Sally Osberg’s closing remarks Skoll World Forum 2010
Skoll Foundation CEO Sally Osberg gives inspiring closing remarks at the end of the Skoll World Forum 2010.
Thank you Jimmy and Donny thank you Paul for the inspiration of all you have shared with us and for the blessed restlessness of your life. Thank you to all the social entrepreneurs whom we've honored, as well as the rest of you with us here in the Sheldonian and with us virtually. Thank you to your families, friends and supporters including and especially my amazing beloved partners and colleges on the Skoll foundation board and staff, on the Skoll World Forum production team and my sisters and brothers on the Skoll Global Threats Funds, Participant Media and Capricorn Investment Group and Scoll Center for Social Entrepreneurship teams.
Will you all please stand so that I can thank you. This is my family.
Not far from where we
sit, about a mile or so north of here lies a tract of land that I have walked and returned to for more then 30 years. Known as Port Meadow, it comprises 440 acres through which a section of the Thames River wanders on it's way to London and the sea.
As a landscape, it's not particularly dramatic, but has a open, expansive, feeling to it. And at this time of year, when much of the meadow is flooded, it's magical. The constantly shifting clouds, the mottled and mutable skies reflected in vast pools of still water, make it feel like you can wade through the sky.
Port Meadow is remarkable, though; in fact, it may be the oldest deeded commons land in the world. Granted to the free men of Oxford by that same King Alfred Jeff referenced in his remarks last night, and held in common by their descendants, the citizens of Oxford, for more than a thousand years, to this very day.
To surveyors and tax collectors, commons is literally defined 'bounded property held in perpetuity for specific community purposes by stewards for future generations.' To systems thinkers, commons has a more profound meaning; that of a resource, fundamental to sustaining life. Oceans, the atmosphere, watersheds and even the workplace.
Tonight, I'd ask you to join me in taking the idea of commons one step farther. To see the social entrepreneurs we've honored here as defining, defending and dignified. Commons that transcend the boundaries of space in time. Think of women, exquisitely designed to conceive and bear life, as a commons that should be defended from mutilation and victimization; of African villagers, plots of land as commons, that can be cultivated and replenished to ensure a sustainable food supply; Of aging American women and men, wanting to contribute their knowledge and experience, as a demographic comments of monumental scale of the mechanisms that power peace keeping as it commons that can be re-engineered to heal societies ravaged by war; of the great forests of the Amazon and Indonesia as a global commons, whose continued degradation threatens life as we know it, and whose preservation could very well save us from ourselves.
And, now go inward, to those individual commons each of us holds in our hearts and in our minds - personal well springs of meaning and goodness that tell us the truth about who we are and what we're here to do. Returning to where I began, to Mary Oliver's, inspired by our honorees, our musicians Jimmy and Donny, by Paul, by Jeff and by all of you.
Maybe it's the restless business of each wild and unspeakably precious life, to discover how to share its commons of heart and mind with others. And so I leave you with a wish, may the great force, Satyagraha, be with you on your journey. May it steel your resolve, and fire your creativity when the big guns come out, and when the battlefields like more than you can take on.
Above all, may you know that your every act of kindness and courage, creativity and purpose matters, and the collective power of such acts, countless such acts, is the only force that can bring about that better future you see beckoning, the world we all know to be possible. The one we can only renew, restore, and recreate together.
See you at the examination room for our party. Thank you and goodnight.
Will you all please stand so that I can thank you. This is my family.
Not far from where we
sit, about a mile or so north of here lies a tract of land that I have walked and returned to for more then 30 years. Known as Port Meadow, it comprises 440 acres through which a section of the Thames River wanders on it's way to London and the sea.
As a landscape, it's not particularly dramatic, but has a open, expansive, feeling to it. And at this time of year, when much of the meadow is flooded, it's magical. The constantly shifting clouds, the mottled and mutable skies reflected in vast pools of still water, make it feel like you can wade through the sky.
Port Meadow is remarkable, though; in fact, it may be the oldest deeded commons land in the world. Granted to the free men of Oxford by that same King Alfred Jeff referenced in his remarks last night, and held in common by their descendants, the citizens of Oxford, for more than a thousand years, to this very day.
To surveyors and tax collectors, commons is literally defined 'bounded property held in perpetuity for specific community purposes by stewards for future generations.' To systems thinkers, commons has a more profound meaning; that of a resource, fundamental to sustaining life. Oceans, the atmosphere, watersheds and even the workplace.
Tonight, I'd ask you to join me in taking the idea of commons one step farther. To see the social entrepreneurs we've honored here as defining, defending and dignified. Commons that transcend the boundaries of space in time. Think of women, exquisitely designed to conceive and bear life, as a commons that should be defended from mutilation and victimization; of African villagers, plots of land as commons, that can be cultivated and replenished to ensure a sustainable food supply; Of aging American women and men, wanting to contribute their knowledge and experience, as a demographic comments of monumental scale of the mechanisms that power peace keeping as it commons that can be re-engineered to heal societies ravaged by war; of the great forests of the Amazon and Indonesia as a global commons, whose continued degradation threatens life as we know it, and whose preservation could very well save us from ourselves.
And, now go inward, to those individual commons each of us holds in our hearts and in our minds - personal well springs of meaning and goodness that tell us the truth about who we are and what we're here to do. Returning to where I began, to Mary Oliver's, inspired by our honorees, our musicians Jimmy and Donny, by Paul, by Jeff and by all of you.
Maybe it's the restless business of each wild and unspeakably precious life, to discover how to share its commons of heart and mind with others. And so I leave you with a wish, may the great force, Satyagraha, be with you on your journey. May it steel your resolve, and fire your creativity when the big guns come out, and when the battlefields like more than you can take on.
Above all, may you know that your every act of kindness and courage, creativity and purpose matters, and the collective power of such acts, countless such acts, is the only force that can bring about that better future you see beckoning, the world we all know to be possible. The one we can only renew, restore, and recreate together.
See you at the examination room for our party. Thank you and goodnight.
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