Skoll Foundation

Today we are cross-posting a blog by Daniel Jensen of Mercy Corps’ Global Envision, focusing on our partnership with Mercy Corps and USAID. Here it is:

In Para, Brazil, farmers are turning a profit and the government is on track to slow deforestation thanks to local nonprofit Imazon, which got them to work together.

By 2003, Brazil was on the verge of an environmental catastrophe. As its economy expanded, cattle ranchers needed more land to graze their livestock, and few laws prevented them from burning down thousands of square kilometers of untitled land in the Amazon, causing vast environmental damage. In the worst regions, like Para, widespread poverty meant that stopping deforestation was at the bottom of the government’s list, despite massive efforts by groups like Greenpeace and Imazon.

A wave of environmental laws passed by the federal government from 2004 to 2008 seemed to complicate things for local governments and economies, even as deforestation rates fell. Many municipal governments couldn’t fully meet government targets under the new regulations but faced economic sanctions if they didn’t. A beef embargo prevented farmers from selling their meat to mainstream supermarket chains like Carrefour and Walmart if their municipality ended up on a blacklist for failing to reduce illegal deforestation to government-mandated levels. The government confiscated herds and sawmills from the law’s offenders. When Paragominas, a municipality in Para where Imazon worked, was placed on the list, 2,300 jobs and all the municipality’s federal agricultural credits disappeared within a year. read more

Today, Skoll Foundation CEO Sally Osberg is serving as a discussion leader at Annenberg Alchemy Gold, a collaborative of 30 Los Angeles-area grantmakers dedicated to strengthening the Los Angeles nonprofit sector. She is focusing on capacity building that can scale impact. Alchemy Gold is a learning collaborative and unique opportunity for philanthropy practitioners that’s  strategic and comprehensive, and offers a venue for dialogue and problem-solving. Partners convene quarterly to learn from experts (such as Sally Osberg) in capacity building around fundraising, leadership development, board governance and other topics. They also engage in facilitated conversations and identify best practices, methodologies, and tactics to increase the sector’s effectiveness and impact. In the photo above, she’s with Annenberg Foundation Director of Operations Sylia Obagi. Learn more: http://www.annenbergalchemy.org/programs/alchemy-gold/what

I just returned from Brazil, where I visited partners in the Amazon states of Para and Mato Grosso.  Before I get into the nitty-gritty, let me reflect on the big picture regarding the State of Para in Brazil.  Para is clearly undergoing a dramatic and deep transformation.  Only a few years ago, Para was a place I was afraid to travel to, a place where organized crime ruled and assassins were available for hire almost openly.  It was known as the wild west of the Amazon—more so than any other place in the Amazon (the size of the continental US).  Quite a few environmental or human rights activists had been killed or threatened.  This is where in 2005 Sister Dorothy Stang was murdered in cold blood for standing up for the poor.

Today, more than half of the private lands are registered with the state and monitored, and organized crime has less of a stranglehold.  In place of lawlessness and fear, one feels a real sense of pride emerging alongside a booming economy and increased governance.   Para is not like it was in 2005; Para is not like it was 5 years ago.  Para isn’t even like it was one year ago. read more

Yesterday, Sally Osberg spoke on “Giving Back” featuring Moderator Lesley Stahl and panelists Cathy Isaacson and Paula Zakaria. Here’s the press release:

On June 6, 2013 in New York, hundreds of influential men and women in media, business, politics and entertainment gathered at The Huffington Post’s first-ever women’s conference, “The Third Metric: Redefining Success Beyond Money and Power,” to discuss a more humane and sustainable definition of what it means to be successful.
The Conference was hosted by Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, and Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Panel discussions included topics such as Leadership and Wisdom, Wellness and the Bottom Line, the Connection Between Giving Back and Well-Being, and Millennials Leading Us Into the Future, among others. read more

Today, Sally Osberg is speaking at the Third Metric women’s conference at Arianna Huffington’s New York City home. At 5 p.m. EST, the winners of our Raise for Women contest will be announced. Then, the panel, called “Giving Back,” will commence, featuring Moderator Lesley Stahl and panelists Cathy Isaacson, Sally Osberg, Jill Van Den Brule and Paula Zakaria.

Read the live blog at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/06/third-metric-live-blog-updates_n_3391377.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008 and follow the conference on Twitter at #thirdmetric. See photos at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/05/third-metric-conference-photos_n_3391525.html?ir=Healthy+Living&ref=topbar#slide=2539064

A press release from Forest Trends, which was picked up by the Wall Street Journal online: 

Four years ago, the indigenous Paiter Suruí of the Brazilian Amazon voted to shift the basis of their economic livelihoods away from logging and other activities that require bulldozing the forest towards activities that conserve it. To make up for lost income, they sought to earn credit for the carbon captured in trees under a mechanism known as REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, plus sustainable forest management).

Last week, an independent audit confirmed they had become the first indigenous people in the world to generate REDD+ credits under the rigorous criteria of the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), which requires detailed validation and verification procedures. Their success can now be replicated by other indigenous people, who have long been among the most effective stewards of the land and play a key role on the front lines of combatting climate change.

“REDD+ is a mechanism that unites our values and those of the non-indigenous capitalist world,” says Chief Almir Suruí, who conceived the project in 2007. “This is our contribution to forest preservation, but projects like this can only be achieved by people with a medium- to long-term perspective.” read more

We are proud to share this great news from Girls Not Brides. The press release:

Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage welcomes the report by the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda to the United Nations Secretary-General. The Panel’s recommendation that the post-2015 development agenda include a goal to “Empower Girls and Women and Achieve Gender Equality” – and that progress on this goal is measured by achieving an end to child marriage – is a bold and crucial effort to address global poverty and improve the welfare of girls and women worldwide.

“Adolescent girls were largely absent from the Millennium Development Goals,” said Mabel van Oranje, Chair of the Advisory Committee of Girls Not Brides. “The recommendation that the new development agenda include a specific goal to empower girls and women is overdue recognition that if we’re to reduce global poverty, adolescent girls must be a focal point of our efforts. Ending child marriage is an essential part of this work.”

“The report recognises that child marriage undermines so many of our development efforts – to keep girls in school, to reduce maternal mortality, to ensure children survive infancy, and to reduce poverty,” said Lakshmi Sundaram, Global Coordinator of Girls Not Brides.“Measuring rates of child marriage, allows us to track progress on the health, well-being and education of girls as well as to assess whether they’re able to enjoy their fundamental rights.” read more

Carne Ross of Independent Diplomat was recently on a very frank interview, where he talked about everything from how he resigned to the British Foreign Service to his opinion of President Barack Obama. It was part of The Carnegie New Leaders program.  An excerpt:

“I wouldn’t disagree with the notion that people need to work cooperatively on a macro level and perhaps need institutions to do that. It’s difficult for me to kind of pontificate about a process that happened to me almost arbitrarily and randomly. I was ejected from the British Foreign Service by this terrible event of the Iraq War. But thanks to that ejection, I was able to rediscover my political soul, if I can put it like that.

I was a very political person as a child and as a student, and I thought that I would remain political through my diplomatic career. God knows I worked on political things, from Palestine to nuclear disarmament. But somehow along the way, I had lost that sense of agency, of myself, of what my real political beliefs were, and it took leaving the foreign service to rediscover those things, to rediscover what my passions were.

So I think if one is locked in an institution and a particular cultural way of doing things, it is very difficult to discover what one’s passions really are.

For me, it required literally ripping up everything that had gone before, kind of jumping off a cliff into the void, not knowing where…I would land.”

Listen to the rest: http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/studio/multimedia/20130521/index.html

Great news from Ceres:

Ski Resorts from 24 States Join 40 Other Large Businesses in Call for U.S. Policies That Capture Economic Opportunities of Addressing Climate Change

This week, 108 ski areas from around the United States joined with 40 other businesses, Ceres and its BICEP (Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy) in signing the Climate Declaration, which calls upon federal policymakers to seize the American economic opportunity of addressing climate change.

These ski areas join iconic American businesses, including General Motors Co., Nike and Levi Strauss & Co., as well as founding signatory Aspen Snowmass, in asserting that a bold response to the climate challenge is “one of America’s greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century.” A full list of ski industry signatories is available here. read more

Great news from Skoll Awardee YouthBuild:

Valley Forge, PA, May 29, 2013 – Saint-Gobain, the world’s largest building materials company, in partnership with Akron Summit Community Action, Inc. (YouthBuild Akron) announces the completed renovation of 887 Garfield Street, the first home in Akron expected to achieve the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) Platinum certification. YouthBuild Akron trainees and the Saint-Gobain Corporation Foundation transformed the once-dilapidated property into a model of affordable, sustainable urban living in 16 months, and today distinguished guests will recognize the trainees’ accomplishment in a ceremonial ribbon-cutting.

read more

Skoll Awardee Sonidos de la Tierra just received the Silver Eye Award, an award given by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The award was presented as part of the Latin American forum Social Responsibility Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean (ORSALC) of UNESCO. “Skoll Foundation, with its support, during so many years, is part of this very important achievement,” Luis Szaran, founder of Sonidos, told us. Sonidos de la Tierra, Szaran told the audience, seeks to “rescue musical cultural values and replicate the project locally and internationally,” using music education as the primary method. He said music is the universal medium of communication that transcends social strata, languages and borders—making society more inclusive.

Did you miss The Fighters, a CNN Freedom Project documentary featuring Visayan Forum and its work to end human trafficking? It successfully made its debut on May 17 and 18, and Visayan says “The response was overwhelming.”

If you missed it, it’s not too late to watch: It’s now online, and on TV again June 1 and 2  on CNN. Watch now:  http://www.cnn.com/thefighters

Following a two-year CNN investigation, the two-hour documentary The Fighters chronicles Philippine human rights pioneer Cecilia Flores-Oebanda in her journey to protect children from the sex trade and convince the Philippines’ biggest star, Manny Pacquiao, to join her as a fighter in the battle against modern-day slavery. It’s estimated more than 100,000 children work in the sex trade in the Philippines. Since founding her anti-trafficking organization, Visayan Forum, in 1991, Cecilia Flores-Oebanda has helped more than 70,000 victims or potential victims of human trafficking. She believes if Pacquiao, an elected congressman in the Philippines and the country’s biggest star, champions her cause, it could mean a turning point. But just when it begins to look like she’s winning, allegations of fraud and missing funds threaten to ruin her life’s work as she is forced to change her focus from saving children to saving the organization she set up to help them.

Learn more:

http://www.skollfoundation.org/the-fighters-new-documentary-features-human-rights-pioneer-cecilia-flores-oebanda-boxer-manny-pacquiao-battling-modern-day-slavery-in-the-philippines/

Today, the Aspen Institute is awarding the 2013 Resolve Award (follow their live tweets from the ceremony @GLCRHresolve or the webcast www.aspeninstitute.org/live). It recognizes countries that are surmounting various challenges to bring essential reproductive health services to their people. Three countries—the Gambia, Kenya, and Zambia, with a special mention given to Sierra Leone—are receiving the Resolve Award for demonstrating leadership and political will.

Today, Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health (GLC) member Joy Phumaphi is presenting the Resolve Award to representatives of each country at a ceremony during the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.

This year’s Resolve Award winners, selected from a robust pool of nominations from countries around the world, showcase groundbreaking innovations in service expansion, financing and policy development:

In the Gambia, unpaved roads and an aging fleet of vehicles kept healthcare workers from visiting rural communities. To solve the problem, the Ministry of Health leveraged public and private funding to purchase a new fleet of ambulances and all-terrain vehicles, then outsourced their maintenance and operations to Riders for Health, a not-for-profit with decades of experience in medical transport. The result has been a dramatic improvement in health care delivery. read more

Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) is proud to share with us a photo of their special celebration earlier this month in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region of northern Colombia, adjoining the Caribbean.

Liliana Madrigal, co-founder of ACT, shared: “A purchase of 383 acres of coastal land considered sacred by the Kogi indigenous people was made possible through a partnership between ACT, the Colombian Ministry of Culture, and the Gonawindúa Tayrona indigenous association of the Kogi.  Such investment is a first for the Colombian government, which also established a new Colombian category of protected area for the land, a site of ‘national and cultural interest.’   On May 5, various government ministers, local leaders and around 50 Kogi spiritual leaders gathered for the official transfer of land to the Kogi, who now will work to incorporate it to their indigenous reserve. This accomplishment is highly significant not only for the Kogi, but for all indigenous groups seeking greater public awareness of the crucial importance of sacred lands to the perpetuation of their culture.”  

More from ACT:

Traditional sacred sites of the Kogi people are managed by the mamos, or spiritual authorities, who make offerings on these sites according to traditional calendars. However, not all sacred sites of the Kogi are in their reserve: some lie outside of it and are seriously threatened by development, extraction, and commercial industry pressures. In the process of recovering these sites in order to develop their ancestral practices in line with their traditional cosmology, the Kogi, in an interesting public-private partnership supported by the Colombian Ministry of Culture, the Colombian national rural development agency INCODER, and the Amazon Conservation Team, bought the property Jaba Tañiwashkaka located at the mouth of the Jerez River in the municipality of Dibulla, department of La Guajira.

By decision of the Ministry of Culture #2873 of November 13, 2012, the site was declared a site of national cultural interest, a new category of protected area in Colombia that protects the land where the sacred site Jaba Tañiwashkaka is located. On May 5, the transfer of this land will be formalized in a traditional ceremony, with the participation of mamos, local communities, and institutions involved in the acquisition process.

Today we share two bits of news from New Teacher Center.

NewSchools Venture Fund (NSVF) named New Teacher Center Organization of the Year at the NewSchools Summit 2013. This and the rest of the NSVF Portfolio Awards recognize the achievements of social innovators making a difference in the lives of students in underserved communities and changing the national conversation about what’s possible in public education. Learn more: http://www.newteachercenter.org/news/newschools-venture-fund-names-new-teacher-center-organization-year

And –

New Teacher Center was selected to be among the nation’s top professional development programs and schools of education to partner with Coursera, a leading Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) provider, in a new initiative to open up training and development courses to teachers worldwide, for free. Learn more: http://green.tmcnet.com/news/2013/05/15/7138311.htm

A new article in Stanford Social Innovation Review uses Bunker Roy as an example of how resilience is key for social innovation. An excerpt:

“In 1972, Bunker Roy and a small group of colleagues set up the Barefoot College in Tilonia, Rajasthan, India. Their vision was an interesting and catalytic one, joining old and new, traditional and radical. Informed by the teachings and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi—giving the poor and the dispossessed the means to produce their own necessities—the Barefoot College trained the poor to build their own homes, to become teachers in their own schools, and to produce, install, and operate solar panels in their villages. Roy and his colleagues also emphasized empowering women in general and grandmothers in particular. As a result, ‘professional’ expertise was placed in the hands of the poorest of the poor and the weakest of the weak: village women.

In one way, Barefoot College’s innovations were deeply radical—challenging the conventions of village life, professional associations, and traditional culture. In another way they were classic bricolage, a term drawn from the junk collectors in France and defined as “making creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are at hand (regardless of their original purpose).’ In this case the juxtaposition of elements not normally combined addressed a cluster of intractable problems including the health needs, gender inequalities, energy needs, and educational needs of the developing South.’

Read the rest: http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/social_innovation_and_resilience_how_one_enhances_the_other