Ashoka’s vision is of an Everyone A Changemaker society, where every person — and young people in particular — have the confidence, ability, and support to be changemakers for the good of all. In a world defined by rapid change and uncertainty, changemaking must become the new literacy.
Ashoka Youth Years is looking for a dynamic individual to take charge in transforming the youth years to a time where changemaking skills are as important as learning to read or write.
What You'll Do:
You will lead Ashoka’s efforts across Europe to reform the institutions that shape how young people grow up to ensure every young person leaves secondary skill having mastered these four changemaking elements.
Specifically, you will create strategic and deeply rooted partnerships with ministries of education, public school systems, teacher unions, educational publishers, teacher training schools and other relevant organizations to put changemaking at the core of their strategies. A key ambition is to quantifiably influence the education systems and youth-focused media to prioritize graduating changemakers through new curricula and syllabi and related teaching materials.
You will not do this alone. Ashoka has a wealth of proven tools to build strategic partnerships. For example, one core program – Ashoka Young Changemakers (AYC) – involves a rigorous selection process that engages directly with young people and supports them in becoming changemakers through the transformative experience of launching and leading their own community-minded ventures. In the past, Ashoka strategic partners have enthusiastically participated in selecting these young changemakers, and in some occasions have involved them in the work young changemakers, and then they involve them in the work of co-creating a new model of education, changemaker education.
Success in the first year in this role would: (a) agree two partnerships with influential players and (b) advance at least one place-based model that is tracking to decreasing direct support from Ashoka. Within five years we would expect to see progress on two metrics that illustrate what societal paradigm change looks like in practice: (1) the percentage of secondary school students in Europe who self-identify as changemakers, and (2) the proportion of school leaders who define success by the extent to which their schools are graduating changemakers.
Core Criteria
- Entrepreneurial Quality: Compelled to take creative initiative and ownership (e.g. founding an organization or company, starting a movement, or re-shaping the work of an existing organization). Demonstrates relentless and realistic how-to-thinking and passion for seeing their ideas come to life.
- Understanding and Belief in the Everyone a Changemaker: Understands and believes the Everyone a Changemaker vision at a gut level. To be able to innately ‘get’ this, candidates should have a broad and inquisitive intellectual and a thinking pattern that connects the dots between historical trends and current social context.
- Emotional and Social Intelligence: Ability to work efficiently and respectfully in teams, putting organizational/team goal first (personal glory second).
- Ethical Fiber: Exceptionally strong ethical behavior. Is self-reflective and has strong empathy skills. Trustworthy.
- Self-Definition: The person expects that changing the world in big ways and on a continental scale is what he/she will do in life.
About Ashoka:
Ashoka is the world’s largest community of leading social entrepreneurs, having pioneered the field of social entrepreneurship over 40 years ago. We support a robust network of more than 4,000 Ashoka Fellows in 90 countries who have successfully implemented systems-changing solutions to human and environmental problems globally. By learning from and collaborating with our Fellows and other social entrepreneurs, Ashoka identifies patterns and key levers to help society gain a new framework for living in the world as a changemaker.
Our current work is centered around the "Everyone a Changemaker" (EACH) movement, which stems from our belief that everyone has the potential and responsibility to make positive change in an ever-changing world. We continue to grow a global movement of social entrepreneurship, recognizing that the rate of change is accelerating and our problems are growing faster than our solutions.
