Skoll Entrepreneur(s): John and Susan Collin Marks
Change(s) Addressed: Peace & Security
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Search for Common Ground
DESCRIPTION:
John Marks founded Search for Common Ground (SFCG) at the height of the Cold War to build bridges between East and West. Operating from the basic belief that the world is running out of space, resources and recuperative capacity to deal with wasteful conflict, he has built SFCG into the largest nonprofit organization in the world working to defuse, prevent and transform conflict. Susan Collin Marks is South African. Before joining her husband as Senior Vice President of SFCG, she served as a peacemaker during South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy, mediating bloody clashes, and helping formulate national policy on community policing.
KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS OF 2010
- In 13 African, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries, we produce localized versions of The Team, a TV/radio soap opera that promotes win-win ways of solving contentious problems. In Kenya, the 26-part series has been the third most-watched program in the country. The Côte d’Ivoire series won First prize at the an Italian festival for best African dramatic TV series of 2009.
- In 2008, we co-convened a working group of 34 distinguished Americans to make recommendations to the incoming U.S. administration on how to improve relations with the Muslim world. Madeleine Albright, a participant in the process, lauded the report as “very strong advice to the next president.”
- With Outward Bound, we launched a leadership development program for Israeli and Palestinian social entrepreneurs, both to empower them in their individual work and to create the core of a Palestinian-Israeli network working for positive social change. The program proved so successful that we are expanding to it to include young political and religious leaders.
