Castlebar man is aiming to 'Change the Nation'

An Taoiseach Enda Kenny will open Change Nation. He will be joined over the course of the three-day platform by Irish entrepreneurs and changemakers, including Mary Robinson, Dermot Desmond, Caroline Casey and Mark Little who are working to accelerate and launch these proven solutions.

Change Nation is hosted by Ashoka Ireland in partnership with the business and citizen sectors, Government and media. Ashoka is the world’s association of more than 3,000 social entrepreneurs.

Launching the event, An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny said: "I applaud initiatives like Change Nation which bring together the talents and ideas of some of our brightest and best to find solutions to challenges facing our nation. By working together, Ireland can not only emerge from its problems, but emerge stronger and better. Social innovation is especially valuable because it can create radical new alliances between communities, government and business to address fundamental social and economic challenges."

Castlebar native Paul O’Hara, Director of Ashoka and founder of Change Nation explains: “The solutions to many of Ireland’s problems already exist at home and across the world – our challenge is to identify these solutions and bring them to scale.

"The solutions to be discovered at Change Nation have proven themselves to be effective, each one typically impacting on thousands of lives.  Systematically importing and accelerating these proven solutions will increase our speed, efficiency and success rate in addressing these challenges.

“We’re inviting everyone to discover these solutions at changenation.org and hope that people will get involved in the solutions they are passionate about or choose to create their own. Ireland needs more changemakers and everyone has a role to play.”

Up to 500 one-on-one meetings will take place over the three days between social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, business and political leaders.

Key social innovators at Change Nation include:

• Matt Flannery, KIVA who has created a new online platform for lenders and borrowers to meet, thereby

bringing fresh finance to SMEs across the world. Since its launch in 2005, KIVA has facilitated more than

$280million in loans in more than 60 countries.
• Peter Eigen, Transparency International leader of a global coalition to challenge corruption. Peter’s

leadership is producing change in monitoring and governance in more than 90 countries around the world.
• Rodrigo Baggio, CDI Brazil - who is working to provide a more interactive learning environment,

computer equipment and training to disadvantaged youths in South America. Established 14 years ago, CDI has

more than 750 community centres in 12 countries and has impacted more than 1million people.
• Mary Gordon, Roots of Empathy is reducing aggression by teaching students emotional literacy fostering

the development of empathy. With programmes already established in more than 40 schools across Ireland Roots

of Empathy will continue to expand in coming years.
• James Whelton,– Coder Dojo is a nineteen year old social entrepreneur who building a movement to inspire and support young people across Ireland to learn about software and computer programming.