Acumen Fund and Echoing Green: Fellows Programs for Those Who Wanna Change the World

So, you wanna change the world?

Check out the following from the Acumen Fund's Web site:

"Each year, the Acumen Fund Fellows Program provides extraordinary young professionals with a unique opportunity to use their skills to effect real social change with our portfolio organizations in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, India and Pakistan, and to build lasting relationships with other like-minded individuals. Joining us in September, fellows will spend one year working with our team and with local entrepreneurs, gaining intensive experience in price performance, logistics, distribution systems, scaling and innovative technology. Fellows will learn and apply these skills while enjoying an unusual level of responsibility both at Acumen Fund and within our portfolio organizations.

"Ideal fellows include those who have already decided on a career in venture philanthropy, those who are seeking a career at the highest levels in the corporate world but want to better understand and have an impact on problems of global poverty, and budding social entrepreneurs who want to learn about managing organizations in the most demanding settings."

For those who are less into travel but equally ambitious, check out Echoing Green:

"Echoing Green awards two-year fellowships to emerging social innovators creating new organizations. Annually, we award approximately twenty fellowships to individuals with innovative ideas for creating new models for tackling seemingly unsolvable social challenges. These fellowships offer them the opportunity to develop and test their ideas. We accept applications from citizens of all nationalities, working in any country.

"This is not a scholarship program. Our fellows do not develop their ideas in an academic setting. Our fellows work in the community. They launch, manage and grow organizations that implement and continually expand their ideas for creating lasting social change.

"During the two-year fellowship, Echoing Green provides both financial and technical support."