This year's Ahoka Changemaker Summit took place in the Belgian capital of Brussels from November 29th to 30th. Ashoka is a global network of social entrepreneurs, with more than 3,700 innovators working across 90 countries on today's most pressing issues. The Change maker summit is one of the largest and most important gatherings of social, refugee and migrant entrepreneurs. The annual meeting of practitioners, academics and representatives from business and policy, which has been taking place since 2018, was held in person for the first time since Covid and offered many opportunities for exchange, networking and mutual learning.
Attendees got the chance to meet other change makers and learn more about their journeys and work. The summit's sessions offered a plethora of interesting ideas and intriguing speakers as well as opportunities for learning. With so many innovative minds in one place, the sessions were organized in a way that fostered meaningful conversations about cutting-edge topics such as public policy, funding system change, and also migration: Here, the focus was on 2 questions in particular: How can we help activate the changemaking potential of migrants across the globe? How can we create a new framework for migration where innovation and collaboration lie at the heart of policy change? These questions are discussed within Enter to Transform as well.
Dr. Alexandra David from the Enter to Transform team, together with representatives from SINGA, Ashoka Hello Europe and the Human Safety Net, led the session "Transforming the Field of Migration Through Collaborative Frameworks". Today, more people are on the move than ever before. Some are escaping wars, others are seeking a better life. In contrast to these developments, the migration-related sector and processes for these transitions seem permanently stuck. National systems to manage migration are old and outdated, organizations are siloed and there are many barriers for meaningful collaboration. During the session, the Ashoka-Hello Europe-report was presented (see other article in this newsletter) and recommendations were discussed with the participants of the session.
Migration is seen as change making in action, where migrants are recognized as change makers, innovative solutions are scaled, and collaborative frameworks emerge to transform the entire system. Differences should be reframed as strengths and we need a mind-set shift around what refugee and migrant entrepreneur are capable of. In addition, access to resources plays a key role and enhancing access to resources and making entrepreneurship more inclusive is exactly what Enter does through its training and mentoring programs.
The event was a great success and it was very encouraging to discuss with social and migrant entrepreneurs how to remove barriers on access and equity. Here we were able to bring in experience from Enter to Transform as well as get new ideas and inspiration for the project.
