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Ejaj Ahmad

Name: Ejaj Ahmad, Age: 28, Country: Bangladesh, Company: Non-profit, Focus: Youth Dev

The challenges confronting Bangladesh today are immense, complex and disparate. Bangladesh is threatened by climate change and ecological devastation, terrorism, chronic poverty and widening socio-political and economic inequities. There is a pressing need for courageous...

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Casey Wilson

Name: Casey Wilson, Age: 25, Country: China, Company: Social Venture, Focus: Finance

Despite China's economic boom over the past decades, over 200 million rural Chinese still live on less than $1.25 USD a day. Inequalities have developed and are growing larger by the day, and the "have-nots" in rural areas continue to have limited access to basic financial services...

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Nimesh Ghimire

Name: Nimesh Ghimire, Age: 19, Country: Nepal, Company: Non-profit, Focus: Education

The age-old curriculum in Nepal promotes a system where being educated simply means memorizing information without caring much for the level of understanding and skill development in students. To add to its woes, even the classroom environment is not up to the scratch. ...

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Famous Entrepreneurs Quotes

"As long as you're going to be thinking anyway, think big." - Donald Trump, real estate developer

"If you can dream it, you can do it." - Walt Disney, founder of The Walt Disney Company

"Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming." - Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Enterprises

Welcome

The Paragon program annually selects 100 young entrepreneurs and social changemakers of up to 30 years of age from Asia Pacific who are an inspiration to other young people.

On this site you can find their inspiring stories, stories from young people in Asia Pacific, who had the desire and guts to make a change and to stride out and start their own venture. Your can read about their background and their ventures, and if you also desire to get started you can find resources such as entrepreneurship courses and current business plan competition.

Get inspired by the stories of the Paragon fellows and take actions to one day become a Paragon yourself.

 

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Our Fellows in the News

  • Noor Mohammad awarded runner-up at the World Summit Youth Award 20

    2010-08-18

    Noor Mohammad, Paragon fellow '09 from Pakistan, became runner-up at the World Summit Youth Award 2010, in the 'pursue truth' category with his Venture Panir Times. Pamir Times is a community media initiative operating in Gilgit - Baltistan since October 2007 and aspires to become an online social space where honest opinions and ideas about various topics are shared and discussed. http://pamirtimes.net/

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  • Khalida's unreasonable Pitch

    2010-08-18

    George Bernard Shaw once said "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man [and woman]." One of this Years amazing entrepreneurs at the Unreasonable Institute was Khalida Brohi, Paragon fellow 2009 from Pakistan. Watch her final pitch for her venture PDI!

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  • Young men who have tasted success with their out of the box ideas

    2010-08-18

    It takes guts to quit the comforts of a stable and well-paying job and take a risk. Even after making it to the London School of Economics, it didn't take Raghu Khanna a second to cancel his admission and pursue his entrepreneurial dream instead. A dream that he had faith in inspite of it being tagged a foolish venture... by a lot of people, who right now might be biting their tongues for saying it. Irrespective of what people said, Khanna started http://www.cashurdrive.com/ in 2008. Read his story in India Today Magazine

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