Earlier this month I offered my five favorite organizations for Christmas giving and this year I added one and subtracted one. Then a couple of days later I got the 159 page 2023 annual report from Ashoka, the one I had subtracted. It’s so terrific that I ‘m going to make it a prime choice.

Ashoka has been in business some forty years. It seeks out social entrepreneurs the world over and gives them the training and resources to carry out their mission.

Their lead example this year is Anusha Bharadwaj. She runs a program targeting 106,000 seventh and eighth grade girls in rural India, to get them into a success track instead of unskilled labor. Ashoka describes her work as essential to assuring that every young girl  has what a good life requires: the power to contribute, to be a changemaker..

Another changemaker, Uma Chatterjee has started a group named named Sanjog, also in India, to break the human trafficking curse.

Myroslava Keryk is building bridges between Poland and Ukraine.

Septiaji Nugroho; in Indonesia, is building an internet network with protection for users who have been cheated and abused on line.

Bree Jones, a black woman in Baltimore, is leading a project called Parity, to help lower income families get into their own homes. That’s a cause I worked on a lot back in the Sixties.

If you have any Christmas money left, please consider Ashoka at www.ashoka.org.