The Global Pursuit of Equity

Social and environmental inequities exist in every pocket of the world, without exception. They often form across familiar lines, including race, gender, or physical ability, and manifest in familiar ways, including greater or less access to education, employment, technology, security, and a healthy environment. However, the severity, entrenchment, and complexity of these inequities are unique from region to region and community to community. So are their origins, their evolution, and how people define them.

Solving them therefore requires a strong sense of context, including what perpetuates or holds them in place and where the power to change them lies. It demands the knowledge and ingenuity of people who see and experience inequity firsthand. In other words, it requires local innovation.

Stanford Social Innovation Review is proud to present our first-ever global series of articles created in collaboration with our six local language partners—SSIR China, SSIR en Español, SSIR Japan, SSIR Korea, SSIR Brazil, and SSIR Arabia. The series, devoted to advancing equity, looks at inequities within the context of seven specific regions or countries, and the ways local innovators are working to balance the scales and foster greater inclusion across a range of issue areas. The stories explore different sectors and feature ideas or projects in different stages of development, but they all aim to inspire and inform.

The series is the result of a generous, creative, and resolute global team of local language edition editors, and unlike any we’ve published before, it will be available in Chinese, Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, and Arabic on our partners’ respective platforms. Taken together, these local stories of innovation help paint a picture of what global equity might look like.