Public Interest Ventures On the Rise, Alum Says

Interest in public service businessmen is growing, the founder and chairman of what he described as the world's only public service entrepreneurial firm told about 20 people at the Kennedy School of Government yesterday.

William Drayton Jr. '65 called his firm, the Ashoka Society, a "non-profit venture firm trying to help the very best public service entrepreneurs get started."

The 1984 fellow of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation said his organization "may be the first public entrepreneurial firm, but it sure won't be the last."

The society, which has its headquarters in Washington, funds Indian, Indonesian, and Brazilian natives to effect social change in their homelands. The fellows receive an annual stipend of several thousand dollars for three years to begin the work.

Drayton described the society's fellows as having "a very high level of determination." He said they are often younger than commercial entrepreneurs but perform similar functions.

"The very fact that Ashoka is now functioning is a statement that some of the supporting infrastructure [for international public entrepreneur programs] is coming into place," said Drayton, who also founded Enviromental Safety--an organization which unofficially monitors President Reagan and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Ashoka funds people in a variety of fields, ranging from education to medicine to waste managment, who propose innovative solutions to their countries' problems. Fellows include a Bombay woman who has established a system to replace rote learning in the schools and a Brazilian consumer activist.