As a young boy in the heart of the Ghanaian countryside, Alloysius Attah spent weekends toiling on his aunt’s small farm, planting and harvesting crops under the scorching sun. The experience opened his eyes to the challenges faced by rural smallholders—individuals who form the foundation of Ghana’s economy.

Despite their hard work, these farmers often remained trapped in cycles of poverty, their struggles compounded by the adverse effects of increasingly extreme weather. They lacked access to the information, funding, and markets necessary to adapt and improve their livelihoods. Driven by a desire to create change, Attah set out to develop the knowledge and skills required to help his community.

In 2013, Attah, now equipped with a college education, co-founded Farmerline—a social enterprise on a mission to revolutionize agriculture in Africa and beyond. What began as a simple mobile messaging platform providing farmers with agricultural information via SMS has since evolved into a comprehensive digital ecosystem serving more than two million people across 48 countries.

Through its Darli AI voice platform, grounded in Attah’s firsthand knowledge of the many challenges smallholder farmers face, Farmerline delivers localized weather forecasts, best practices, and market information in easily digestible formats. The company also facilitates microfinancing opportunities, connects growers to global markets, and promotes sustainable farming techniques that build resilience in the face of climate change. 

Attah’s experience shows the impact of utilizing a people-centered approach known as social innovation.

Tapping overlooked local potential 

Addressing the planet’s most complex social and environmental issues from a grassroots perspective, social innovation seeks to foster positive change by disrupting traditional strategies. Rather than imposing solutions from the top down, the approach recognizes that revolutionary ideas often come from communities. By drawing on the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of individuals with firsthand knowledge of the challenges their communities face, social innovators tap into a wellspring of potential that has long been overlooked. 

Importantly, social innovators do not aim for incremental improvements or quick fixes. Instead, their goal is to get to the nub of problems fast, tackling root causes of challenges like inequality and environmental degradation. “Social innovation is not about providing a Band-Aid to a particular problem,” explains Cheryl Dorsey, president of Echoing Green, a global nonprofit that identifies and supports emerging social entrepreneurs. “It’s about transforming systems. It’s about fundamentally changing the way we think about and approach the world’s most intractable issues.”

This is precisely what Attah set out to do with Farmerline. With seed funding from Echoing Green, he saw an opportunity to disrupt the status quo in rural agriculture. Instead of pursuing gradual changes that might take years to generate significant results, Attah focused on using technology to leapfrog traditional barriers confronting smallholders, including low levels of literacy, a lack of financial tools and knowledge, and limited access to expert advice on goals like improving yields and promoting soil health. 

His solution, Darli AI, makes vital agricultural information available to anyone with a mobile phone. By asking questions in their native language, users can receive actionable and personalized advice on everything from protecting crops during droughts to connecting with new customers. This not only improves the productivity of individual farmers, but also drives a wave of wealth creation—bigger yields mean bigger incomes that can be invested in the wider community.

Collaborating to build climate resilience 

Passionate, committed individuals like Attah are the lifeblood of social innovation—but they can’t secure lasting progress alone. To truly move the needle on thorny global challenges, social innovators must collaborate and build networks that amplify their impact.

This is where initiatives like Catalyst 2030 come in. Co-created by the Skoll Foundation, Catalyst 2030 is a global movement of more than 5,000 social innovators and organizations committed to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals before the end of the decade. By supporting knowledge sharing, peer learning, and effective practices, the program enables systemic change via collaborative action across sectors and geographies. 

Social entrepreneurs don’t go it alone; 
they have changemakers with them 
at every step.

“Social entrepreneurs don’t go it alone; they have changemakers with them at every step,” explains Diana Wells, president emerita of Ashoka, a social innovation network and Catalyst 2030 partner. “It’s about creating a virtuous circle, where each member of the network provides value and everyone can be a giver.”

This unified effort is particularly important when addressing the effects of climate change, which demand coordination across geographies and at all levels of society. In Bangladesh, for example, the social development organization Uttaran has leveraged collective power to conserve tidal wetlands threatened by rising sea levels, more frequent cyclones, and increasingly erratic rainfall. These climate hazards are hitting the most vulnerable Bangladeshis hardest, with research showing that the poorest households are disproportionately threatened in 69 percent of coastal subdistricts.

Uttaran, founded by Ashoka Fellow Shahidul Islam Chowdhury, is taking a multipronged approach to combat this accelerating crisis. By mobilizing a coalition of civil society partners, the organization has successfully persuaded policymakers to halt environmentally detrimental projects that exacerbate waterlogging caused by flooding and threaten delicate ecosystems. Simultaneously, Uttaran has advocated for the rights of landless farmers and fishers, fighting to ensure that fallow government-owned lands are returned to their rightful owners.

Central to Chowdhury’s activism is a deep respect for Indigenous knowledge and traditional land management practices. By working closely with local people and drawing on their wisdom, his group has pushed for sustainable solutions that are both environmentally sound and socially just.

A prime example of this is the implementation of an approach called tidal river management, a nature-based model for managing sediment and preventing saturation. Shaped with the input of local people, the technique involves strategically breaching embankments to allow tidal water to deposit sediment on wetlands rather than clogging up riverbeds.

Thanks in part to Uttaran’s influence, the Bangladeshi government has now adopted tidal river management as an official policy, scaling up the approach in several coastal districts. The organization continues to work closely with authorities to ensure effective deployment and to promote the rights of marginalized communities.

Progress through partnership 

Achieving this kind of robust government buy-in is fundamental to the success of social innovators and their solutions. Groundbreaking ideas often start at the local level, but achieving systemic change at scale requires the infrastructure and support of government partners. 

This can be a delicate dance, and one that is best started early. “Government officials really worry about failing,” explains Don Gips, CEO of the Skoll Foundation, which has supported social innovators and social entrepreneurs for more than two decades. “The risk of getting it wrong versus doing the safe thing is so much higher, so social innovators need to bring the government along early in the process if they want to succeed.”

Alongside policymakers, engaging the corporate world is also important. Businesses can bring not only financial resources to the table, but also invaluable expertise in areas like supply chain management, marketing, and technology development. By partnering with the private sector, social innovators can access even deeper networks to support their work.

Yet, in the rush to collaborate with influential institutions, it’s essential for proximate leaders to preserve their agency. Successful social innovation rests on empowering communities to solve their own challenges, which means keeping those closest to the problems—the farmers, the fishers, and the families on the frontlines of poverty and climate change—at the heart of the process.

So-called “system orchestrators”—organizations like Farmerline and Uttaran —have a pivotal role in this regard. With their deep connections and expertise, these groups are best positioned to bridge relationships between governments, businesses, civil society, and local communities.

Evidence shows that when this balance is struck—when the drive and insights of local innovators are paired with the reach and resources of larger institutions, and when the wisdom of communities is elevated and respected—we can achieve greater impact. 

“We’re at a moment where I believe social innovators with new ideas are critical to moving us forward, globally and domestically,” says Gips. “They’re reminding us of what’s possible, uniting us, and showing how we can take on some of the world’s toughest challenges.”

This story was reported as part of a partnership with the Skoll Foundation. Through their support of social entrepreneurs tackling society’s most urgent challenges, they’re collaborating to create lasting, systemic change for those who need it most. Visit Skoll.org to explore more stories of impact.