You may not  have heard of Ashoka,  but for the past 27 years,this association, founded by Bill Drayton, has fought  poverty (贫穷)and sickness, promoted education and  encouraged small businesses. To support these worthy causes, Ashoka provides money for the world's most  promising "changemakers" seeking to solve (解决) urgent problems and would like to create a  world in which every citizen is a changemaker.

    Drayton believes that anyone can become an agent for change. The important thing is to simply give yourself permission. If you see a problem that you care about, you can help solve it. The young in particular are willing to accept this concept because at heart every child wants to grow into a happy, healthy,  contributing adult. In fact It is many young people's ambition to set up programmes or businesses that improve social conditions. An excellent example is an Ashoka project started in 1995 in Dhaka, which handled the rubbish problem facing the city ,helped local farmers and provided an income for poor people there .

When Masqsood and Iftekhar began to study the problem of all the uncollected rubbish that lay in Dhaka's streets, Attracting tats and disease , they discovered that 80% of it was natural waste . So they educated the poor people in the city to compost (把……制成堆粪)this waste . They knew that they would have a market for the end product because local farmers were struggling with chemical ferntilisers (化肥) which were expensive and had reduced the natural minerals in the soil over the years . At first , they were refused ,but once they were able to persuadethemthat there was money to be made , the project took off. In 2009 sales were $14,000.

    Drayton is optimistic that in ten years Ashoka will be making really serious ,practical progress in bringing about social change by changing the way we look at economic development.