In a year with lockdowns and border closures, TEDx Skoll Conversations took us around the world to hear how frontline workers and community leaders are responding to the pandemic. Virtual…
Why social innovation education programs need to develop students’ inner well-being alongside their knowledge of the field, and five principles to help lead the way. Rethinking how universities, nonprofits, and…
Systems orchestrators are leaders and organizations who shape transformational social change behind the scenes by connecting people, providing resources and support, and mobilizing collective, unified efforts. At the Skoll Foundation, we…
Weekly testing can reduce in-school infections by 50 percent when combined with masking and distancing With support from The Rockefeller Foundation and the Skoll Foundation, new Covid-19 Testing Playbook is…
We all had to adapt and reinvent our plans and daily routines in 2020. For TEDx organizers around the world, this has been a challenge. While we realized we wouldn’t…
At the most recent TEDxPortHarcourt event, we explored the theme “Light Bearer”, with an aim to highlight the discoveries and lessons learned during the pandemic—a dark time in history for…
In 2010, Michael Jenkins and Carlos Souza each earned Skoll Awards for their innovative work to preserve forests and promote both conservation and sustainable development in South America and around…
TEDxJohannesburg explores the issues with local innovators and social entrepreneurs. Many countries in Africa were not adequately equipped to withstand the shock of the coronavirus pandemic. While the continent was…
When I had the opportunity to reboot TEDxBangalore digitally as COVID-19 restrictions eased in India, I focused on the theme of "Living with the Pandemic." It was one that resonated…
For me, the end of January has for many years meant a visit to Park City, Utah for the annual Sundance festival where Skoll has partnered in the Stories Of Change…
2020 was a tough year on many fronts, and land rights were no exception. COVID-19 hindered land rights advocates from doing field research, meeting with government officials, prioritizing policy initiatives,…
In our journey at the Skoll Foundation of supporting social entrepreneurs and other social innovators, we collectively seek paths to scale impact beyond the footprint of a single organization or…
The Skoll Foundation Board of Directors and team is proud to announce Dr. Raj Panjabi, CEO of Last Mile Health and world-class social entrepreneur, as its newest Board member.…
New Initiative Will Help Keep Doors Open for Estimated 1,600 Health Providers Offering Malaria Treatment and other Essential Health Services As countries have shut down sectors of their economies and…
If you could track my radius of movement since March 2020, I bet 98 percent of my footsteps were in my house. At first my new and small world DC (during COVID) was claustrophobic and oppressive. I felt I was under house arrest, “confined” to my home after years…
Social change is a team sport. We hear that a lot these days. The scope and scale of a problem that impacts billions of people demands deep, systemic collaboration and coalition building. Never will a single organization—or…
The Families and Workers Fund, a collaborative philanthropic effort designed to support and empower workers, families, and communities devastated by the health and economic crisis caused by COVID-19, is…
No health worker should have to choose between treating their patients and keeping themselves and their families safe. However, as the global shortage and inequitable distribution of personal protective equipment…
Kimberly Bardy Langsam - Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship , Erin Worsham - Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship , Ellen Martin - SoJo , December 14, 2020
2020 has been a year filled with unprecedented challenges—a global pandemic, racial reckoning, deepening climate crisis, and more. And while 2020 comes to a close, we know that these will…
On the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, philanthropies including the Skoll Foundation have underlined and enhanced their commitment to investing into climate solutions. In September 2018, 29 funders made a combined pledge to grant $4…
Governors represent 1 in 3 Americans Recommendations call for common, comprehensive action across states COVID Collaborative also released review of state vaccine distribution plans The nation needs a uniform…
Facing the historic global challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Skoll Awardees and our larger portfolio of grantees have met this moment with empathy, determination, and innovation. “This is the moment…
Healing collective trauma at the community level, and planetary health are now becoming part of the DNA of the healthcare system, and that gives me an enormous amount of hope.…
Commitment signifies the continued importance of funding the racial equity movement The Skoll Foundation is proud to announce a significant partnership with the groundbreaking Racial Equity Philanthropic Fund launched…
Never has listening to ideas that help us reflect about different points of view, our next steps, and our human condition been more necessary. -Elena Crescia, TEDxSãoPaulo The COVID-19 pandemic…
Climate change threatens the global water supply, particularly within lesser developed countries and emerging markets that have seen decades-long shortages in the investment of clean water infrastructure. With the onset…
Claire Melamed - Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data , December 1, 2020
One of the themes of the last decade has been a frightening rise in misinformation and untruth. Social media platforms transmit falsehoods around the world with a single click. The…
COVID-19 Health Education and Caregiver support Reaches Millions The pandemic has reached all corners of the globe, hitting the world's most vulnerable populations hardest. India and Bangladesh were no exception.…
In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought about big changes for Tostan, the West Africa-based organization that has partnered with communities at the grassroots for almost 30 years to…
I lay back in the ambulance early in the morning as it rushed through the dark streets of London. In those days there were no sirens but instead there was…
For far too long, injustice and inequity have disproportionately impacted underserved communities. The COVID-19 crisis and the killing of George Floyd, and many others, have laid bare the stark consequences.…
Although more and more organizations are taking steps toward greater diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace, people of color continue to consistently report feeling undervalued, unsafe, and exhausted from navigating…
Imagine you’re swimming in the sea. At first, the waves are manageable, enjoyable, even. But as you continue, you notice the currents getting stronger. You recognise the power of the…
States leading the fight on the climate crisis in the U.S. are ratcheting up their ambition. Governors across the country are rolling out sweeping new plans to slash greenhouse gas…
People working in social impact have had to deal with COVID-19 and its varying impact at two levels—on one hand, they have to manage themselves and their own lives in…
The mental health crisis we are seeing in India as a result of COVID-19 isn’t new—it’s just the old problem, in the new normal. Just as with every other aspect of the…
This year, American voters are more concerned with election security than ever before. Public confidence in an election process is integral to democracy, but what happened in 2016 left many questioning…
In the first weeks and months of the pandemic, as the Skoll Foundation aimed to support COVID-19 response across sub-Saharan Africa, we made an early grant to Development Media…
Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has been on a listening tour over the past several months hearing folks’ answers to the question of what it means to be an…
Human rights lawyer Karen Tse is Founder and CEO of International Bridges to Justice, an organization that provides prisoners in 48 countries with access to justice and prevents torture as…
The acknowledgement that wellbeing and mental health are affected by casteism and patriarchy is often missing. When I think of well-being, I don’t think of it as something that is…
Jennifer Oldfield - Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data , September 24, 2020
Let’s come together to accelerate progress in up-to-date data on the Sustainable Development Goals in an accessible and engaging way. Humans have a complicated relationship with facts—something we’ve seen clearly…
Collaboration and coordination are the only way to overcome COVID-19, says Don Gips, CEO at the Skoll Foundation, a private foundation working to drive social change through innovation and social entrepreneurship. “I…
COVID-19 and climate change are impacting all of us, but the dual disasters have a disproportionate impact on communities in emerging economies. These impacts are felt most acutely in rural…
As the massive scale of the COVID-19 pandemic became apparent, social entrepreneurs across the world, including many Skoll Awardees, have stood on the frontlines as first responders in this…
According the UNHCR, there are 25.4 million people currently registered as refugees, and over half of them are under the age of 18. These numbers will continue to grow as…
Sherrie Westin is President of Global Impact and Philanthropy for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street. She leads the Workshop’s efforts to serve vulnerable children through mass media…
While the Forbes 400, released this week, offers a sweeping view of individual wealth in the U.S., the real story is how it highlights the levels of philanthropic commitment…
Nancy Kapoor - The Wellbeing Project , September 9, 2020
Individuals working in social change are solving the most complex problems humanity faces, often in resource constrained environments. For many, this work takes a toll on their physical, mental, and…
The Skoll Foundation is proud to announce Cheryl L. Dorsey, President of Echoing Green, as its newest Board member. Echoing Green is a global organization that finds and supports…
Where does the concept of individual and universal “well-being” fit in the future society we aim to create? It is, of course, central to both the goals and to the…
It’s spring 2020 and, like much of the world, skateboarders are on lockdown. Around the world, there are over 200 social skateboarding projects, each aiming to empower young people and…
Steve Metcalfe - Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor , September 1, 2020
The Covid-19 crisis has been a powerful reminder of the urgent need for improved water, sanitation and hygiene around the world. Particularly for people living in densely populated urban communities,…
Back in the early 1970s, artist John Baldessari did The Pencil Story. As he explained, his pencil was producing blurry and indistinct lines, but he revived it by sharpening it. He…
As the world faces the climate crisis, international protests for racial justice, a global pandemic, and an economic downturn, the social change sector is struggling. Organizations across the spectrum are…
African governments have historically relied on face-to-face services as a key mechanism for supporting citizens. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with those services largely suspended, there was an…
Since the day COVID-19 arrived in your country, how many times have you washed your hands? It’s probably an impossible question. The 20-second interludes have become a part of life.…
Today, we’re excited to share that mothers2mothers (m2m)—an African not-for-profit that trains and employs women living with HIV as frontline health workers has launched a new, interactive WhatsApp platform to provide…
For nearly three decades, Tostan has co-created and implemented human rights based-educational programs with communities across the African continent that inspire large-scale movements leading to dignity for all. Founder of…
At the end of June, the African continent had 400,000 COVID-19 cases, with local transmission increasing significantly. By the end of July, that case count had more than doubled. Health…
The myth of the corporate American do-gooder is a thinly veiled attempt at upholding the capitalist systems that produce and entrench systemic injustice and inequality. The philanthropic community must—and can—change…
Artist and Crystal Award winner, Lynette Wallworth, describes how her work calls attention to moments happening on the periphery – such as individual moments of loss. The capacity to see…
More than three years ago, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors gathered a group of funders to ponder questions related to supporting promising solutions with the potential to transform or perhaps even re-imagine…
When Estonia held the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council in May, it hosted the largest high-level gathering of UN Member States since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis.…
At a 2017 event hosted by The Wellbeing Project (TWP), Gabriela Gandel, executive director of the social entrepreneur network Impact Hub, expressed the need to address dysfunction and high rates of burnout across…
In a time of a global pandemic and a movement to end systematic racism, philanthropy aims to connect inefficiencies and use modern-day technological systems to help magnify and accentuate…
Kathryn Cross, executive director of communications at the U.N., recently conducted a virtual seminar with Don Gips, CEO of the Skoll Foundation; Elizabeth Cousens, President and CEO of the UN…
Ever since the pandemic touched our shores, we've been concerned about two broad things at the Circular Apparel Innovation Factory (CAIF). One, what happens to the members of the textile…
Jess Murrey, advisor at Search for Common Ground (2006 Skoll Awardee), recently spoke with two peacebuilders, Shoqi Al-Maktary from Yemen and Ehsanullah Abrar in Afghanistan, to learn how countries torn…
Social entrepreneurs suffer widely from burnout, limiting their potential to make change. A Schwab Foundation collaboration with the “Wellbeing Project”, explores the integral yet often overlooked link between wellbeing and…
Across the globe, social change leaders are responding with urgency to Coronavirus and the human rights issues the pandemic has laid bare. The work of social change can be as…
Three steps to help funders actively support the well-being of their partner organisations. Mental health is still not well explored in India, and the discourse around well-being is only slowly…
Social change leaders can better advocate and find funding for well-being initiatives by creating a more authentic and deeper understanding of what it looks like and the difference it can…
Essam Daod co-founded Humanity Crew in 2015 to provide first response mental health and psycho-social support for refugees and people in crisis. Journalist Ray Suarez sat down with Daod to…
We at the Skoll Foundation are deeply shaken and angered by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks, and of so many other Black Americans. Injustice and…
The Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE), a 2015 Skoll Awardee, is a pioneering NGO that developed the first public database of water pollution information in China and brought…
To be a hero is to take a risk. Hem Moktan does this every day, facing his brutal past as an enslaved child. He is featured in the documentary film Hem…
One of my first childhood memories is of a never-ending sea of small yellow rooms, sprawling across a desert with not a single tree. Many people wore the same kind…
How do social enterprises and the funders that support them achieve impact at scale even in times of acute crisis? This is the question that prompted the Scaling Pathways partners—Skoll Foundation, Mercy Corps…
It’s been 55 years since police violence sparked the Watts rebellion. It’s been 28 years since the Rodney King arrest, beating, filming, and subsequent uprising in South Los Angeles. Today,…
Isidoro Hazbun - Amazon Conservation Team , May 29, 2020
Marginal access to healthcare, limited hygiene resources, and weak government support in deterring potentially contagious intruders put even the most remote communities in the Amazon at risk of the spreading…
African and global philanthropists have teamed up in an effort to help African nations secure cost effective ventilators, breathing support devices and other medical equipment. Strive Masiyiwa co-founder of…
With demand for toilet paper and other household items in the headlines, the COVID-19 crisis has made supply chains news, highlighting what disruptions mean to consumers, companies, and workers. This…
A look at myriad ways funders can support the well-being and mental health of often understaffed and under-resourced grantees, and help foster healthier individuals and organizations. In another day and…
At VC Include, we’ve built a platform for diverse fund managers to develop relationships with and learn from investors who are interested in finding new market opportunities that align with…
Emily Bancroft is President of VillageReach, an organization that works to transform health care delivery to reach everyone. VillageReach won the Skoll Award in 2006. Its initiative in Malawi, Chipatala…
Seven years ago, I was in one of the most remote places on the planet, hiking through the rainforest of the northwest Amazon, following an indigenous colleague clad in only a…
How are you feeling? Before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus that was a simple question. Today, posed on the COVID Near You website, it’s a question with life and…
During the current lockdown, I like to join members of the wellbeing community in a weekly webinar where we spend an hour with a special guest–an 82-year-old Chinese Tai Chi…
Effective leadership goes beyond outward-facing skills such as managing people and growing organisations. What matters is mastering the ‘inner game’ of introspection. Here are some concrete ways to do so.…
How the internal work of self-inquiry can meaningfully shift our perceptions and behaviors in ways that positively impact the outer world, and how leaders of social change are incorporating the…
When we set out to organize an event on urban innovation in Africa as part of this year’s virtual Skoll World Forum week, we knew we wanted to draw attention…
Last September, we held a TEDx Skoll Conversation in Chengdu, which brought together social entrepreneurs from different regions across China to demonstrate the positive role of social innovation in shaping…
It took a global pandemic to raise the world’s awareness of the importance of handwashing and access to clean water – basic services that over 2 billion people in the world still lack. Many of us in the US and…
Geneva, Switzerland, 4 May 2020 – Over 40 leading global organizations have united to launch the COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs, pooling knowledge, experience and responses to alleviate suffering…
Gift Follows a Doubling of Current Grants to Total $200 Million Committed to Date This week, Jeff Skoll made a new $100 million gift to the Skoll Foundation, which it…
I have frequently heard about the life changing effects of meditation from enthusiasts. It often comes across with religious fervor and intensity. It often includes jargon that doesn’t make sense…
For several years, we both have actively supported entrepreneurial ecosystems in our respective regions. We are both what some call ecosystem builders. As ecosystem builders, we act as intermediaries, cheerleaders,…
This year during the first-ever virtual Skoll World Forum, Health Care Without Harm organized a session to explore the relationship between the coronavirus pandemic and the climate crisis. We had planned…
The Skoll Foundation has announced the five winners of the 2020 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship. “The Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship shines a light on emerging leaders who fearlessly…
As the coronavirus pandemic impacts millions across the world and brings economies to a grinding halt, there’s a lot of talk about how emissions from fossil fuel combustion have dropped…
Note: On April 24, Jeff Skoll announced a new $100 million gift to the Skoll Foundation, which it will use to fight the COVID-19 pandemic globally. Learn more here: skoll.wf/covid-19/…
As a global pandemic infiltrated daily life and halted any sense of normalcy, the 2020 Skoll World Forum morphed into an entirely online open-sourced experiment. With the enduring spirit and irrepressible…
In this unprecedented and uncertain era, it’s more important than ever to gather our collective strength and support and elevate groups that build a more sustainable, peaceful, and prosperous future…
The Skoll Foundation has announced the five winners of the 2020 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship. “The Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship shines a light on emerging leaders who fearlessly…
In July 2007, Nelson Mandela took to a stage in Johannesburg on his 89th birthday to introduce the world to a new alliance of senior statespeople dedicated to solving thorny…
With incredible generosity and energy from our community, next week will be the largest and most globally diverse Skoll World Forum Week ever. This open-sourced experiment is a reimagined approach…
Each year, I spend most of my time curating the Skoll World Forum program. We determine an overarching theme to provide connective tissue for the four-day program. We scope the…
I became a mother as I was leading the liberation movement in my home country of the Philippines. I hid in the mountains and the military ran an endless pursuit.…
The first in a series of articles dedicated to exploring the relationship between inner well-being for social change in the context of India, as well as other countries in the…
Steve Metcalfe - Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor , March 21, 2020
Climate change is water change. That's the message for this year's World Water Day, which takes place on Sunday. In the poorest parts of the world, the challenge of climate…
The Wellbeing Project—co-created with Ashoka, Esalen, the Impact Hub, Porticus, the Skoll Foundation, and Synergos--focuses on catalyzing a culture of inner well-being for all change makers. As part of its…
“There is a lack of knowledge around the early warning signs of burnout in frontline work. The question has been how do we get [frontline workers], not how do we…
Three decades ago, I started my journey in social entrepreneurship–like so many others—hungry for impact. I told Roy Prosterman, my early mentor and fellow co-founder of the nonprofit land rights…
Sohini Bhattacharya is the CEO and President of Breakthrough, a global human rights organization working to drive culture change to build a world where all people live in dignity, equality,…
As CEO of New America, Anne-Marie Slaughter, leads a think and action tank dedicated to renewing the promise of America. It focuses on a range of policy issues from national…
One thing social entrepreneurs have in common is that we are motivated to tackle BIG problems: systemic problems, societal problems, global problems, environmental problems. But every social innovator starts with…
The Emerging Leaders Initiative (ELI), a six-year partnership between the Skoll Foundation and the Mastercard Foundation, sought to support the next generation of rising social entrepreneurs. Between 2014 and 2019,…
In 2019, we embarked on a journey to learn more about the impact of the Skoll World Forum. We also investigated what we could do to increase, extend, and amplify…
Everywhere I turn in these first weeks of 2020, I’m struck by the need for urgency. With the scope and scale of the issues we’re facing across the globe, I…
Erin Worsham - Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship , Kimberly Bardy Langsam - Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship , February 10, 2020
How can funders accelerate impact at scale? The social enterprises interviewed in Scaling Pathways have also shared ways in which funders can better support them in developing and accessing the…
Hundreds of business, government, civil society, and other leaders recently weighed in on the most urgent threats confronting humanity and, for the first time in the Global Risks Report’s history,…
Erin Worsham - Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship , Kimberly Bardy Langsam - Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship , February 4, 2020
One component of the Scaling Pathways series is Scaling Snapshots, which are glimpses into one organization’s scaling journey, including the strategies pursued, implications of those strategies and “Pearls of Scaling…
Erin Worsham - Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship , Kimberly Bardy Langsam - Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship , February 4, 2020
What internal and external levers can social enterprises activate to finance impact at scale? Root Capital on the challenges of blending colors of money inside an organization: Willy Foote, the…
Erin Worsham - Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship , Kimberly Bardy Langsam - Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship , February 4, 2020
How do your talent needs evolve as you drive toward scale and how can you evolve with them? Health Leads on actively navigating talent through strategic shifts Alexandra Quinn, CEO…
Erin Worsham - Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship , Kimberly Bardy Langsam - Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship , February 4, 2020
How can social enterprises prepare for and successfully partner with government to dramatically accelerate the scale of impact? Code for America on understanding the whole government ecosystem before engaging Jen…
We are truly saddened by the loss of Leila Janah, Founder and CEO of Samasource, and LxMI. Leila also co-founded Samahope with Shivani Garg Patel, Chief Strategy Officer of the Skoll…
For two decades, innovative social enterprise and 2009 Skoll Awardee APOPO, has researched, developed, and implemented detection rats technology for humanitarian purposes, most notably for demining operations. It has freed…
Every year, the Skoll Foundation has the privilege of managing the sourcing and selection of the Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship. The Skoll Award is an investment of $1.5 million…
Vu Le is the former Executive Director of Rainier Valley Corps, a non-profit organization in Seattle that promotes social justice by developing leaders of color, strengthens organizations led by communities…
9,000 disposable cups used in a week! That’s the total used in our primary venue during the 2019 Skoll World Forum, despite the complimentary insulated tumbler given to each delegate.…
As the end of 2019 approaches, we’ve gathered up the good news: the progress and accomplishments of Skoll social entrepreneurs, hard at work on the world’s thorniest problems. We are…
Dimakatso, 23, lives in Soshanguve, South Africa. Her father passed away a little over a year ago, forcing her mother to relocate to a neighboring town for work, and leaving…
Ai-jen Poo - The National Domestic Workers Alliance , November 22, 2019
Ai-jen Poo is a leading labor activist and the founder of National Domestic Workers Alliance. The Alliance works to bring dignity and fairness to the growing numbers of workers who…
In this video, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank imagines a future with “poverty museums” and shares his vision for creating change. “If we imagine today…
Last week as we prepared for a panel on transitioning health solutions to government, Skoll Principal Liz Diebold introduced me to the word game Mad Libs. While I’d never filled…
In a remote corner of southwest Madagascar last month, local communities launched the world’s largest mangrove carbon conservation project, sequestering a huge amount of carbon and securing an ecosystem vital…
James Mwangi, Executive Director of the Dalberg Group, has spent decades designing and supporting innovative approaches to tackling the world’s most stubborn problems. His recent work has focused on helping…
When Mariana Costa Checa was bootstrapping a software development start-up with partners in Lima several years ago, finding the right talent for the team was a challenge. There simply weren’t…
On the 2019 International Day of Rural Women, Landesa’s Shipra Deo explores how land rights are an essential element for overturning misperceptions about the role of women in society and…
At the Skoll Foundation, we’ve been on a journey over the last year to advance our understanding of the impact of our convenings, in particular the Skoll World Forum. As…
Two major events loomed large for the TEDxJakarta curatorial team as we began to think about this year’s event. First, were the earthquakes and tsunami that hit Palu, Sulawesi in…
Last month, we successfully organized the TEDxChengdu 2019 annual event, and celebrated the TEDx Skoll Conversations series in Chengdu, one of the biggest city in western China, with its unique…
Climate and health took center stage at the 74th session of the UN General Assembly last week in New York—the annual gathering of nearly 200 world leaders with a…
Bob Annibale is the Global Director of Inclusive Finance for Citigroup and leads their partnerships with global, national, and local organizations to support inclusive finance and community development through economic…
Former President of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, recently made a triumphant return to his home country as head of the national parliament after several years of exile in the UK.…
The Skoll Foundation is proud to announce James Mwangi, Executive Director of the Dalberg Group, as its newest Board member. The Dalberg Group comprises a collection of impact-driven businesses that…
Sean McKaughan chairs the board of Fundación Avina, which focuses on sustainable development through collaborative change processes in Latin America with the aim of large-scale positive impact. He recently published…
Degan Ali - African Development Solutions , September 23, 2019
Degan Ali is the director of Nairobi-based Adeso, an organization that’s trying to change the way people think about and deliver humanitarian aid. Adeso envisions an Africa not dependent on…
We’re 43 years behind schedule in our progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. That’s the sobering takeaway from the recently released 2019 Social Progress Index (SPI). The report gauges social…
Every year, human civilization churns out ever more dangerous quantities of greenhouse gases. Every day we see and feel the increasing effects of a growing climate crisis that impacts people’s…
Edgar Villanueva - Schott Foundation for Public Education , September 4, 2019
While philanthropy is no stranger to criticism, it has weathered some sharp critiques in the past year, helping to catalyze an opportunity for introspection, reassessment, and redesign. Edgar Villanueva, author…
More than 26,000 fires have raged throughout Brazilian Amazon in August alone—the fastest rate of destruction since record keeping began. President Jair Bolsonaro campaigned with a promise to open the…
Water For People's goal is clear and ambitious: lasting quality water services for every family, clinic and school—forever. When people have access to clean water all the time, their lives…
I have a dream job. I get to travel the world making films about inspiring change makers doing incredible work on many of the world’s thorniest problems: environmental degradation, human…
Suzanne Pelletier is the Executive Director of the Rainforest Foundation US which partners with indigenous peoples in Central and South America to help them assert their rights and conserve their…
Women who lack access to life’s basics know exactly what they need. And they’re getting it. As different as everyone’s life may be, there are a few basic human functions…
In late 2016, Tara Houska called Morton County North Dakota home for six months—she stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the frontlines at Oceti Sakowin, the gathering of Indigenous Nations at Standing Rock…
What does it mean to give one person access to clean water or safe sanitation? For them and their family, it means the world: dignity, health, more time to work, study,…
The organizations in the Skoll Foundation portfolio are a leading corps of global change makers. We receive awards, funding, and celebratory fanfare at the annual Skoll World Forum on Social…
What would it take, in terms of both financial and human resources, to achieve your goals? That was the final question Don Gips asked a group of Skoll Foundation Awardees…
The results of the 2018 midterm elections made it clear that American voters are ready for climate action. Across the country, we saw victories for many candidates who support bold…
Don Gips joined the Skoll Foundation in early April, taking over leadership responsibilities from Interim President and COO, Richard Fahey. Don brings a wealth of experience in both the public…
The two “mega-trends” that occupy much of Secretary Madeleine Albright’s attention these days are globalization and technology and their intersection. “Globalization is not a four-letter word,” she told a small…
In the wake of a long and brutal civil war, Liberia had one of the world’s worst shortages of doctors—51 physicians to serve the entire country. The health of millions…
At the Skoll Foundation, our north star is to drive large-scale change by supporting the work of social entrepreneurs and other innovators. "Large-scale change" is a very high bar for…
“The idea of ‘social entrepreneurship’ has struck a responsive chord. … Though the concept of ‘social entrepreneurship’ is gaining popularity, it means different things to different people. … The language…
Imagine the impact if the untapped, underfunded, and underappreciated talent and tenacity of leaders from developing countries was fully utilized. At the 2019 Skoll World Forum, my co-facilitators and I…
Erin Worsham - Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship , Amanda West - Mercy Corps , May 1, 2019
“People are at the heart of everything we do. Hiring, retaining, and developing staff is our most important calling as an organization, because having adequate people resources is a crucial…
Grace Mzumara - Saïd Business School , April 24, 2019
How would you explain the world today, to the world that was, a hundred years ago? I imagine my wide-eyed self, sharing the marvels of modern day transportation and music from the…
Tulsi Parida - Saïd Business School , April 23, 2019
The much anticipated Fail Faire at the Oxford Foundry during Skoll Week brought out stories of the biggest challenges faced by social entrepreneurs. Earlier in the week I was at…
Few issues generate more debate today than economics. Occupy Wall Street, the 99 vs. 1 percent, unequal development, and other impacts of globalization have spawned bestsellers, undergirded contentious political campaigns,…
There are more than 25 million people registered as refugees today, displaced by conflict, volatility, or climate change. Of this community, half are children under 18. Their lives have been…
As we face a looming 12-year deadline on climate change, increasing threats to democracy, and a global refugee population of unprecedented size, effecting social change at a systems level has…
Long before he founded the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), Ma Jun was a trailblazing investigative environmental journalist in China. His groundbreaking reporting on the mounting environmental crisis…
Several email-based scams claiming to be from or associated with the Skoll Foundation and/or CEO Don Gips and other staff members are circulating. We have learned that people are receiving…
At the 2019 Skoll World Forum, we hosted a series of live conversations—led by award-winning journalist Emily Kasriel—with social entrepreneurs, innovators, and thought leaders on Facebook Live, off the main stage.…
We’re sometimes asked why we work in farming. Why, of all the many things we could task ourselves with, did we choose the incomes of smallholder farmers? The answer is…
As we gather in Oxford to discuss how humanity can accelerate a future that is fair, inclusive, and sustainable at this year’s Skoll World Forum, it is helpful to remember…
We are delighted to announce the five winners of the 2019 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship, one week before we head into the 16th Annual Skoll World Forum: Crisis Text Line, Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, mPedigree, mPharma, and Thorn. …
Edgar Villanueva - Schott Foundation for Public Education , March 26, 2019
You would be hard-pressed to pick up a newspaper, scroll through an online media platform, or check social media without being bombarded with stories on the U.S. college admissions scandal.…
In recognition of the complexity and interconnectedness of so many of the world’s most pressing challenges, institutional funders have been thinking deeply—and collaboratively—about how to create more transformational impact. Two…
There’s nothing more important to human life than clean, reliable water. It’s the first, and most basic of needs, something we cannot live without for more than a few days.…
As we look forward to next month’s Skoll World Forum, the Skoll Foundation and the Mastercard Foundation are honored to introduce our 2019 Emerging Leaders! Launched in 2013, the Emerging…
Our TEDxSãoPaulo event in October 2018 explored the theme "Innovation + Impact" with the goal to attract many social entrepreneurs and people already engaged in social impact. Our events have…
Looking for the perfect bedside reading as you prepare for the Skoll World Forum? Whether you’re joining us in Oxford or engaging through the Digital Pass, there are plenty of great reads by Forum speakers to expand…
Lindsay Branham is the founder of NOVO, a non-profit incubator for art and technology that recently produced a slew of virtual reality (VR) films meant to increase human connection. Her projects use film…
Attending the Skoll World Forum for the first time can be overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be. We hold video orientations to share advice for first time Forum delegates…
What does it mean to Accelerate Possibility? We had been mulling over this concept in the fall, when suddenly the concept became very real in my personal life. My second…
We're thrilled to announce CNN's Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour; domestic rights activist Ai-jen Poo; Amnesty International Secretary-General Kumi Naidoo; actor, writer and producer, Chiwetel Ejiofor; futurist and filmmaker Anab…
In May 2015, a group of ambitious philanthropic collaborators, including the Skoll Foundation, pledged to make a measurable dent in Africa’s hunger crisis through a catalytic $100 million investment to…
The Skoll World Forum brings together a global network of change agents to discuss, collaborate, and celebrate social progress. We curate invitations each year to convene 1,200 delegates—about a third of whom are social entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders, a third are funders spanning philanthropic to commercial, and a…
The Skoll Foundation Board of Directors today announced the appointment of a new CEO: former Ambassador to South Africa Donald H. Gips. With a diverse career spanning public service,…
The Stories of Change initiative, now into its second decade, connects independent storytellers with social entrepreneurs. It fosters the enhancement of story skills and networks between these communities and supports…
Every summer, soon after the frenzy of the Skoll World Forum has passed, we begin to think about what thematic elements will guide the next Forum. We read the news.…
During West Africa’s devastating Ebola epidemic in 2014, the Liberian Ministry of Health and Last Mile Health—an organization that delivers primary health care to some of the most remote corners…
Back in the fall of 2017, the Skoll Foundation joined several other funders—Richard Chandler, Bill and Melinda Gates, The Rockefeller Foundation, and Rohini and Nandan Nilekani—to commit $500 million for…
Shashi Buluswar - Institute for Transformative Technologies , January 14, 2019
In short, no—at least when it comes to lower-income countries and populations, and not in time for the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Even worse, it can be a major…
Those without enough income to keep the heat on and food in the fridge are more likely to get sick than those with sufficient resources to meet these essential needs.…
The abbreviation for "Access to Markets" (ATM) makes for a great parallel to the actual challenge for most small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)—without clients there’s no cash to run…
The world’s attention this week has turned to Katowice, Poland, where leaders and advocates have gathered to discuss the global climate change agenda at the COP24 United Nations Climate Change…
Sometimes great ideas can hide in plain sight—innovative solutions are far too often overlooked. Even social entrepreneurs with the most passion and ingenuity can be missed. TEDx events are one…
In 1993, political tension in Burundi ignited and quickly engulfed the country in violent conflict. Long-simmering tensions born of colonial divisions quickly ignited into bloody massacre. Hutus and Tutsis who…
On September 25, “We the Future,” featured a day of TED talks exploring some of our most difficult collective challenges—as well as emerging solutions and strategies for building bridges and…
Stavros Yiannouka - World Innovation Summit for Education , November 13, 2018
The world is both fascinated by and fearful of artificial intelligence (AI). Very few of us understand the technology behind it and even fewer can clearly articulate the implications of…
In 2018, we elevated and amplified the stories of Skoll awardees in more than 50 cities and 11 countries, showing audiences all over the world that change is possible. Here's…
Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) are an outcomes-based (pay-for-success) model where private investors contribute debt capital to fund projects with social goals. If the projects achieve their targets, the investment capital,…
Want to dramatically increase your impact and scale? A new book, Lean Impact by Ann Mei Chang, offers a practical guide to social innovation with inspiring examples drawn from her…
With the 2018 elections right around the corner, states and business continue to lead the move toward clean energy and clean transportation solutions to accelerate a low-carbon economy. Recent legislative…
Partnering with governments is an increasingly popular pathway for social entrepreneurs seeking to scale their impact. But as the new Scaling Pathways report shows, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. It…
The quiet agricultural revolution that Kola Masha has sparked in north central Nigeria has its roots in the early 20th century fields of South Dakota where his grandfather banded together…
For communities across the Global South, the impacts of climate change are not abstract projections but concrete realities that threaten their land and food security. In the wake of the…
When I had the opportunity to convene my community for a TEDxBangaloreSalon event last month I immediately thought of the underrepresented narratives. I tried to think of those so busy…
David McGinty - Palladium International , Emma Davies - Palladium International , October 1, 2018
The rapid development and diffusion of innovation, including digital technologies, is challenging the systems and capacity of traditional international development partners. Testing and scaling of innovation and technology require agile…
The question for many social entrepreneurs is not whether to work with government, but how. Partnering with government offers enormous potential to scale a product or service across regions or…
How would you spend a billion dollars? Gary White knows what he will do. The Water.org CEO and co-founder says his organization has reached the $1 billion milestone in its…
Last year, the Scaling Solutions Toward Shifting Systems initiative—led by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and a Steering Committee of which the Skoll Foundation is a member—reflected on what more funders could…
September 2018. It’s been a momentous month. A massive hurricane stormed across the Atlantic Ocean. A super typhoon simultaneously traversed the Pacific. Both wreaked havoc—displacing more than a million people…
“If you don't account for your impact properly, you have no right to call yourself a social anything” – Alex Nicholls. Measuring impact: it’s a challenge all social entrepreneurs face. Is…
It’s become clear that the participation of local people and community organizations in the design and implementation of service delivery models is critical for success. Top-down, technocratic development often fails.…
With TEDxLagos this year we wanted the event to embody the essence of our vibrant, diverse community, one of the major business hubs of Africa. Under a theme of “Spotlight,”…
Half of the one billion people in the world who still defecate in the open live in India. Poor sanitation in India is not just a rural issue: at least…
In India, some 50 million hectares of land, an area the size of Kenya, is classified as "wastelands and degraded lands"—a holdover from a colonial land management philosophy that fails…
The big problem is clear. With a global population expected to reach more than 9.7 billion by 2050 and ambitious goals to end poverty, hunger, and food insecurity by 2030, agricultural production will need to nearly double. This increase in productivity must…
Educate Girls, an Indian NGO working to enroll out-of-school girls and increase learning for girls and boys, recently reached a major milestone: completion of the world’s first Development Impact Bond…
In partnership with TED, we support the TEDx network of curators and conveners who strengthen community and civic discourse in more than 170 countries. This year, we’re teaming up with…
It was nearly noon on an early December day when the shooting started. The small indigenous community near Lake Sebu in the Philippines had again come under attack. "The soldiers came…
End AIDS by 2030. This is one of the headline-grabbing targets laid out in the Sustainable Development Goals. Later this month, more than 15,000 people from the international HIV/AIDS community…
What do you think of when you think about improving water and sanitation? No doubt the first thing that springs to mind is a tap; probably followed close after by…
If I have your ear for long enough, you’ll eventually hear me grumble about the philanthropic sector. I usually start by claiming that, contrary to recent assertions by Steven Pinker…
For hundreds of years, the Grand Banks cod fishery was one of the world’s most productive, providing a dietary staple to millions of people. Drop a basket over the side…
With World Environment Day this week, we're thinking a lot about the intersection of climate change and injustice, a place where many of our Awardees work daily. Climate change deepens…
Neither technology determinists nor tech skeptics would have been wholly satisfied with the Skoll World Forum session, “Emerging Technologies: Shifting the Path from Poverty to Prosperity.” But it was a…
Ruth Norris - Resources Legacy Fund , May 22, 2018
In the last several years, a wave of populist leaders have risen—and in many cases taken office—around the world. As a globalized economy and the automation of work catapults winners…
We're thrilled to announce that Lindsey Spindle, President of The Jeff Skoll Group, will join the Board of the Skoll Foundation. Working for global change-maker and renowned entrepreneur Jeff Skoll,…
As we mark an important milestone—the Skoll Foundation’s first CEO transition—we believed it important to capture the aspirations, values, and ways of working that constitute the DNA of the Foundation…
Over the past nearly two decades, the Skoll Foundation and its partners and community have navigated unexpected outcomes, new challenges, and major shifts in the landscape. With each upheaval, we…
Every year since 2004, the Skoll Foundation has convened its community for a transformative week in Oxford at the Skoll World Forum. Change-makers and thought leaders come from all different…
The Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship was launched in 2003 at Oxford’s Saïd Business School to promote the advancement of social entrepreneurship worldwide. The Skoll Foundation provided what was at…
The Skoll Foundation helps bring to scale models and approaches that move the needle on injustice and human suffering. There are many labels affixed to results-oriented approaches to philanthropy—venture philanthropy,…
In the first chapter of the Skoll Foundation, the term “social entrepreneur” hadn’t yet emerged, but the core concept and all of the elements were there. The Foundation’s objective was…
Storytelling is woven throughout the Skoll Foundation’s DNA—central to the mission since its inception because of Jeff’s firm belief in the transformative power of a story well-told. Telling the stories…
In a world transformed by immediate digital connectivity, physical nearness—proximity—has never been more critical to crafting solutions and creating lasting social change. "Problems are not solved in isolation," Stephan Chambers…
I am thrilled to announce the Skoll World Forum Fellowship in partnership with Johnson & Johnson. A platform for global voices, the inaugural Fellow cohort includes 50 incredible local leaders…
Her smile is truly as warm as the tea she prepares each morning to sell from her home in Mysore, Karnataka, India. Past the mint and chamomile drying in the…
As we prepare to head to Oxford for the 15th Annual Skoll World Forum, we are delighted to introduce you to our 2018 Skoll Awardees for Social Entrepreneurship! The Skoll…
High in the hills above Udaipur, Rajasthan, I recently walked through a lush landscape with a healthy watershed, an expanse of vibrant green that less than 20 years ago had…
A central question for any social entrepreneur with a proven, effective innovation is how to scale its impact. For many organizations and funders, the answer to this question is elusive.…
Izizi ndi Zathu Zomwe. This is ours. That’s the name my team of adolescent researchers has given a groundbreaking public health initiative—a close study of their peers’ needs, behaviors, and…
Proximity is powerful. It’s a value that I’ve shaped my career around: bringing people from disparate places together, in person, to connect. While we live so much of our lives…
Financial health is critical to understanding the overall health and sustainability of an organization and is a consistent consideration for any funder or nonprofit manager. But assessing financial health can…
Paul Macek - World Cocoa Foundation , March 16, 2018
When you think of chocolate, you probably conjure up thoughts of hot chocolate after skiing or memories of a favorite person who offered you a box of Belgian truffles on…
As we look forward to next month’s Skoll World Forum, the Skoll Foundation and the Mastercard Foundation are proud to introduce our 2018 Emerging Leaders. Launched in 2013, the Emerging…
Irrigation: that’s the key to lifting sub-Saharan Africa out of poverty, according to Martin Fisher. He traveled to the region on a Fulbright scholarship in 1985, and shortly after he…
The Skoll Foundation Board of Directors has named Richard Fahey, Skoll Foundation Chief Operating Officer, to the role of Interim President. The Board decided to temporarily suspend the search…
Some 200 million women and girls alive today have undergone female genital cutting (FGC). Every year, three million more women are violated with FGC—a massive, mostly invisible health and human…
Stories of Change, a decade-long initiative of the Sundance Institute and the Skoll Foundation, marries the power of storytelling with the impact of social entrepreneurship. This initiative connects and engages…
Access to quality healthcare for all communities in a scalable and sustainable way—that is at the heart of VillageReach’s mission. VillageReach (2006 Skoll Social Entrepreneur) focuses on the lowest levels…
We know that large-scale social change is a team sport—no one social entrepreneur can create a new status quo on her own. This reality is evident in the global effort…
The end of a year always makes me stop and think about where that year began. For social entrepreneurs, funders, and frankly anyone in the social change space, it’s been a…
After a year marked by natural disasters, refugee crises, and political turmoil, it can be a challenge to not become discouraged. But take a closer look, and you'll see the progress…
Building Markets (2010 Awardee) started in 2004 with a deceptively simple mission: to reduce poverty in crisis-impacted countries by championing local entrepreneurs. Building markets connects small and medium sized enterprises…
In Sub-Saharan Africa, 12 million people who rely on smallholder agriculture have improved their yields and income with the help of a single, simple piece of technology: a human-powered water…
In 2006, Juliet was 26 years old and six weeks pregnant when her feelings of joy sank into anxiety and fear. The HIV test she had taken during an antenatal…
Today, we are committing to standing #WithRefugees. By the end of 2016, more than 65.6 million people had been displaced by conflict or fled human rights violations—22.5 million were refugees,…
We love to see our awardees enter into partnerships that leverage collective strengths to affect large-scale change. It’s even more satisfying when those partnerships are formed by organizations within the…
System-level change requires collaboration across a range of partners—social entrepreneurs know this well. It's become clear that a collaborative approach among funders is also a critical piece of the…
On a windy morning this past July, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill to extend that state’s historic cap-and-trade program to 2030, doubling down on climate action just months…
The Skoll Foundation recently became a proud signatory of the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment. The PRI are a set of six voluntary and aspirational principles that offer a menu…
In five months, our global community of social entrepreneurs and innovators will convene for the 15th Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. Each year, we invite new and returning…
We’re excited to be in New Orleans for this year’s TEDWomen, where women from all over the world have convened to hear from innovative thinkers giving talks centering on the…
Years ago, early in Jagdeesh Rao Puppala’s career, he ran into some trouble with the law in rural western India. He had just returned from a small event where some…
Slavery is a modern scourge of shocking proportions. Some 40 million people live in slavery today, according to a report released last month from the U.N. affiliated International Labor Organization…
Every two years, the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy is awarded to philanthropists who have shown outstanding and innovative leadership in strategic giving. Yesterday, Jeff Skoll was awarded this honor at the…
Last week, a group of social entrepreneurs, corporate pioneers, and policy innovators gathered at the TED Theater in New York during Global Goals Week for We The Future: Accelerating Sustainable…
More than half the U.S. states have policies that require utilities to power their grid with a certain amount of renewable energy and for that amount to increase over time.…
China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, is experiencing massive health costs due to pollution, with some 1.6 million premature deaths attributed to air pollution annually. China is also leading…
In addition to moving from an economy powered predominantly by fossil fuels to one powered by clean energy, an important piece of the climate change mitigation puzzle is arresting deforestation.…
Oceans provide livelihoods and protein-rich food to more than 3 billion people, cover nearly three quarters of the earth’s surface, and are home to a diverse community of a million…
Erratic rainfall, extreme droughts and floods, and deterioration in water quality brought on by climate change will intensify existing water stress and water allocation challenges. By 2025, absolute water scarcity…
The agriculture sector is highly dependent on consistent climatic conditions to produce food. The roughly 475 million smallholder farmers in developing countries, who rely largely on rain-fed rather than irrigated…
The Skoll Foundation is deeply committed to broad action against climate change, action that exceeds our core grantmaking through the Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship. The innovations and global consensus…
India’s commons—collectively owned land administered by the government—make up as much as 25 percent of the nation's territory. The government legally owns these lands, but lacks the reach, incentive, and…
From water resource management and food production, to disease and conflict: climate change exacerbates underlying vulnerabilities. As the severity of these impacts increase over the coming decades, poor communities in…
Impact: that's the north star for funders in the social entrepreneurship space. Many foundations are unwavering in their attention to measuring how a grantee moves the needle. Increasingly though,…
Social entrepreneurs rely on a diverse ecosystem of funding flows to sustain and scale their work, and public sector institutions play a key role in supporting these social enterprises with…
Jake Wood, former Marine sniper, believes there’s a better way to do disaster relief. While giant bureaucratic organizations like the Red Cross have come under increasing scrutiny for mismanaged…
In Bangladesh, nearly half of 55 million urban residents lack the sanitation infrastructure to properly process human waste. The result: massive amounts of raw waste is unsafely dumped, fouling the…
The global water and sanitation crisis is one of the world’s most intractable problems–and one that has been addressed by the development, public, and private sectors since the dawn of…
Every minute of every day, 28 girls under age 18 are married off against their will. Child marriage has broad and devastating impacts, and a new study from the World Bank…
VisionSpring began with the guiding principle, “If you can’t see, you can’t work.” Since then it has evolved to include “If you can’t see, you can’t be safe”, and “If…
In 2008 I sat in the offices of a big Wall Street firm for a job interview as an investment researcher. This was just as the financial crisis had begun.…
Two years into a pioneering three-year development impact bond (DIB), Educate Girls—which tackles gender inequality in India’s educational system, is showing promising results. With a DIB, a service provider receives…
Some 20 million people around the world are victims of human trafficking, and nearly 70 percent of those are trapped in forced labor. The International Labour Organization reports that this dark…
Al Gore recently stopped by the offices of Skoll and we had the opportunity to hear his take on the fight against climate change in the wake of the U.S.…
Sir Ronald Cohen arrived in London as an 11-year-old refugee from Egypt. He eventually earned an Oxford scholarship, attended the Harvard Business School, and co-founded a venture capital firm. He…
A water deal between Israelis and Palestinians reached earlier this month will ease the chronic shortages that have threatened to become a public health risk for the Palestinian people, particularly…
One in four people in the world is unbanked, leaving them completely outside the system of formal financial services which can serve as bridge out of poverty and unlock opportunities…
For the fourth year in a row at the Skoll World Forum, we teamed up with the MasterCard Foundation to convene in Oxford a dozen emerging leaders from the growing…
Global Witness released a damning report late last week that shows it has never been deadlier to stand up against corporations seizing land and destroying the environment, tallying 200 deaths over the…
The problems that social entrepreneurs seek to solve—from failed school systems to infectious disease—are too big and tangled for any single organization to address, no matter how innovative or well-funded.…
Like many on the coasts, I’ve been guilty of engaging in ‘armchair anthropology’ these past months, and my recent trip to the Aspen Ideas Festival allowed me the opportunity to…
Last week I joined Al Gore's team in Seattle for their 35th Climate Reality Leadership Corps training. The community is an international one, including strong representation from India, Europe, and sub-Saharan…
Thirty years ago, as horrific disease like AIDS and tuberculosis ravaged much of the world, three remarkable young people—Jim Yong Kim, Paul Farmer, and Ophelia Dahl—came together in a squatter…
In rural India, half of village children can’t read or understand math at a level appropriate to their age and grade. This disparity in education creates ripples through society; it…
Today marks the release of the 2017 Social Progress Index, a tool that uses key indicators in the areas of basic human needs, foundations of well-being, and opportunity to measure…
Every minute of the day, conflict and persecution forces 20 people from their homes. By the end of today’s World Refugee Day, nearly 30,000 people will find themselves displaced. 2016…
Millions of children are forced into labor each year. Consumers at the end of the supply chain often know nothing of the lives of those who made the product; it's…
What does it take to scale social impact? That’s one of the fundamental questions for social entrepreneurs anywhere. As they seek to create solutions to widespread, seemingly intractable problems, such…
With President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, it’s become even more clear how critical the leadership of investors and companies are in tackling climate change and pushing for clean…
No condition is permanent. That’s the refrain of tough-minded optimism that Raj Panjabi, founder of Last Mile Health, grew up with in Liberia. It’s the mantra often repeated by his…
Leadership transition—particularly founder transition—is top of mind among many social entrepreneurs within the Skoll community. In fact, almost half of Skoll Awardee organizations have already weathered such a milestone. Some…
“I see aspirations converging all over the world and I’m really worried about it because unless we move more quickly in fighting poverty, unless we move more quickly in creating…
Imagine a country’s Olympics team getting all mixed up. The swimmers end up in the sprint and the cyclists are handed javelins. There’s a wrestler on a horse and a…
Invest. Connect. Celebrate. This is the Skoll Foundation’s mission and deep commitment to the field of social entrepreneurship. The Skoll World Forum is one of our greatest opportunities for the 'celebrate'…
After 16 years at the helm of the Skoll Foundation, Sally Osberg announced plans to step down as President & CEO. She will continue to lead until her successor is…
“What if sociologists had as much influence as economists?” That’s the provocation with which Bjarni Benediktsson, Iceland’s 46-year-old Prime Minister of Iceland, set the tone for recent global summit of…
Ruth Norris - Resources Legacy Fund , April 27, 2017
"Global health is a marathon, not a sprint." -- Barbara Bush, Global Health Corps The race often starts with great excitement over big breakthroughs: new vaccines and treatments, new technologies…
Invest. Connect. Celebrate. That’s the Skoll Foundation mission in a nutshell, and the ‘celebrate’ part of that triad is where Skoll’s storytelling resources take center stage with the medium of…
The annual Skoll World Forum was, as always, an inspiring, energizing, and at times dizzying week of conversations and celebrations in the hallowed halls and cobblestoned streets of Oxford. Stephan Chambers…
Employee #1 of the Skoll Foundation Unleashed Social Impact Felt in Every Corner of the Globe Palo Alto, CA – After 16 years of dedicated leadership, Sally Osberg announced her…
Asia’s Tigers, the collection of booming economies that emerged in the East following World War II, are often hailed as economic miracles. There was, though, no “secret sauce” behind that sustained…
Ruth Norris - Resources Legacy Fund , April 13, 2017
In the past five years, 70 countries have passed restrictive laws controlling civil society organizations, with more than half of them restricting foreign funding. There is a crisis of effectiveness…
Kola Masha was unable to attend Oxford's New Theatre in person this evening, because he was waiting for the imminent arrival of his second child. Appolo Goma, Babban Gona Executive…
These four short films situate you right in the center of the landscape where each of our 2017 Skoll Awardees make lasting impact on the world’s most pressing problems: Nepal…
The development community has experienced various ‘revolutions’ over the years – from microfinance to women’s rights, from the green revolution to sustainable development. Each of these awakenings has improved our…
By: Fiona Mavhinga, Founder, Camfed’s CAMA alumnae network “I have seen girls suffer,” Mary told me. “And I knew I had to speak for them.” Mary was born poor and grew…
By: Katherine Milligan and Nicole Schwab As the world grapples with increasingly complex and seemingly intractable challenges, a new answer is gaining momentum: systems change. But what is systems change?…
PALO ALTO, CA, MARCH 27, 2017 —Kicking off next week’s 14th Annual Skoll World Forum, the Skoll Foundation announced the four recipients of the 2017 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.…
Skoll World Forum delegates often talk about the “magic” that happens in Oxford; an ineffable quality turns a gathering of some thousand people into an experience of unquantifiable value. We’ve…
Universal access to safe water in Latin America? How is this possible to achieve in a region where some of the most beautiful tourist destinations in the world have signs…
On January 21st, my daughter and I joined the sea of citizens marching in solidarity down Independence Avenue in Washington, D.C. Humanity in all colors, ages, and genders jostled along,…
In 2014, Isaac Jonas had left his small village in Zimbabwe to study for a master’s degree in food and resource economics at the University of British Columbia, Canada. The…
Several years ago I embarked on a learning journey to better understand why Skoll was experiencing what we refer to as the “mezzanine melt” in finding female social entrepreneurs poised…
On an unusually mild Sunday in mid-April of 2010, June Cohen stood on a London stage and welcomed a disoriented crowd. “How many of you are stranded here?” she asked.…
Curating the programming of the annual Skoll World Forum is a monumental undertaking. Planning for the next year begins soon after the delegates leave Oxford, and often is ongoing right…
When people come to the Skoll World Forum for the first time, there’s often a moment when something clicks, and they say, “I’ve finally found my tribe.” To share a…
Last summer, the Skoll Foundation surveyed our Board, partners, and Awardees about trends and issues influencing the work of social entrepreneurs and other change agents. As a curator of the…
Friends, Over my lifetime, the course of human events here in the US has always found its way forward. While far from perfect, our union has been characterized by its…
The Skoll Foundation is delighted to announce that Pat Mitchell has joined the Board of the Skoll Fund. “Over the years, Pat has been a deeply valued advisor to the…
Kim Hogan, Skoll Foundation Citigroup makes strides towards systems change in the financial inclusion space by investing $1 billion in Citibanamex as the government of Mexico launches its National…
At the Skoll Foundation much of the work we support—and the stories we seek to tell—has to do with organizations and movements seeking to protect the environment and indigenous land…
Since the 1990s, demand from students for social entrepreneurship courses has mushroomed. Why? Because as the world started to realize that social progress is essential to the wellbeing of individuals,…
Nogah Kornberg - Joseph Rotman School of Management , December 5, 2016
Just over a year ago, Sally Osberg and Roger Martin asked if I would help them design a post-secondary course syllabus to accompany their book Getting Beyond Better: How Social…
What are social entrepreneurs? What are the unique ways in which they work to achieve lasting solutions to the enormous problems facing humankind? What makes social entrepreneurship different from other…
Sonali Khan - Sesame Workshop India , November 24, 2016
I was moderating an open discussion at a program on “safety in public transport” in a college in the state of Haryana, India. The students had heard about how girls…
Last year in Paris, nations forged a historic agreement on halting climate change. The Paris Agreement called for zero net greenhouse gas emissions by the second half of this century,…
Despite the long shadow from the US election, the COP22 climate negotiations in Morocco, which wrapped on November 18, were a remarkable feat of global optimism, resolve and concrete action…
The Africa that I visited recently was very different from what I had read about in U.S. newspapers. Instead of terrorist attacks and marauding gangs, I saw economic vitality, world-leading…
Most entrepreneurs can agree that research and development (R&D) are key to innovation. Take the mobile phone, which weighed 2.4 pounds when invented in 1973. Today, the iPhone clocks in…
Richard Fahey, Skoll Foundation It took only a few days for more than 365 of America’s largest companies and leading brands to assert that the transition to clean energy…
An emerging theme among Skoll Foundation Awardees is the strategic use of data to inform and influence decision-making by governments, corporations, consumers, and communities. While all organizations use data on…
I met Maria when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. She was three years old—smiley, pudgy, and fun. I lived with her grandparents. We spent a…
Silicon Valley is a hub of innovation, but it also lives in a bit of a bubble. Many startups’ design decisions are based on assumptions that simply don’t apply or…
After more than four years of negotiations, the referendum to ratify the final peace agreement that would end the armed conflict between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas was held on October 2, 2016. It…
What do Andrew Carnegie, steel magnate and one of America's first philanthropists, and Vicky Colbert, founder of Escuela Nueva, have in common? Check out the free Introduction of Getting Beyond…
Rosemary Kumwenda - United Nations Development Programme , October 10, 2016
Public health is the core of medicine. It entails that we, as health care professionals, need to ensure public goods are delivered in a safe and sustainable way. Public procurement…
A major traumatic experience changed Muhammad’s life and he grew increasingly bitter, angry, and paranoid. Things escalated to the point where his family life began to suffer. Muhammad had been…
Social entrepreneurs work in proximity to entrenched social challenges, come to know these challenges deeply, and work wholeheartedly to bring about a new status quo. Few challenges are as…
At the Hilton Humanitarian Symposium in New York on September 30, 2016, Skoll Foundation President & CEO Sally Osberg had the honor of introducing David Ross, President & CEO of…
Joony Moon - Skoll Foundation , September 27, 2016
In a 2015 article, New York Times writer Eduardo Porter, noting that one in 20 Americans fall below the poverty line, deftly summarized the poverty research of Harvard sociologist Matthew…
In honor of World Water Week: a look at water and sanitation and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This article was originally posted in September, 2015. The world achieved the…
In July I attended the Aspen Institute’s Resnick Aspen Action Forum in Aspen, Colorado, along with a number of Skoll Awardees. The Skoll Foundation sponsors this annual four-day event, where…
As Skoll Foundation CEO and President Sally Osberg says, “social entrepreneurs are cracking the code of some of the world’s most pressing problems.” The Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship are…
Over the course of the 2016 Olympics in Rio, we’ve delved into some of the challenges facing Brazil. We began with the Social Progress Index’s (SPI) assessment of Brazil’s performance…
Ceres’ Clean Trillion campaign aims to increase clean energy investments globally by $1 trillion a year, in order to minimize the damaging impact of climate change. Part of that campaign…
PALO ALTO, August 22, 2016—The Skoll Foundation community is heartbroken to have lost our brilliant colleague and founding member of our Board of Directors, Peter Hero, to cancer yesterday. Peter…
When a group of twelve twelve-year-olds gathered in my parents’ living room 20 years ago to draft a petition to end child labor, we felt strong together, but alone in…
Social entrepreneurs aim at the root causes of social problems. For WITNESS, one of the main reasons human rights abuses persist is a lack of visibility. WITNESS empowers citizens to…
My dear colleagues, friends, and fellow travelers, I write to let you know that we lost our beloved Pamela Hartigan on August 12th, valiant to the end, but as she…
At the Skoll Foundation, we have seen time and again the importance of the deep connection and inspiration social entrepreneurs get from working with and staying close to people and…
This week The Task Force for Global Health was awarded the 2016 Conrad N. Hilton Foundation Hilton Humanitarian Prize, an inspired choice for this wonderful award. Since its inception in…
The opening ceremony for the 2016 Summer Olympics kicks off today in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Both the city and the country have been mired in controversies in the lead-up…
Last month I traveled to Nepal and India to meet with Skoll Awardees and partners and learn about their progress in deploying mobile health solutions, fighting gender bias, and expanding…
Recently I joined the pandemics team from the Skoll Global Threats Fund (SGTF) in Chiang Mai, Thailand, to spend a week learning about disease surveillance and how it’s used to detect…
During the July 2016 AWNY Stages Summit in Chicago, the Skoll Foundation’s Director of Public Engagement & Communications Suzana Grego delivered a speech about her experiences working in human rights…
Israelis and Palestinians often play the blame game on the crucial issue of water. Palestinians scream “water apartheid” and Israelis respond with accusations of a “sewage intifada.” But recently there…
As President Obama said in his address to hundreds of Global Entrepreneurship Summit attendees at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium last week: “Entrepreneurship is the engine for growth….You [entrepreneurs] are the bridge,…
Comparing the recently-launched 2016 Social Progress Index to prior years, we can see what many already know—social progress takes time. As developing countries struggle to provide equitable access to important…
The Skoll Foundation is a partner and passionate supporter of the Social Progress Imperative because their work advances our knowledge of how the world is currently faring, based on comprehensive…
Today, the US healthcare sector is no longer debating the connection between patients’ unmet social needs—like shelter, heat, employment, and food—and poor health. It’s widely recognized that just 10 percent…
The world’s eyes are fixed on one of the most pressing social crises of our time—the refugee crisis unfolding across Central Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Driven…
This is part of a series of articles about the 2016 Skoll World Forum, which took place April 13-15 in Oxford, England. Even though the social sector is one of…
In 2015 Blue Ventures won the highest award in our sector, the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. A year later, has anything changed? Can winning a major award really be…
This is part of a series of articles about the 2016 Skoll World Forum, which took place April 13-15 in Oxford, England. In April, I had the privilege of moderating…
Rosemary Kumwenda - United Nations Development Programme , June 10, 2016
Standard medical ethics dictate “primum non nocere” (first do no harm). The health sector provides an indispensable service to the public, playing an essential role in human development as the…
Made by Children. Instead of Made in China or Made in India, what if this was the label inside the neatly stacked sweaters on a department store shelf? For most…
Annual general meetings at the world's largest fossil fuel companies are usually a time for reflecting on strategies to increase revenues for the coming year, global energy outlooks, and governance.…
Despite continuing disputes over settlements, Jerusalem, borders, and refugees, there is at least one problem on which Arabs and Israelis can still make progress—water. Much hard work lies ahead. The…
Lack of access to finance and business development services are key obstacles to growth for social enterprises operating in frontier markets. While there has been a rise in investment in…
When Participant Media and Skoll Foundation founder and chairman Jeff Skoll, Vice President Al Gore, and Davis Guggenheim premiered An Inconvenient Truth on May 24, 2006, the effect was immediate…
This is part of a series of articles about the 2016 Skoll World Forum, which took place April 13-15 in Oxford, England. In recent years, wealth inequality has been passionately…
More than 1,000 social change agents converged on Oxford, England, to explore fierce compassion as a driver of social progress at the 2016 Skoll World Forum. Here are some highlights…
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” –Rumi Those of us working towards a more just society…
There is a global crisis in healthcare; the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that one billion people lack access to basic care, and a further 100 million are pushed into…
Every social entrepreneur dreams of telling the perfect story, the one that inspires not just people who see the potential of their vision, but also those so deeply entrenched in…
Echoing Green provides seed funding and technical assistance to emerging social entrepreneurs. Over the last few years we’ve seen a significant increase in innovative enterprises making social change through for-profit…
Fadwa, Mahmoud, and Yasser have three things in common. They all live in Istanbul, but not by choice. They are there because their lives in Syria became too dangerous or…
The world is changing, and it’s changing fast—much faster than our education system has so far been able to keep up. In his TED talk titled “Do schools kill creativity?”…
In 2008 I was talking to social entrepreneur Vera Cordeiro of Saúde Criança—a Skoll Awardee and, like me, an Ashoka Fellow. I was in the midst of a sabbatical, and…
OXFORD, April 11, 2016—Kicking off this week’s 13th Annual Skoll World Forum, we are pleased to announce the six recipients of the 2016 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. The Skoll…
Tim Hanstad - Chandler Foundation , March 17, 2016
When we think about global development, we generally picture tangible improvements like bridges, hospitals, and schools. When it comes to agriculture, people think of improved seeds, fertilizer, and irrigation. But…
As human beings, our brains are wired for stories. It’s how we expand our knowledge, and experience going places we’ve never gone, doing something perhaps we’d never even thought to…
The Jeff Skoll Group had the honor of hosting a breakfast event at the recent TED2016 conference in Vancouver, featuring two leaders in the fight against climate change—Christiana Figueres, the…
The climate deal agreed on by 196 countries at COP21 in Paris this past December is extraordinary in its ambitions—a 1.5° C limit on warming, and net zero emissions in…
Catalina Cock Duque is the director of the Mi Sangre Foundation, founded in 2006 by Juanes, the Grammy Award-winning Colombian musician and social activist. Juanes will perform at the 2016…
Cindy Chen - King Philanthropies , February 13, 2016
Raymond Guthrie and I are in Zimbabwe visiting Camfed, one of our early Skoll Award winners (class of 2005), to learn more about their work within rural communities to support…
The Sundance Film Festival this year celebrated 10 years of its New Frontier program, which highlights the intersection of technology and storytelling. One such feature was a virtual reality experience…
Laura Mecagni - International Finance Corporation , February 5, 2016
Also read the Skoll perspective from principal Eric Cooperström. Worldwide, roughly 450 million smallholder farmers scrape out a living by working two hectares of land or less. Figuring out how…
Released in October 2015, Roger L. Martin and Sally R. Osberg's Getting Beyond Better: How Social Entrepreneurship Works explores how social entrepreneurs transform society. This free syllabus uses Getting Beyond…
The two-week UN Climate Change Conference wrapped up last weekend in Paris. COP21 was the latest international meeting to follow the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the…
Building an online community is a priority for most non-profit organizations. Active and engaged online communities create a wealth of opportunities: to attract volunteers, increase fundraising revenue, expand reach, or…
With the launch of Getting Beyond Better: How Social Entrepreneurship Works, co-authors Sally Osberg and Roger Martin led a number of lively discussions on the road about how social entrepreneurs…
Twenty-one recipients of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship will be participating in the Challenge and will have the opportunity to win $250,000 in prizes from the Skoll Foundation, in…
Skoll Awardee Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) just launched a new website called Amazon Gold Rush: Gold Mining in Suriname. The site offers a rich, interactive user experience that tells the story…
The Skoll Foundation mourns the loss of Soraya Salti, founder of INJAZ al-Arab. Last week, Soraya and her sister, Jumana, both died tragically and unexpectedly. Soraya was an outstanding leader and…
Global forest loss is a complicated and multi-dimensional problem, and the signals of progress (or regression) can be confusing. On the one hand, a recent study by Global Forest Watch…
Women and girls make up two-thirds of the world’s 774 million illiterate adults and more than two-thirds of the 130 million school-age children not enrolled in school. By missing out…
Who drives transformation in society? How do they do it? In this compelling book, Roger Martin and Sally Osberg describe how social entrepreneurs target systems that exist in a stable…
Malala Yousafzai grew up in the Swat Valley in northern Pakistan. From the age of 10, she has campaigned for the rights of girls to receive an education. At 15,…
The world achieved the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water in 2010—ahead of schedule. But progress towards sanitation…
JEFF KEHOE, SENIOR EDITOR AT HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS, spoke with co-authors Sally Osberg and Roger Martin about their new book, Getting Beyond Better, during the 2015 Skoll World Forum.…
A system is in equilibrium when it is balanced and stable. Such systems tend to be pervasive, self-reinforcing, and persistent, even if they are not reasonable, just, or fair. As…
Adam Mordecai is editor-at-large at Upworthy. When he’s not trying to get millions of page views (300 million to date) on issues like racial justice, climate change and economic inequality,…
As a brand developer, I’ve met countless social entrepreneurs all over the world: people with an extreme passion for social or environmental impact. They have a lot to master in…
Ehren Reed, the Skoll Foundation’s Director of Evaluation, was recently asked what matters when he is looking at the measurements social entrepreneurial organizations use. “Organizations have the power to achieve…
The United Nations just released its 2015 Millennium Development Goals report, so we thought it was a good time to share the thoughts of five experts who joined the United Nations’ Tomas…
Jenny Bowen thought her work was almost done. After 17 years of running OneSky (formerly known as Half the Sky), she had helped transform China’s child welfare institutions, and she could “see…
Jack Sim - World Toilet Organization , June 29, 2015
I was born in a slum in Singapore in 1957. Except for the British, almost everyone else was poor. My father worked in a grocery shop and his salary as…
Velvetine, a local fisher from a village on the coast of Madagascar, reports: “Before we started doing octopus closures, we were only catching two or three octopus in a day,…
Dasra, a strategic philanthropy foundation in India, wrote a case study on Educate Girls affirming of the importance of investing in measurement. Here’s more from Dasra’s Divya Pamnani and Arjav Chakravarti: “Dasra worked closely with…
Cecilia Flores-Oebanda and some of her children were jailed for four years for fighting against the Marcos regime of the Philippines. (Former President Ferdinand Marcos was removed from power in 1986). Her…
In a recent Huffington Post blog Skoll Awardee Jeremy Hockenstein—co-founder and CEO of Digital Divide Data (DDD)—posits, “Nowadays, almost every major company and institution outsources business processes offshore. Imagine the…
Jim Fruchterman founded Benetech in 2000. Since then, his organization has been featured in numerous publications, such as Barron’s, The New York Times, and public radio station KQED. At the…
At the Skoll World Forum last month, Jeff Kehoe of the Harvard Business Review Press led a conversation about how social entrepreneurs are transforming society’s unjust equilibria. Skoll Foundation President and CEO Sally Osberg and strategy…
We sang. We saw images of war. We saw beautiful art that inspired a little boy who eventually became president of a large foundation. We heard a musician from Mozambique…
There is no better way to open an Awards Ceremony than with the Soweto Gospel Choir dancing down the aisles. So began the 2015 Skoll Awards Ceremony. Yesterday, Skoll Foundation…
The Skoll World Forum is coming up very soon (in fact, most of the Skoll Foundation staff is heading to Oxford this week!) so here are some highlights from 16 new…
The Global Innovation Summit – one of a seemingly endless number of meetings in the Bay Area with the name “innovation” in the title – might well serve its namesake. …
I just wrapped up a 1.5 day training seminar at MIT in Boston with individuals from around the world who are adopting, adapting and running social progress networks in their cities, countries…
The Global Innovation Summit – one of a seemingly endless number of meetings in the Bay Area with the name “innovation” in the title — might well serve its namesake. …
Michael Skoler - Public Radio International , February 16, 2015
In 1994 I was a foreign correspondent covering the genocide sweeping Rwanda. My radio stories shared the voices of people — Hutus and Tutsis alike — who were caught up…
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…
Snow-covered mountains, celebrities, and long lines in the streets of Park City can only mean one thing: the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. The Skoll-Sundance partnership is a natural one. The…
Sally Kassab - Skoll Foundation , January 11, 2015
It’s official – the Skoll Foundation/Sundance Stories of Change short film OPEN HEART has been nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Short category. Here’s a synopsis: Open…
On December 5th, the second annual Social Entrepreneurs Challenge, hosted on CrowdRise, came to an end. And what an ending it was! The goal was for social entrepreneurs to raise…
Years of hard work building a thriving social enterprise are starting to pay off for VisionSpring. This year, we expect to generate an estimated $1.6 million in earned income from the…
Sally Kassab - Skoll Foundation , October 13, 2014
Every so often, we have the pleasure of a visit from a Skoll Awardee. One of our most recent was Cecilia Flores-Oebanda, founding president and executive director of the Visayan…
Last year, the government of Paraguay adopted a new way of measuring the state of the nation, called the Social Progress Index (SPI). Both government and business leaders were concerned…
“The Revolutionary Optimists,” a film which was part of the Skoll Foundation/Sundance Stories of Change, was nominated for a 2014 Emmy in the category “Outstanding Business and Economic Reporting, Long Form.”…
We recently shared some top media coverage from the 2014 Skoll World Forum—here are some highlights from major blogs. Kimberly Sedmak, executive producer of Jane Pauley’s AARP show, focused on…
Tim Hanstad - Chandler Foundation , January 30, 2014
I’ll Tell You a Story 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…
The Sundance Film Festival is best known as the land of filmmakers and celebrities, mountain chic clothing and glamorous parties. But over the last few years, there’s been a new…
Sally Kassab - Skoll Foundation , November 13, 2013
Our founder, Jeff Skoll, just wrote an essay on Forbes reporter Kerry Dolan’s page about the power of a good story. An excerpt: “When I was a kid, I read…
In my time as a human resources director at the Skoll Foundation, I have talked many social entrepreneurs and one question that seems to come up often is: How do…
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…
I just returned from the Oscars, where a film we funded, “Open Heart,” was up for an Academy Award. The film did not win, but the impact has already been…
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…
I spent last week in Ghana with Camfed, learning more about the return on investment to girls’ education and young women’s economic empowerment. On a hot afternoon near Tamale, as…
We often hear the term empowerment, but wonder what it really actually means. When I recently visited Skoll Awardee Fair Trade USA in northern Colombia, I saw it firsthand. Landless…
At a 2012 Giving Pledge learning series event called “Connecting for Good: How Social Media is Driving Social Good,” our very own senior manager of digital technology Phil Collis (third from…
The idea was appealing from the start: convene a group of older but far from doddering global leaders, women and men justly renowned for their integrity and achievement, and ask…
Reflections from Skoll 2011 Alumni from Water For People on Vimeo. Surprises are always fun. Unbeknownst to us, last year’s Skoll Awardees created a “reflections” video for us at the…
I am honored to be a part of The Elders delegation visiting Israel and the Palestinian Territories from Aug 24-28. We are meeting with a number of civil society and business leaders, as…
Skoll Foundation CEO Sally Osberg writes from Washington after attending the social innovation event yesterday at the White House: Pretty great day—for social entrepreneurship, community-based solutions, what works! A great…
