In 1980, Bill Drayton, former Assistant Administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection agency who pioneered the first demonstration of "emissions trading"--a market-based approach to pollution reduction that has since been adopted around the world--founded Ashoka: Innovators for the Public based on the recognition that social entrepreneurs deliver the highest leverage and impact society-wide for addressing social problems.

Drayton, a former management consultant with McKinsey & Company, established Ashoka to provide social entrepreneurs--and their new ideas -- with financial backing and a series of professional supports to help them spread their ideas and solutions, individually and collectively. Through Ashoka, Drayton has played a major role developing and legitimizing the profession of social entrepreneurship.

Jeroo Billimoria has provided millions of vulnerable children living in India with a 24-hour toll free telephone hotline that connects them to an extensive network of hundreds of child-service organizations, making it possible for ordinary citizens, policemen or social workers to assist children in danger at any time. Manned by street children themselves, Childline combines 24-hour emergency telephone services with follow-up support to alleviate their distress. Through the franchise model, Childline has been able to multiply rapidly to more than 40 Indian cities. Jeroo is currently spearheading the replication of Childline India throughout Europe and Asia.

J.B. Schramm is helping low-income students across the U.S. enroll and succeed in college. Operating from outside the educational system, J.B. has identified a fundamental disconnect that prevents thousands of high-potential students from attending college. (College graduates can expect to earn $1 million more during their lifetimes than high school graduates.) J.B. has designed a program that motivates all the actors within this system (students, high schools, colleges, and communities) to correct it. His training programs are designed for high school students who possess the talent to succeed in college, but lack the support to maneuver through the application process to present their strengths effectively.

College Summit organizes intensive, four-day, on-campus workshops during which low-income high school seniors complete their college applications essays, overcome emotional hurdles through peer-support, receive one-on-one college counseling, complete common applications and learn to navigate the financial aid system. College Summit students enroll in college at a rate of 80 percent, against a national average of low-income enrollment of 46 percent. The organization is now working with city governments in Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland and Charleston to help rebuild the college guidance systems in public schools.

Veronica Khosa saw that the health care system in South Africa was unable to manage the AIDS crisis. A nurse by trade, she had visited hundreds of people with AIDS who were suffering alone in their homes, with no one around to provide simple care or pain relief. In response, she founded Tateni Home Care Nursing Services and instituted a community-based model capable of addressing the AIDS pandemic at the enormous scale of the problem. She spent years developing and professionalizing her basic home-care model, instituting an innovative system to provide training to thousands of unemployed youths so they could offer effective care to the people in their communities and families. The government has adopted her model for the largest state in South Africa and it has since spread to more than fifty localities. Through the recognition of the world's leading health organizations, the idea is spreading beyond South Africa. Khosa is now developing a community-based response to orphan care that she plans to spread nationally.

Grant conceived of and orchestrated a global campaign to stop the needless deaths of millions of children each year from easily preventable illnesses. The "child survival and development revolution" that he launched in 1983 mobilized massive international support to bring cheap, life-saving medicines and technologies to children in developing countries including vaccinations and oral rehydration therapy to prevent death from diarrhoeal dehydration, the single biggest killer of children. By 2000, this revolution for children was estimated to have saved 25 million young lives.

Grant also made possible another milestone for children: the 1989 World Summit for Children, and the adoption by the UN General Assembly of the ground-breaking treaty The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which entered into force as a part of international law within a year.