Skoll Foundation

US2020 Signs New Partners Tata Consultancy Services and HP at Clinton Global Initiative’s “CGI America” Event

Last week at CGI America, a nationwide gathering hosted by the Clinton Global Initiative, President Clinton announced that US2020, a new initiative chaired by a Skoll Awardee that aims to engage one million science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professionals by the year 2020, will launch a city competition to increase the amount of STEM mentoring in communities nationally. New US2020 partners were also announced at the event, including Tata Consultancy Services and HP.

“We need these one million volunteers to ensure that we’re going to have students take the courses” that will inspire and prepare them for STEM careers, said President Clinton.

Joining current US2020 Founding Leadership Partners Cisco, Cognizant, and SanDisk, Tata Consultancy Services and HP will collectively work towards US2020’s goal of mobilizing one million STEM professionals to mentor students by the year 2020. Through an online matching platform, US2020 will help place STEM volunteers into high impact mentoring opportunities with top nonprofits working across different grades, settings, and delivery models. As more companies join this effort, their early leadership will help catalyze a culture shift in which mentoring becomes the new normal for STEM professionals, much like pro bono work is in the legal profession. read more

I’ll Tell You a Story
By Tim Hanstad

A week spent at the Sundance Film Festival usually includes photo opportunities in your best mountain chic, mingling with celebrities, and getting a sneak peak at the world’s best films of the year.

That’s true for most visitors to Park City this time of year. But for a small group of social entrepreneurs, something even more magical happened last week in the mountains of Utah. Landesa, along with leaders from three other world-class nonprofit organizations (Fair Trade USA, GoodWeave, and Injaz), four award-winning documentary film makers (Cori Shepherd Stern, Patrick Creadon, Mona Eldaief and Kirsten Johnson) and experts from the Skoll Foundation and the Sundance Institute, explored how to better leverage storytelling to achieve large-scale social impact.

What did I learn? The best way to explain is, naturally, to tell a story. And mine begins with a confession of sorts.

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Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification helps protect future fish supplies, ensures McDonald’s customers will continue to enjoy high-quality seafood

OAK BROOK, Ill. (Jan. 24, 2013) – In recognition of its ten year commitment to sustainable fishing practices, McDonald’s USA  (NYSE: MCD) announced today it would become the first national restaurant chain to adopt the Marine Stewardship Council’s blue ecolabel on its fish packaging in restaurants nationwide.

As one of the largest single buyers of fish in the US, McDonald’s scale will help assure that growing seafood demands are balanced with MSC’s responsible sourcing practices to maintain the health and sustainability of fish stocks for the future. Sustainable fish sourcing is part of McDonald’s broader commitment to sustainable sourcing and 100 percent of all fish sold in its US restaurants has been certified sustainable. read more

17 January 2013, Dakar, Senegal: Tostan, an African-based NGO, has launched a new project to enable communities in West Africa to share their own vision of development, social change and peace-building through innovative filmmaking.   

Tostan was awarded a $20,000 grant by Stories of Change, a project of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and Fund (DFP), supported by the Skoll Foundation for this project.

Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, which is funding Tostan’s Peace and Security Project, is also supporting the training program for Tostan staff and local filmmakers.

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Girls Who Code, Jobs for the Future, and YouthBuild Among Groups Vying to Outraise the Field Starting Inauguration Day

*** full list of finalists at bottom ***

Palo Alto, CA – Jan 16, 2012 – On Inauguration Day, when politicians return to Washington to face the same jobs crisis, 74 organizations will begin a crowd funding competition to demonstrate who has the most promising, scalable employment solutions. They are finalists in the JobRaising Challenge, an innovative competition to help job-creating nonprofits raise money and publicity. The Skoll Foundation, The Huffington Post, and knowledge partner McKinsey & Company have selected the most innovative, feasible, and scalable candidates of the 210 applicants representing 31 states and 110 cities across America. Starting on Monday, January 21^st, the American people can choose to donate to one or more of these organizations.  Top fundraisers will be eligible for $250,000 in prizes by The Skoll Foundation.

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By David Rothschild and Joy Zhang

Our team bounced along the dirt road in Samistipur district in rural Bihar, India, who knows how far from the nearest paved road, until we finally arrived at the beautiful and peaceful village of Akha.  In rural Bihar you may be far from a paved road, but you are never far from people—the state is 2/3 the size of California, with three times the population.  Almost all of Bihar’s very few doctors live in cities, and the majority in the capital of Patna.  Over 70 million people live in Bihar’s villages, far from any city, and hence far from any doctor.  Villagers typically only make the long arduous trip to a city to see a doctor in extreme cases.  As expected, this lack of available doctors has led to unaccredited health practitioners filling the void, responding to the demand in almost every village. These rural health providers typically have some limited medical experience but no formal training.

We entered a small brick room with no embellishments, nestled among thatched roof and dirt walled houses and dung patties drying in the hot sun.  Inside we met Hardener Sharma, the village health provider, a young man who had recently joined the World Health Partners network.  Prior to joining the network his only training was having worked as an assistant to a doctor in a city a few hours away.  He was excited to share how the World Health Partner network had improved the quality of care he provides. The room was small and spartan but clean, with a bed, a tiny wooden table and a few chairs.  On the table was his “doctor” bag and a cell phone.  An older woman with hardened features and a crying baby on her lap sat next to him with a worried expression.  Hardener reassured her and called a number on his cellphone, and then hung up.  Two minutes later his phone rang and a World Health Partner counselor, similar to a physician’s assistant, took down details about the woman and her baby, and then put Hardener on hold.  A minute later Hardener greeted a doctor on the other end, explained a few details, and then passed the phone to the woman who conversed with the doctor.  Hardener then spoke briefly with the doctor again, and the woman seemed relieved, even gracing us with a heartfelt smile. A few minutes later a text arrived on Hardener’s phone—a prescription from the doctor for medicines for the baby. read more

2013 Skoll Awardees signal social entrepreneurs’ increased focus on not only individual impact, but also ecosystem-level change

December 20, 2012 – Palo Alto, CA – The Skoll Foundation today announced the winners of its 2013 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship (SASEs).  Chosen from hundreds of applicants, the award recognizes a highly selective group of the world’s most promising social entrepreneurs.  Skoll’s 2013 award winners are BasicNeeds, The Citizens Foundation, Crisis Action, Independent Diplomat, Khan Academy, and World Health Partners.

2013 Skoll awardees: Who and why

“While Skoll’s six new awardees focus on different issues, they share what Skoll believes is key to accelerating large-scale change: an entrepreneurial approach, a proven innovation with demonstrated impact that can be scaled, focus on a pressing issue that is at an inflection point, and an ability to catalyze systems change,” said Sally Osberg, president and CEO of the Skoll Foundation.   read more

By Joy Zhang

In between visiting my folks in Shanghai, I took a couple days to hop up to Beijing where I spent an afternoon at one of Half the Sky’s programs, the China Care Home. Babies and young children from orphanages all over China (HTS and non-HTS) come to the Home for medical care not available in their hometowns.  It’s a unique program in the Half the Sky umbrella, with only one location in Beijing.  The Home is discretely tucked away in a high-rise apartment building where one floor of apartments has been converted into a nursery and pre and post-operative care facility.  Most of the apartment’s residents probably have no idea what they’re riding past on the elevator every day!

The babies were just waking from their afternoon naps when I arrived, rubbing the sleep from their eyes and stumbling around in onesies.  Most are recovering from surgeries for birth defects such as cleft lip, spina bifida, hydrocephalus – dangerous but treatable.  The nannies, who are there 24/7, call them individually by name, talk and play with them and encourage the toddling ones to take their first steps, while nurses come by on rounds to make sure recoveries are on track.  China Care Home is set up for 70 babies at any given time and hasn’t had to turn anyone away.  While the number of children in orphanages is on the decline in China, the majority of “orphans” now in institutions have disabilities or disorders that the families are unable or unwilling to treat. The government, through its Tomorrow Fund, now pays for many of the surgeries that these children require and then works in partnership with Half the Sky to provide the post-operative care.  Indeed, much of Half the Sky’s success in China can be attributed to its ability to partner with the government, to deeply respect and respond to the culture and inner workings of the country.

The China Care Home is only a sliver of what Half the Sky does, but I got a sense of the kind of care ingrained in all HTS-inspired homes around the country.  The nannies for the most part don’t have professional backgrounds in nursing or childcare – because you don’t need a degree to know how to love.  They are nurturers by nature.  And the babies blossom under their care as a result.

“First, do no harm” probably came from the Hippocratic Epidemics not Oath. It’s in that document that the line “to do good or to do no harm” actually appears. But the provenance of the phrase matters less than the practice. Health Care Without Harm’s Gary Cohen came to the Skoll office in Palo Alto for lunch Thursday, with Josh Karliner and Eric Lerner from his team, and talked about evolving the Hippocratic ideal. “What does it mean to do no harm on a planet in crisis?” he asked. “Can you have healthy people on a sick planet?”

As Gary pointed out, we’re running a fever (10 hottest years on record), we’ve got chemical dependecy issues (fossil fuel) and we’re overstressed and overconsuming. He cited fello Skoll Awardee Global Footprint Network’s finding that it would take 2.5 planets between now and 2050 to maintain our current production and consumption rates. To combat this craziness, HCWH has founded Practice Greenhealth, an organization that develops more sustainable healthcare models and brings them to hospitals. HCWH is also thinking global, working to to “build an ecosystem of collaboration, internationally, like the Skoll Foundation does.” So a medical facility in Nepal that once had a medical waste system that looked like a garbage dump now has a pristinely organized mercury storage area, an underground biodigester and a great sense of cleanliness and order. This isn’t rocket science; it is “super-low technology that can be used around the world”. read more

Multi-year investment supports expansion of certification program,
continued development of partnerships with fishermen, industry and retailers 

Hong Kong – September 4, 2012 – As representatives from the seafood industry and conservation community convene in Hong Kong for the SeaWeb International Seafood Summit, three leading funders — the Walton Family Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Skoll Foundation – announced a combined $10.85 million investment in the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) through September 2015, with the goal of continuing to build the global market for sustainable seafood. The multi-year grants demonstrate a continuing commitment to MSC’s certification and ecolabeling program, to preserve the livelihoods of fishermen while restoring depleted fish populations and a healthy marine environment.

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By Bruce Lowry

Several of our Skoll Global Threats Fund team accompanied Jeff Skoll on a trip to Israel and Palestine earlier this month.  The main objectives of the trip were to visit our grantees in the region, assess prospects for peace, and explore both double-bottom line business opportunities and philanthropic ways to engage constructively in the region.  We spent a little over a week there, visiting Skoll Global Threats Fund and Skoll Foundation grantees and speaking with representatives from the business community (including a number of tech startups), civil society and government on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.

Through the Skoll Foundation and the Skoll Global Threats Fund, Jeff has engaged philanthropically in Israel and Palestine for a number of years, and the trip afforded an opportunity to touch base with a number of groups the two entities work with, including Friends of the Earth Middle East (see photo above!), Sadara Ventures, OneVoice, Partners for Sustainable Development, the New Israel Fund and the Telos Group. We also had an opportunity to meet with a range of other civil society players working on issues ranging from economic development to women’s empowerment to nonviolence.

Jeff and the Skoll Global Threats Fund president, Larry Brilliant, had been invited to come to Israel earlier this year by Israeli President Shimon Peres, and they met and had a wide ranging conversation with the President.  The group also met with Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad to get his assessment of current political challenges in the region, including on the peace process.  With Fayyad, we had a chance to discuss the upcoming film from Jeff’s media company, Participant Media, that focuses on the state-building efforts of the Palestinian Authority over the last several years.

All in all, an action-packed and extremely informative set of meetings that provided us a good sense of the complexities and challenges of working in this region in this moment of time.

New Ceres Report Finds Disclosure by Exxon, Other Industry Giants Lacking; Reporting Rules Also Need Bolstering

Deepwater oil drilling in all corners of the world. Hydraulic fracturing for gas and oil across the U.S. Proliferating oil sands production in Canada.

A new and more risk-laden energy future is taking shape as the global thirst for fossil fuels spurs a search on frontiers once beyond technology’s reach. The environmental risks from extracting and transporting these fuels are numerous – with the 2010 Gulf of Mexico deepwater oil spill just one example of how things can go wrong. Climate change risks, including climate-driven physical impacts and regulations to control carbon emissions, also create financial exposure for oil and gas companies. read more

May 15, 2012 – Palo Alto – The Skoll Foundation today announced the merging of Social Edge and Skoll World Forum into a new year-round platform, Skoll World Forum Online:

In the last decade the Social Edge Community and its social entrepreneurs have together built a rich and trusted online community dedicated to changing business as usual. Their discussions around promising solutions, barriers to change, scale, metrics, and more, have contributed indelible value to the evolving social sector.

The Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, a program of the Skoll Foundation, has evolved too. It is now the premiere international platform for social entrepreneurship; we just convened our 9th annual event. And we couldn’t be prouder that both Social Edge and the Forum continue to attract the best and the brightest thinkers and doers committed to global social change.
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Mothers2mothers invites you to stand tall with us this Mother’s Day as we take an unprecedented step towards eliminating pediatric AIDS by 2015 and saving mothers.

Along with our colleagues at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF), we’ll make history in the House Triangle outside the Capitol as Representatives Trent Franks, R-AZ, Barbara Lee, D-CA, and James McDermott, D-WA announce a new bipartisan House resolution: “Recognizing the Potential for the Virtual Elimination of Pediatric HIV and AIDS and Keeping HIV Positive Mothers Alive.”

The event is scheduled to begin Thursday, May 10th at 1:00PM.  RSVP to lily@us.m2m.org or call 323-969-0445.

If you are unable to join us at the press conference, here are three easy ways you can help.

1. Encourage your Congressman to sign on to the House Resolution.

2. Donate to mothers2mothers.

3. Spread the word through Twitter and Facebook.

On April 30 at 7 p.m. at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, Calif., hear a free panel about village grandmothers becoming solar engineers in India, data technologists in Brazil transforming global rainforest conservation, and former Hollywood producers eradicating mother to child HIV transmission in Africa. Social enterprise organizations like Barefoot College, Imazon and mothers2mothers are creating breakthrough models that can ignite sweeping change for seemingly intractable problems.

They are part of the innovative Sundance Institute | Skoll Foundation ‘Stories of Change’ partnership, which pairs documentary filmmakers with social entrepreneurs to leverage the power of storytelling in their initiatives. Join us as we launch a week-long immersive Stories of Change Impact Lab at Tomorrow Partners. Hear from leading social entrepreneurs, filmmakers and designers about the inflection points they look for to uncover extraordinary opportunities for social impact at scale. How do the innovations we design, the systems we build, and the stories we tell work together to create lasting change?

Join the conversation at this inter-, trans-, multi-disciplinary panel discussion and catch a sneak preview of some upcoming Stories of Change films!

Again it’s free, but RSVP by tomorrow to dfprsvp@sundance.org if you plan to attend. Learn more about the partnership at  www.sundance.org/storiesofchange and the event at https://uinta.sundance.org/emailmarketer/display.php?M=68904&C=b940e1e76bd29aadacdb169569aea788&S=248&L=11&N=186

April 26, 2012 – At the Global Impact Economy Summit in Washington, DC, Secretary Clinton announced a new $44.5 million partnership – a Global Development Alliance (GDA) - between USAID and the Skoll Foundation.

Inspired by venture capital models, Development Innovation Ventures’ (DIV) at USAID invests in game-changing innovations in development with the power to change millions of lives at a fraction of the usual cost. DIV has made 20 investments to date, to world class innovators in health, energy, governance and food security.

The Skoll Foundation, founded in 1999 by Jeff Skoll, eBay’s founding President, drives large scale change by investing in, connecting and celebrating social entrepreneurs and the innovators who help them solve the world’s most pressing problems. Skoll has identified and cultivated the world’s most effective social entrepreneurs in areas from education and employment to food security and healthcare.

In this alliance, Skoll and USAID will identify and fund high-impact social entrepreneurs who have demonstrated innovations and sustainable business models ripe for scale – and maximum impact. The alliance will deliver evidence of impact, thereby encouraging increased public and private investment in scaling the most promising innovations

“Investors serious about scaling up development innovations need to scale up their own capabilities, and that’s what we’ve set out to do with this partnership,” said Sally Osberg, CEO and President of the Skoll Foundation. “Together, the Skoll Foundation and USAID are prepared to back and grow entrepreneurial solutions to many of the world’s most pressing problems. Along the way, we expect to deliver value well beyond what either of us can accomplish individually.”

For more information about DIV: http://idea.usaid.gov/organization/div

For more information about the Skoll Foundation: www.skollfoundation.org

This piece, called “Social Entrepreneurs ‘Refreshingly Uncynical’ — But Not At All Delusional” is featured on the front page of the Huffington Post today. (Sally is above, right, with Eve Ensler at this year’s Skoll World Forum.) Enjoy!

By Sally Osberg

Just as I was coming up for air after our ninth Skoll World Forum, held each spring in the U.K. at Oxford University, David Brooks’ New York Times column on social entrepreneurs hit my desk. Talk about timing!

For starters, Mr. Brooks cites coffee shops, universities and “a certain sort of conference” as fertile ground for bumping into “some of these wonderful young people who are doing good.” Big note to self: be sure to invite him to the Forum next year. Not only would this global community of 900 delegates welcome his savvy perspectives, he’d discover just how many social entrepreneurs are actually doing what he thinks they aren’t.

In his provocative piece, “Sam Spade at Starbucks,” Mr. Brooks attests to the appeal of the “refreshingly uncynical” women and men he considers social entrepreneurs. But they’re missing a big beat, he believes, by shunning government, and by thinking “they can evade politics” in their pursuit of social progress. Our experience at the Skoll Foundation suggests otherwise.

So, with all due respect, allow me to take up Mr. Brooks’ gauntlets.

Contrary to his concern that “you can cram all the nongovernmental organizations you want into a country, but if there is no rule of law… your achievements won’t add up to much,” in fact, many social entrepreneurs are directly and indirectly supporting the rule of law. Landesa, for example, a new addition to the Skoll Foundation portfolio, works with governments in 40 countries to transfer property rights, which ultimately bring food, income, and the opportunity to transcend poverty. In India, for example, a local state government worked with Landesa to educate women about their land rights and help them through the land-application process. Already, 100 women in that small area have their land titles. They are counted among the 105 million families who have received land rights because of Landesa’s government partnerships.

Mr. Brooks is concerned that social entrepreneurs have “little faith in the political process.” But a number of organizations work with a “healthy political process.” Camfed (the Campaign for Female Education) partners with the Zambian government to enforce child protection as a cornerstone of its education plan. (In Africa, it’s common for teachers to pressure their female students to have sex with them). Now, 1,500 schools have these plans in place. The real social progress? Experts agree the best way to bring lasting social benefits to a country is to expand educational and economic opportunities for girls. In total, Camfed has given grants to 60,000 girls to complete secondary school.

While Mr. Brooks thinks young activists are “not as good at thinking nationally and regionally,” Partners in Health (PIH) is doing just that, by partnering with the governments of Haiti and Rwanda to ensure sustainable access to first-class medical care. In Rwanda, the year-old Butaro Hospital is a collaboration between PIH and the Ministry of Health. It provides salary incentives and extensive training to healthcare workers. In Haiti, PIH will soon open Mirebalais Hospital, which former President Bill Clinton recently visited. PIH is also helping the Haitian Ministry of Health develop an immunization program to protect all Haitians against cholera, which has already killed more than 7,000 people. read more

By Kelly Greenwood

The Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership celebrated Soraya Salti of INJAZ al-Arab and mothers2mothers (m2m) at an awards ceremony and dinner at Claremont McKenna College (CMC) on March 21. This was the first time two winners were selected to receive $250,000 each for their respective organizations – and both are Skoll Awardees. CMC students, faculty, board members, and past Kravis Prize winners, among others, attended the event, during which Henry Kravis, Marie-Josée Kravis, chair of the Prize Selection Committee, and Pamela Gann, the President of CMC spoke.

Gene Falk, co-founder and CEO of mothers2mothers gave a speech on m2m’s role in preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa through its training and employment of mentor mothers who also have HIV/AIDS. For most mentor mothers, m2m is their first formal job, which “empowers them personally, economically, and professionally” and enables them to lead. read more