Skoll Foundation

Sundance, so glitzy on top, is constantly and astonishingly substantive underneath. The best films are often documentaries and the best conversations, at least last week, were about social entrepreneurship not celebrities. Four Skoll awardees – Imazon, Mothers2Mothers, Tostan and Water.org – gathered at the festival in Park City, Utah from Monday to Friday for movies and merriment, but most of all for deep analysis of their own story-telling. The question: How can they more powerfully get the word out about their work?

The Stories of Change convening, led by the Sundance Institute and the Skoll Foundation, came to a really productive close on Friday, with all four awardees having significant breakthroughs. Each is at a crucial inflection point: Imazon has helped reduce Amazon deforestation from 60M acres a year ten years ago to 15M a year, and aims for less than 6M by 2020. Mothers2Mothers reaches 20% of HIV+ pregnant women and is poised to eliminate mother to child transmission of HIV in the next three years. Tostan has enabled 6000+ villages in West Africa come together to abandon practices such as female genital cutting (FGC), child marriage and domestic abuse and is set to rid Senegal of FGC. Water.org has pioneered the concept of water credit and now is in a position to lead a global movement to ensure that everyone in the world will have access to clean water and sanitation – in our lifetime. read more

The Global Journal,  a new publication aimed at opinion leaders and policy makers in the development sector, has just put out its Top 100 Best NGOs in the World, and 31 of them are Skoll Awardees. They started with a list of 1,000, then narrowed it down to 400, then these. Read about their criteria and metrics. Congratulations to all:

Partners in Health, Barefoot College, Water for People, Pratham, APOPO, Ceres, Digital Divide Data, Teach for America, Landesa, Root Capital, Saude Crianca, Population and Community Development Association, Gaias Amizonas, Tostan, Escuela Nueva, Aflatoun, Gram Vikas, Search for Common Ground, Center for Digital Inclusion, One Acre Fund, Kickstart, One World Health (founder Victoria Hale, is a 2005 Skoll social entrepreneur), Room to Read, Free the Children, IDE-India, Friends International, ICTJ, Witness, International Bridges to Justice, Injaz Al-Arab, and Global Footprint Network.

Today at 2 p.m. GMT, Skoll Foundation CEO Sally Osberg answered questions in a live chat on the Bellagio Initiative web site. An excerpt:

Q: ‘Can bottom-up entrepreneurs help major international top-down corporations become more startup friendly?’
SO: Great question! Happily, social entrepreneurs are the answer…I want to underscore that social entrepreneurs partner with their stakeholders and communities; it’s their MO in fact…lots of folks think that social entrepreneurs are lone rangers, but they are anything but. Think of the “social” in social entrepreneur as not just describing the why and what–a status quo that leads to oppression, marginalization and victimization of human beings, communities and populations, the goal of social benefit and value, but also the “how,” a way of working with those served.

Read more from Osberg, who gives great examples in Skoll awardees Camfed, Tostan, IDE-India, Riders for Health, Partners in Health, Root Capital and Kiva, here: http://action.bellagioinitiative.org/pages/online-qa-sally-osberg

Yesterday’s edition of the New York Times featured Skoll Awardee Tostan‘s work in helping to stop genital cutting in parts of Africa. The front-page story is a comprehensive look at the practice, and how powerful Tostan’s impact has been. An excerpt from the piece:

“But here in Senegal, Tostan, a group whose name means “breakthrough” in Wolof, Senegal’s dominant language, has had a major impact with an education program that seeks to build consensus, African-style, on the dangers of the practice, while being careful not to denounce it as barbaric as Western activists have been prone to do. Senegal’s Parliament officially banned the practice over a decade ago, and the government has been very supportive of Tostan’s efforts.”

Read the story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/world/africa/movement-to-end-genital-cutting-spreads-in-senegal.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1

Molly Melching of Tostan and Mechai Viravaidya of the Population and Community Development Association have been nominated for an international award. The Guardian International Development Achievement Award celebrates organizations that help poverty around the world. There are five nominees, and anyone can vote for them on the Web site. A panel of judges will also take part in choosing the winner. The winner will be honored at an awards ceremony on November 17.

The global new agency AFP reported a major victory in Skoll grantee Tostan’s longstanding effort to stop Female Genital Cutting and Child Marriage when 700 villages announced, “We are forever abandoning FGC and child/forced marriage.” Last week more than 3,000 people gathered in Kolda, Senegal, to affirm, or publicly reaffirmed, their commitment after participating in Tostan’s Community Empowerment Program (CEP). read more

Social entrepreneurs once again take center stage in The New York Times. In an essay on do-it-yourself foreign aid in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and in a follow up blog post on How to Change The World at NYTimes.com, columnist Nicholas Kristof highlights Skoll grantees Kiva, APOPO, Kashf, CAMFED, Afghan Institute for Learning, Tostan, and many other great social entrepreneurs. read more

Gary Slutkin, Executive Director CeaseFire, tells the story of Skoll awardee Molly Melching and the work of Tostan in a column in Huffington Post. Slutkin explores the parallels and draws larger lessons from the work of Tostan to stop female genital cutting and Ceasefire to stop shootings and killings. Slutkin writes: read more

Fortune Magazine’s latest issue includes a feature on Jeff asking, “How did this unassuming Canadian billionaire become a philanthropic superhero?” The article describes Jeff’s background and goes into depth on his work at Participant Media; how he “backs heady causes and finances serious films” and how his entry and success in Hollywood has taken Hollywood heavyweights, including Robert Redford, by surprise.

“Skoll’s films aren’t typical Hollywood fare: They tackle weighty subjects such as eco-Armageddon, petro-terrorism, education reform, and women’s rights. In short they tend to reflect Skoll’s progressive, and ultimately optimistic, worldview that shining a light on the world’s problems will inspire people to band together to bring about change on a large scale.” read more

The 2010 Clinton Global Initiative kicks off tomorrow in New York City with a series of plenary sessions, keynote speeches, breakout sessions, and small group discussions. The Skoll Foundation will have a significant presence at CGI this year, with 20 Skoll social entrepreneurs participating as delegates to the conference, five of whom will be speaking on various panels. Skoll Foundation CEO Sally Osberg will be moderating a session and Foundation Board Member Debra Dunn will also be on a panel. read more

The Skoll Foundation has just announced five new recipients of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.  Forest Trends, Imazon, and Telapak work on protecting forests and natural ecosystems in the Amazon, Indonesia and beyond.   One Acre Fund tackles subsistence farming in Africa through an integrated value-chain approach – inputs, training, and marketing – while Tostan uses human rights as a hook for driving community-based social change, including the abandonment of female genital cutting.  You can read more about these great organizations in our press release.  These five, along with Civic Ventures and Peace Dividend Trust, two award winners announced earlier, will all receive their awards (which include a $765,000 grant) at a ceremony at the Skoll World Forum in Oxford on April 15, 2010.

PALO ALTO, Calif.—March 31, 2010—The Skoll Foundation announced today its most recent investments in social entrepreneurs driving large scale change on critical issues around the globe. Recipients of the 2010 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship include three organizations – Forest Trends, Imazon and Telapak – working to tackle climate change through innovative efforts to preserve tropical forests in the Amazon, Indonesia and beyond.  Also receiving the Skoll Award are One Acre Fund, which provides an integrated approach to empowering rural farmers in Africa, and Tostan, which has developed an innovative method to leverage human rights as a framework for community development. read more