent history of the country, “entrepreneurship was rather a nasty word” in Poland, and there were several beliefs to be changed in order AP to be successful. Parallelly working as a psychotherapist and being active in civil society organizations lead the interviewee to the conclusion that “after ’89 we have to overcome” the notion that “if someone wins, then someone has to lose”, and introduce the idea of the "plus-sum game", “everybody can win if there is someone with innovation and passion”. What helped the interviewee overcome these challenges was his own belief that “change is not in the hand of the government or other institutions, it is in the hand of individuals” and that Ashoka could make a change by “empowering special individuals”
The CTP was considered to be a crucial challenge also at the time, as the country representative believed that all these social entrepreneurs acting in remote areas could have a much higher impact on Ashoka’s support.
One of the main learning points of the CTP was that “the speciality of Ashoka and the beauty of the Ashoka system is that there are ways to find those guys in very remote areas even if they did not find you". Secondly, while travelling around the world with Ashoka, the understanding came to the interviewee that it is possible to find social entrepreneurs even in areas “which are far more oppressing and dangerous” than the ones in Central Eastern Europe. Thirdly, the difficult process of communicating and reaching a common understanding with entrepreneurs from remote areas helped to refine many of the questions that are now used in second opinion interviews. Therefore, the CTP and its learning points are still influencing the work of the organization.
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