Denver's Change Your City campaign promotes innovation between business, government and nonprofits.

• Author: Cote, Mike
• Position: SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Ashara Ekundayo and Kendra Sandoval smile down on Denver from a giant billboard somewhere in the city, though they're not sure which intersection yet.

Ekdundayo and Sandoval, who operate a sustainability consulting company called Blue and Yellow Logic that focuses on urban issues, are among several "change makers" featured in an awareness campaign designed to promote social entrepreneurship.

Organized by Ashoka, a global network of social entrepreneurs, the Change Your City program kicked off in April at the Denver Public Library--and on billboards around town and at www.DenverChangeMakers.Ashoka.org.

"We hope to bring more people to understand what innovation is, and really follow your dreams," Sandoval said. "These things we crave to do to change the systems that we live in--go for it."

The program includes an online competition designed to allow innovators to collaborate on ideas to work on local projects.

"We're really, really pleased to be able to work with cities all over the country to create environments that foster social innovation and social innovators. Denver is the first one to launch in the United States," said Siobhan Canty, the U.S. change leader for Ashoka. "We look forward to a day when there are multiple cities and a movement of change makers across this country who are continually applying the values of entrepreneurship and innovation to the deepest questions that face us in our social challenges."

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who was on hand to kick off the campaign, said the challenge is to merge business acumen with social change.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"This country has always been the center of innovation, but we've never been as successful taking that innovative instinct and translating it from capitalism to social change," he said during his remarks to the group. "There have always been exceptions. What this is all about is let's not make that the exception but part of the landscape of people's consciousness."

Bob Allen, senior vice president of CH2M Hill and co-chair of the task force organizing the program, says the initiative should play well in Denver.

"One of our Change Makers is Engineers Without Borders," he said, referring to one of the groups that is being featured in the billboard campaign, "and we've been a major supporter of them for years."

How Change Your City measures success will evolve as momentum about the program builds, organizers say.

"If we can get the business community and the social...