Over 100 Global Social Entrepreneurs Convene to Discuss Revolutionizing Social Change through Invention

PORTLAND, Ore., Feb. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Ashoka and The Lemelson Foundation, with support from Microsoft®, will bring together inventors and social entrepreneurs from February 11 to 13, 2010 in Hyderabad, India. The goals of this first-of-its-kind meeting, called Tech4Society, are to bring greater attention to the importance of technological innovation in driving global development and to highlight effective strategies for cultivating the next generation of inventor-entrepreneurs and scaling their world-changing ideas. The event will attract over 250 of the world's foremost social entrepreneurs, innovators, business leaders and movers and shakers to showcase technological advances and entrepreneurial business models that are revolutionizing social change.  

Over the past three years, the Ashoka-Lemelson Fellowship has brought together two organizations that work passionately to find, support and celebrate social innovators whose technologies offer fresh, effective approaches to advancing social change. These innovators - a cohort of 106 Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows - have been chosen for their unique and cutting edge uses of technology, education, capital and support as tools for community development, policy setting and poverty alleviation. Many of the Fellows will be in attendance at Tech4Society, sharing best practices, demonstrating inventions and developing partnerships that can work toward solutions to economic, environmental and societal challenges.

Ashoka-Lemelson Fellow examples include: Harish Hande, whose organization, SELCO-India, brought affordable and reliable solar-powered electricity to more than 100,000 homes and businesses in India; Isaac Durojaiye, who created Nigeria's first mobile toilet initiative to remedy rampant urban unemployment and poor sanitation conditions; David Green, based in the U.S., who is producing and globally disseminating socially-useful products, including affordable hearing aids, using a tiered price-structure; and Tri Mumpuni, founder of People Centered Economic & Business Institute, who is tackling challenges of rural electrification and economic development by creating community-owned, micro-hydropower systems throughout Indonesia.

"Inventor-entrepreneurs such as these Ashoka-Lemelson Fellows can help lead the way to eradicating poverty," says Bill Drayton, CEO and Chair of Ashoka. "They have the ability to think creatively and systemically to design appropriate solutions; profoundly increase markets for life-changing products; increase incomes; and advance sustainable rural development.

"The people who will attend Tech4Society demonstrate the power of uniting social entrepreneurship with invention and technology. Their successful approaches will help international policy makers and actors in the private sector, financial industry and civil society learn how to support invention-led development, a bottom-up entrepreneurial approach to economic-inclusion," adds Julia Novy-Hildesley, Executive Director of The Lemelson Foundation. "The conference attendees work in greatly varying fields, from low-cost alternative energy development to science education to agricultural innovation, but they are all brought together by a singular goal: to harness their inventiveness to be changemakers."

The three-day conference will include plenary panels and break-out sessions covering topics such as mobile technologies for social change; women and girls in science and invention; venture capital; and intellectual property. Tech4Society is also supported by Microsoft, Infosys® and will take place at the Indian School of Business.

For more information about Tech4Society, please follow updates on Twitter via the #tech4soc hashtag or visit: http://tech.ashoka.org.

About The Lemelson Foundation

Established in 1993 by Jerome Lemelson, one of America's most prolific inventors, The Lemelson Foundation uses its resources to inspire and recognize inventors, innovators and entrepreneurs to support invention-led sustainable development.  It has donated or committed more than $150 million to improve lives through invention in the U.S. and developing countries.  For more information, please visit http://www.lemelson.org.

About Ashoka

Ashoka is the global association of the world's leading social entrepreneurs - men and women with system changing solutions for the world's most urgent social problems.  Since 1981, Ashoka has elected over 2,500 leading social entrepreneurs as Ashoka Fellows, providing them with living stipends, professional support and access to a global network of peers in more than 60 countries.  More information is available at http://www.ashoka.org.

SOURCE The Lemelson Foundation