In the close-knit culture of Sweden, corporate hiring operates on networking, personal relationships, and references. To a large degree, immigrant communities do not have access to these resources. Sofia Appelgren has launched a program that matches the most dynamic and entrepreneurial young women with Swedish entrepreneurs and corporate leaders. Beginning in Goteborg on Sweden’s West Coast,...
Caroline Casey helps Irish businesses to develop new approaches to employing and serving disabled people.
Madeleine Clarke is crafting a strategy to nationally overhaul the disability field in Ireland. She has created a new set of standards and a unique selection process to determine the most community-focused, integrated, and cost-effective initiatives, and has set up structures to scale these initiatives at a policy level. Madeleine is creating a convergence for a fragmented sector, building...
Steve Collins is changing the architecture of nutritional treatment by bringing treatment out to afflicted people rather than afflicted people to the treatment. By using a decentralized care model and orchestrating the spread of a range of Ready to Use Foods, Steve is revolutionizing the way the world prevents and responds to malnutrition.
Recognising that with guidance, ordinary citizens can do much of the work of professional speech therapists, Tara Cunningham is revolutionising the field of speech therapy by putting parents and teachers in charge of children’s learning. As vacancy rates for speech therapists continue to grow globally, Tara is also mobilising a new generation of certified professionals with the support of the...
Through his organization, RedBranch, David Egan is empowering a generation of young people in Ireland to choose healthier lifestyles by changing their attitudes towards food and exercise and encouraging schools to adopt policies that support these changes.
Mike is creating an initiative to serve as the global source for online education at a time when community college is an underfunded and underdeveloped educational resource. His free form of online community college offers everything from computer courses to English classes, and opens up employment opportunities for users. His new approach to skills training is designed around a system of...
Despite considerable economic resources, Norway ranks below France and Germany in science education. As one of the first masters students to work in gene technology in Norway, Hanne Finstad realized that you learn science by doing. Every scientist—like every social entrepreneur—had a moment that sparked his or her passion. Through Forskerfabrikken (Scientist Factory) Hanne is creating...
Michael Kelly is catalyzing a nationwide movement to substantially increase the number of people growing their own food. He has resurrected the traditional Irish notion of the “meitheal,” a practice that builds a spirit of community by working collectively on individual projects—much like a barn-raising—to exponentially increase the number of people with the skills to grow their own food....
Mary Nally is building structures that keep older people engaged in their communities and active contributors to society. She is bridging gaps between generations and disparate populations, placing older people as advocates for other isolated populations.
In launching the Natural Step, former cancer researcher and clinician Karl-Henrik Robert has facilitated the outgrowth of a unifying framework for social and ecological sustainability, and built a global institutional platform that brings together disparate strands of environmentalism (scientific, social, economic, etc.) to assist institutions, from companies to governments, to create and...
Thorkil Sonne is transforming the way society perceives autism—from viewing it as a handicap to recognizing that it can become a competitive advantage. By demonstrating that autistic people can not only function in the business world, but can thrive as specialists in certain types of work, he is offering an often isolated population the opportunity for active, productive and fulfilling lives...
