When robotics entrepreneur Keller Rinaudo, started his first company at the age of 23, the number of drone strikes in Afghanistan were at an all-time high.

“Most robotic companies were building things that kill people, so we thought it would be cool to build a company that built things that actually make people’s lives better,” he said.

Now his drone-delivery company, Zipline , is making last-mile deliveries of blood to health clinics and transfusion facilities across Rwanda. Zipline delivers 20% of the country’s national blood supply outside of Kigali and has signed a commercial contract with the Tanzanian Ministry of Health to deliver medicines to 10 million of the hardest to reach people in the country. “Entrepreneurship is the only force in human history that has lifted millions of people out of poverty,” says Keller.

Like Keller, a Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur, many in his community – along with Global Shapers and Young Global Leaders – attended the Annual Meeting in Davos to advance leading models of sustainable social innovation.

Global Shaper Jaideep Bansal is the Energy Access Leader of Global Himalayan Expedition (GHE), and is

working to electrify remote mountain communities using solar micro grids. Some villages in India are so remote that it can take ten days to reach them, and many of these places lack basic utilities like electricity. During the Annual Meeting, he showed participants how he is bringing them light.

Women make up 70% of the world’s poorest 1.5 billion people. So, after Kate Roberts and HRH Mette-Marit,

Crown Princess of Norway, met through the Forum of Young Global Leaders (YGLs), they founded the Maverick

Collective to eliminate extreme poverty and engage female philanthropists beyond cheque book giving. The initiative

seeks women, not just those with financial resources, but also those with skills and experiences, to help solve

challenges faced by women and girls in developing countries.

To date, they have mobilized $60 million in resources for you girls and women, helped more than 800,000 girls and

women live healthier lives and launched pilots in 15 countries around the world.

Social Entrepreneur Chetna Sinha, one of the co-chairs of the Annual Meeting in Davos, founded the Mann Deshi

Foundation and is dedicated to economically empowering rural women in India. The Foundation started India’s

first bank run by and for rural women, business schools providing women with entrepreneurial skills and a community development programme focused on water conservation. It has supported 400,000 women and aims to reach 1 million by 2022 through a new fund launched in Davos.

These are just some of their stories. To learn more about what Global Shapers, Social Entrepreneurs and Young Global Leaders accomplished at the Annual Meeting, read on.

Explore their profiles here:

–Global Shapers

http://wef.ch/gsc18participants

–Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneurs

http://wef.ch/se18participants

–Young Global Leaders

http://wef.ch/ygl18participants