2010 Skoll Awards For Social Entrepreneurship

At the 2010 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship, listen as each awardee gives a short, inspirational acceptance speech. Awardee Marc Freedman of Civic Ventures talks about going from aspiration to action in this speech at the Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship. Later, Michael Jenkins of Forest Trends, Carlos Souza Jr and Adalberto Verissimo of Imazon, Andrew Youn of One Acre Fund, Scott Gilmore of Peace Dividend Trust, Molly Melching of Tostan, and Ambrosius Ruwindrijarto and Silverius Oscar Unggul of Telepak accept their awards in this video.

With: Andrew Youn, Scott Gilmore, Molly Melching, Ambrosius Ruwindrijarto, Silverius Oscar Unggul, Michael Jenkins, Carlos Souza Jr, Marc Freedman, Adalberto Verissimo
Tonight we honor 9 individuals, representing 7 organizations, doing work in environmental sustainability, economic opportunity, community development, and conflict resolution. They work throughout the world, in the U.S, Africa, Indonesia, Latin America, Afghanistan, and beyond. Jeff, Would you come join me?

First up will be Civic Ventures and Marc Freedman. More than 20 years ago, Marc took note of three seemingly unrelated trends and connected the dots. Baby boomers were getting older. He had a number of baby boomer friends who had spent their careers making money, but were now interested in doing something more meaningful, and existing systems were falling short of solving society's problems.

His answer was Civic Ventures, a think and do tank leading the call to engage millions of older Americans in the work of rebuilding their communities. Through the Experience Corps, one of Civic Ventures' programs, 2000 older Americans mentored 20,000 poor children in 22 American cities. Marc has pioneered the concept of "encore careers," a way for older adults to combine continued income, meaning and social impact and Civic Ventures purpose prize has brought national recognition and funding to sixty remarkable social entrepreneurs - some well into In their sixties and seventies.

Marc Freedman.
The writer William Dixon says the future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed. And when it comes to the longevity revolution, the doubling of life expectancy in the developed world over the last century, the verdict for the future is already in, we hear about the Grey Tsunami, the coming population bomb, that long gray of greedy geezers about to bankrupt posterity. But come to the Skoll World forum as I've had the chance to do the last three years and a very different picture a possibility emerges. People like Jimmy Carter, Harry Robinson, the other elders, Al Gore, people who have taken this period of life, which used to be the left-over years when people were discarded, sent to the sidelines, and created out of it, a monument, living a legacy, not just leaving one and provided a sense of hope for so many others who are entering that juncture right now.

They are not alone. They are absolutely not alone. Fifty percent of people over fifty in the United States, say they want to follow that same path. They want to dedicate their lives to work in education, in the environment, health, poverty. Robert Chambers is one of them. He is one of the Purpose Prize winners a few years ago.

He left his job as a used car salesman because he was appalled at how dealership was taking advantage of the rural poor in New Hampshire. When he was summoned to the White House last year to celebrate his work. Creating and organization providing fuel efficient new cars and low interest loans to the rural poor.

He uttered these words which I think any of the elders would have been proud of. He said I would. was old enough to know injustice when I saw it, and I was experienced enough to do something about it. There are so many more who want to follow that same path. And at Civic Ventures we're trying to build a movement around those people.

We're trying to help them go from aspiration to action - those who have a burning desire to go down that road. And the Skoll award will help us enable tens of thousands to make that transition.

Ten thousand boomers a day
in the United States alone are turning sixty. If we could even capture a fraction of that energy, it would be a wind fall of talent for the things that mattered most. And it wouldn't just be talent, and it wouldn't fall over the short term.

Half the children born in the developed world, this year, will see their hundredth birthday. That's a potential source of renewal at the individual social level, that can last for generations to come. And just in closing, I would like to invoke the words of John Gardner to refute all of the jeremiads, John Gardner has mentored so many who were in this room, including Sally, Jeff, was our founding board member at Civic Ventures, fifty years ago he said, "America today faces breathtaking opportunities disguised as unsolvable problems".

And I can think of no better benediction for the work that we're going to try to do through the Skoll Award, and really for the work of social entrepreneurs everywhere. Thank you.

Beautifully said Mark, beautifully said.
Forest Trends, Michael Jenkins. Michael Jenkins is harnessing the power of the market to protect, rather than destroy, tropical forest.

Working in Haiti and Brazil, early. In his career, Michael saw the effects of extreme degradation of natural ecosystems on poor people. He began promoting a whole systems approach to forest protection, one that embraced the entire value chain of forests, including, among other things, their role in purifying and retaining fresh water and absorbing carbon, creating Forests Trends in 1998.

Michael and Forest Trends has helped translate concept to currency. By initiating a payments for ecosystems services model that is gaining increased traction in development and in markets.

Michael Jenkins.

Thank you very much, Sally, and thank you very much, Jeff. I am also an optimist, and having worked in forestry for thirty years now, and having seen a lot of terrible things, and recognizing the huge challenges that are ahead of us, nine billion people in a world, in a world that's going to happen quite quickly.

350 parts per million is probably what we really need to keep a climate and environment that we can live in. But in spite of that, I'm an optimist, because I think that we're finally starting to get handles on some of the possible solutions that I think are going to go to scale. And these are these emerging environmental markets that we see.

We're all familiar with carbon markets and the failure of Copenhagen, but carbon markets will continue on. But we also are seeing opportunities around water, clean water, and we're seeing opportunities about biodiversity. So, the power of these new, emerging markets and capitalism is what gives me great optimism.

I like to hing about it as building the natural infrastructure fund of the planet. We've spent a lot of time this morning with folks from the financial community talking about built infrastructure. We all know how to invest in power plants, in sewers, in roads. It's about time that we start thinking about investing in that natural infrastructure that's really fundamental to the, to our existence on the planet, but I think that concept people are starting to get more and more.

The Skoll gift for us means a couple of things that are really important, one nimbleness. We are a small yet ambitiously global organization that's trying to move around these issues. We are trying to keep pace with all of the other things like the change, the changing pace of climate, or the changes in the marketplace, or the changes in communication tools.

The pace of those or the pace of change in local communities which of course is very, very different. But, what core support from Skoll means to us is that we can move at that pace. Very, very unusual in the donor community to allow us to keep pace. That's one of the fundamental things that's a part of this gift.

We also like to think of the model, the institutional model that we've created as connective tissue, so when we started for example trends we said, "We don't need to put another dot on the map of another organization. What we need to do is figure out a way to connect all of those organizations and those business. And those communities that are out there so we can be more effective at the work we do."

So that core support allows us to do things like, work at local level with a group like the Surui in Rondonia, Brazil helping them figure out how they can get into these emerging environmental markets. Linking them in to the conversations that are happening in Copenhagen, the policies that are being developed in Copenhagen, so that everybody can see that there is an opportunity for a new emerging market that can reward local communities, indigenous groups, for the critical roles they play.

Another part of this nimbleness that's important is to be able to speak and to bring together very unusual stake holders. So it's not only the million NGOs and research institutions that are out there and community groups. But it is an equally long list I hope, and a growing long list of unusual partners.

So, it is businesses that are recognizing, that environment is fundamental to their business. And it is financial institutions that are starting to think out of their boxes and starting to understand these notions of natural infrastructure and the value of that.

Jeff, last night when we heard Paul Farmer talk a little bit about Haiti, it was really striking me because I also spent a lot of time in Haiti, and I also will go back to Haiti, and I will do what I can do and what we can bring with Forests Trends to help solve that problem. But it is going to be, as he said, a different way of doing it.

We will be able to plant trees, and by planting trees we will hopefully help protect some of the watersheds. And by protecting some of the watersheds we will also hopefully create jobs. And by creating jobs we will provide opportunities for energy sources. Charcoal that comes from those trees. And hopefully leading into Paul and the work he does in health.

So that's another part of that nimbleness that that Skoll gives us that is going to be so valueable for us going forward. Thank you so much.

Imazon.
Adalberto Veríssimo and Carlos Souza Jr. Adalberto Veríssimo, Berto, and Carlos Souza are recognized leader in rainforest protection.

Berto and Carlos have made it possible to measure and monitor the rate and extent to which we are losing the forest. Leveraging technical mapping and satellite imagery they've developed the first independent deforestation monitoring system for the Brazilian Amazon. Recently the Brazilian government defined rigerous new limits to deforestation and comitted to stop illegal logging, focusing on hot spot regions identified by <span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Imazon.</span>


Imazon is working directly with public prosecutors' offices in Brazil to monitor deforestation, to help enforce conservation law in 75 million hectares of protected areas and indigenous lands in the Amazon.

Berto, and Carlos.

We are very thankful tonight.
It's an amazing moment for us. We are so very optimistic that it is possible to reduce deforestation in the Amazon region, and develop this region for the people living there. We have a list of people that we'd like to thank. We'd like to start with Jeff and Sally.

We are very thankful for your generosity. It is a big honor for us to be a part of the Skoll family. And we also want to extend this thanks to the whole foundation, to the board members and to the staff. We would like to express our gratitude to our colleagues and friends from Imazon, for their dedication, passion to conduct their work.

We know that without this we wouldn't be here tonight celebrating these extraordinary moment. This would not be possible also without the mentoring and inspiration of our friends, Professor Christopher Uhl, From Penn State University. Who co-founded Imazon together with Berto and the other Brazilians.

Chris guided us, and help us to become better researchers and social entrepreneurs. For that, we are very thankful.

We're also grateful to our
donors that over twenty years have supported us to conduct work in Brazil for sustainable Amazionia and to create a better place for the region. We know also that the positive impact of our work cannot be achieved without hundreds of organizations, private companies, indigenous communities.

All the angels and social movement have been part of our work. Carlos and I like to say special thanks for our family for Elitaz[sp] Averyday[sp]. And for supporting our journey many times far from home. We already feel the positive energy that is to be part of the cause, network. We've learned a lot in the last few days and we know that's just the beginning.

Inspiring stories of social entrepreneuers have touched us deeply, in our hearts and create, even strong motivation for us to continue our work. Increase our sense of mission to help to create not only a sustainable Amazon, but to go beyond and help all the folks that live in Africa and southeast Asia to really help for the first time a global moderting assistance that's going to cover a billion hectares of tropical forest that really have a tremendous value in terms of carbon environment service and especially in terms of cultural value as well. So, and again, thank you very much for this opportunity and we very pleased to be here.


One Acre

Fund, Andrew Youn. Few challenges have faced more analysis and led to the creation of more well meaning programs than subsistence agriculture in Africa.

Andrew Youn's One Acre Fund is one innovation that proves good intentions can be channeled into effective scalable solutions. One Acre Fund takes an integrated value chain approach to empowering rural farmers in Kenya and Rwanda, providing them with everything they need to succeed. Seeds, fertilizer, training, and once production goes beyond what's needed to feed their families, access to markets.

In less than four years, One Acre Fund has helped triple the harvests and double the income, per acre, for subsistence farm families representing more than a hundred thousand of the world's poorest people. With his dream rooted in determination and on a clear trajectory to success, Andrew projects reaching millions it's more rural African farm families in the next 10 years.

Andrew Youn.


I'm so honored to accept this reward on behalf of the One Acre team and the partners that have put us here. We have very little time, so please indulge me for a quick thought experiment. Please close your eyes. That was pretty easy. Imagine for a moment you are a subsistance farmer.

You are standing in a small field and your job is to some how grow enough food to survive another year. All you have is a sack of seed left over from last year. You live miles away from any markets or services. You haven't eaten in 24 hours, and you somehow need to keep your five children alive.

It is an impossible situation. Please open your eyes.

Three-quarters so the world's poor people live in basically this situation.
So this room, representing the world's poor people, everybody from about there all the way over would be subsistence farmers. That is one heck of an opportunity, because if we can find something that works for one farmer, Sally for example, we might be able to scale it to all of them.

One Acre Fund has an amazing leadership team living in rural areas of East Africa, learning directly from farmers. I believe we have developed new insights in how to serve that one farmer. We provide that farmer with a loan for a tiny amount of environmentally responsible seed and fertilizer in training.

It's that simple. On average we double farm profitability on every planted acre. Our families start to reach a little bit of their human potential, our families start eating enough, they can afford books and uniforms for their kids. A little basic health care and they start investing in the future.

The Skoll grant will help to transform our organization. We currently serve 23,000 farm families, and in three more years will serve more than 100,000 farm families with nearly a half million children living in those families. We also hope to play a role in starting a broader movement. Thank you to the Skoll community for high lighting and growing our work.

Peace Dividend Trust. Scott Gilmore.

Too often
we see the end of armed conflict as peace. But lasting peace requires healing. Systems that can help war torn societies back on their feet armed not with guns, but with the confidence to move forward. Scott understands this. Nearly ten years ago, when he was working for the UN peacekeeping mission in Timor-Leste, Scott grew frustrated at how management and operational problems undermine such missions from achieving their ultimate goal. The absence of violence and viable ultimately vital nation state economic and political systems. He started in informal group of development and peacekeeping professionals to share how they could improve operational efficiency and in 2004 launched Peace Dividend Trust.

The organization leverages the learning of past failures, working to disperse the benefits of humanitarian assistance as widely as possible and implement innovative economic development. approaches. PDT's approach is taking hold. Embraced by US authorities in Afghanistan it led to the groundbreaking Afghan First policy.

Today PDT is actively engaged in transforming 12 peace and humanitarian mission around the world.

Scott Gilmore.

Wow!
You know, I applied to Oxford, and I didn't get in. So it's comforting to know there's more then one way to the Sheldonian. First of all I have to thank, I was told not to, but I have to thank Sally and I have to thank Jeff and the Skoll foundation and the Skoll staff.

And my wife Catherine, who just flew in, for her patience over the years with all the long travel. I'm going to say a few quick words about the dramatic impact of this award on Peace Dividend Trust. First of all, I need to preface this by saying, the only real skill I have is my ability to find people who are smarter than me, and work harder than me, and get them to work with us.

And two of them are here tonight, Edward Rees, and Jennifer Holt, and the first impact of this award has been to validate their extraordinary efforts over the last five years, and for that I'm very grateful. The second impact of course, is that the Skoll family has really challanged us to ask some difficult questions about what we do and what works and how we could make that better and how could replicate that.

And in answering those questions, we've set ourselves a new road map over the last few months. Which brings me to the third impact, which is that the Skoll foundation has given the resources to start moving down that path. And it's not just the money, which we're very grateful for. But perhaps even more important is the access to the Skoll family and the experience and the wisdom of the people in this room.

I can say without any exaggeration that the conversations I've had over the last three days will make a dramatic impact on where PDT is going in years ahead. And finally, the big impacts, the one that I am relishing the most, is that this is giving us the resources to cause a little bit of trouble.

What we do is occasionally controversial and it's occasionally unpopular because it suggests that some of the institutions we love the most, like the United Nations, some of the things we love the most, like aid, don't work that well. And here are some things that we would really like to do to expose the light, or put some light on some on those most glaring inefficiencies. And to make some of the larger government donors very uncomfortable with some of things that they've allowed to take place. And so I think it's the Skoll Foundation's desire to see equilibrium change. Which is the most important thing for us, because what it's going to allow us to do is give us a fighting chance to start to shift that balance.

So thank you very much.

Telapak, Ambrosius Ruwi Ruwindrijarto, Silverius Oscar Unggul.

They go by Rewi and Onti,
have led efforts to transform logging in Indonesia to a community based system. One with a capacity to bring down powerful economic interests and stop the continued scourge of illegal deforestation. As many of you know, Indonesia is the third largest emitter of global greenhouse gases.

The result of massive deforestation. Ruwi co-founded Telapak in 1995 to raise awareness of the issue. Onte's insight was to transition Telapak's focus from promoting awareness to enacting a new paradigm: that of community logging. Telapak is the first organization in Southeast Asia, to help achieve group forestry certification for logging cooperatives.

Having proven the model in a variety of local areas, Telapak is now scaling nationally, helping local communities manage millions of hectares of forest across Indonesia.

Ruwi and Onte.


Good evening.
Good evening everybody, everyone. I'm celebrating this with my wife Debbie and my wife Lily. So, one village in East Java, it's in Lamongan where we are working now, it's the village where Amrozi was born.

Amrozi and his brothers were the ones that bombed Bali in 2002, and their relatives are the ones who bombed J.W. Marriot hotel in Jakarta in 2006 and very recently. So we work there. and we've met with the parents of all those people. And we've talked to them about, we're going to organize cooperatives.

We're going to manage the forest and the land. Then you are going to do this whole value chain and be and export and everything. And it gives hope to those people, to the parents and everybody. And then there's one particular study, because we are in talk with Marriott hotel chain, actually, a Marriott hotel wants to buy furniture, sustainable furniture from us.

So we talk to them in this negotiation with Marriott. And the parents said, "Oh my God, why did my boys bomb the Marriott Hotel?" Now, I think the story here is that we came very late there. Too late to this village. Maybe if we came earlier, we talk and organize and do all the things that we all do.

Maybe a different situation will happen, maybe there will be no bomb in Bali and at Jakarta.

So, we came very late, and this award, and all of you, working together. What we want to get out is that we, now we can, do everything faster, so we can do faster pace. So we can go to all those villages, and maybe, there's nothing inconsequential. You're speaking. Every action has consequence, there's nothing inconsequential.

So maybe, with this, we can do things at a faster pace. Thank you, Jeff and Sally Thank you all, Skoll Foundation. Edwin and Pritamin, they came to Indonesia and survived many flights every day. Survived Julian, survived our strange English, and survived the temptation of beaches and a life in Bali.

Thank you. Thank you also to Julian and Faith, somewhere there from the [xx] Investigation Agency, they've been with Telapak for a long time and fighting against illegal logging. Are you going now?

I need the paper.

And I need your hand. Thank you for my wife, especially because sometimes our home is very crowded. When the farmer and from the villages and the forests come to Jakarta, and they're all living in our home. We already have three kids, and no one, and my wife, I think, is very patient, thank you very much.

I will thank you for Bill Draten and Asoka, all Asoka members. Without Asoka, I think without Asoka who can find us, we cannot stay at this stage. I want to thank you too, Miriam and Chik Chan Jee and all Skoll Foundation too. Thank you for all kinds of gifts to us, and thank you for Trisakti University.

Their Information University in Indonesia. Only one University can be challenged to make social entrepreneurship center. They help us to make a business plan. What is a business plan? We don't know, we only stay in the village peace but now we know. And thank you very much for all the time. I think this very much for us, thank you very much.

Very happy to be here, Jeff and Sally. Thank you very much.


Tostan,

Molly Melchin.


Our last award recipient tonight is Molly Melching. Few activities in the development arena deliver more value and are more leverage then that of investing in female rights and education. Molly has lived in Senegal for more than 30 years, building and expanding Tostan's model for community led development and large scale social transformation.

Tostan bases it's way of working in human rights coupled with respect for community culture and knowledge systems. It delivers it's educational program through each community citizens over a 30 month time horizon, long enough to to ensure that changes to local norms are driven by stakeholders, and that those changes will hold.

Abandonment of female genital cutting has been the cornerstone of the program and proof of its effectiveness. Thanks to the work of Tostan, over 4200 communities comprising some 4 million people have publicly declared abandonment of female genital cutting in Senegal, Guinea, Burkina Faso, The Gambia and Somalia.

In addition 4000 Tostan communities have stopped the practice of child marriage.

Molly Melching


Thank you so much. It is such an honor and pleasure to be here with you tonight. On February 14, 1998, representatives of 13 communities gathered in central Senegal, in the small village of Deabugu to announce the outcome of many months of community wide deliberation.

They declared as a collective, extended family, the end of female genital cutting, a centuries old tradition which they had previously embraced and observed with almost religious fervor. At the time of this declaration, many working on this issue had predicted that female genital cutting, which began in Africa, and has endured for almost 2000 or more years, would certainly take 100, 200 -- maybe never, is what some people said -- to end.

Despite the clear evidence of the harm that it caused. And this, because previous attempts to fight, to pass laws against FGC, had all always met with fierce opposition and resistance at the grassroots level. Twelve years after Deabugu made their declaration, as Sally just said, over 4,200 villages just in Senegal.

4,229 to be exact, have joined those first 13 villages in an historic movement to abandon a practice that has caused great suffering and pain to millions of girls and women. And it is the villagers themselves who once practiced FGC--the elders, the women, the men, and all the youth, also--that after participating in the Tostan community empowerment program are at the forefront and leading the way.

These communities have done what was once thought was impossible. They have changed an entrenched, harmful social norm through a vibrant and positive grass roots movement. I think it's very important, as Paul said. It wasn't about blame and shame or humiliating anybody or fighting against what people were doing.

It was about going forward with human rights and for health, people feeling they were part of a very noble and positive movement that inspired and that made them want to be part of this exciting movement that was going on. But as Tostan now seeks funding to spread this movement and the many other program outcomes across Africa, we are confronted with social norms in the development world, which are extremely confusing and frustrating as Scott said.

For often it is the donor driven, top down, outside in, and highly expensive development model that seems to be the accepted norm. It is for for this very reason that we are so extremely grateful for the Skoll Foundation Award, an award that will allow Tostan to continue our work in providing grassroots communities, with these social and economic resources they need to guide and lead their own development, and do it in the way we know is right, from within.

As the people of Senegal wisely say, "The chameleon changes color to match the earth, but the earth does not change color to match the chameleon". My dream tonight is that the mounting evidence of success from bottom-up approaches, such as Tostan and the other Skoll awardees that are all here tonight, present in this room, will create a critical mass, a movement to shift the current paradigm towards the development model that has been discussed with so much passion here at the Skoll forum these past days.

One of a partnership. A partnership led by the communities themselves. In closing, and I'm the last one tonight. I was thinking, how can I thank you for this wonderful award?

And I thought, what if the women of Senegal were here? I know exactly what they would do. They would dance. So I am going to dance for you.
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