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Welcome to Skoll eNews, the Skoll Foundation’s bimonthly update on Skoll activities and news in the world of social entrepreneurship!
Although there were occasional individuals throughout history who dedicated their lives to transforming social systems, Bill Drayton was the first to actively seek out “changemakers,” as he calls them, when he founded Ashoka 25 years ago. He is widely credited with coining the term “social entrepreneur,” which he did partly out of frustration. “We had no way to describe the work we did. My godmother was unable to explain what I did to others,” he recalls. He named his organization after a third century B.C. Indian emperor who was extraordinarily creative in both economic development and social welfare, globally minded and tolerant. Ashoka now supports 1,700 Ashoka Fellows in 62 countries who combine entrepreneurial acumen with the determination of social reformers to help lift people out of poverty, become self-sufficient and live happier lives. Ninety percent of these Fellows report that other independent groups are replicating their projects, and half say their work helped change national policies within five years. Among the Ashoka Fellows are eight recipients of Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship: Rodrigo Baggio of Committee for Democracy in Information Technology, which helps slum residents self-organize schools that have helped 750,000 overcome the digital divide; Jeroo Billimoria of Childline International, a global network of free telephone hotlines for and staffed by street children; Vera Cordeiro of Renascer Child Health Association, which treats whole families in Brazil to prevent the recurrence of disease; Paul Rice of TransFair USA, which expands brand awareness, consumer demand and distribution of fairly traded coffee and other products; Albina Ruiz of Ciudad Saludable, which cleans up cities in Peru by creating local enterprises to collect garbage; Kailash Satyarthi of Rugmark, which certifies carpets made without child labor and rescues and educates child laborers; J.B. Schramm of College Summit, which helps low-income students navigate the college application process; and Karen Tse of International Bridges to Justice, which promotes justice in China by training and supporting criminal defense lawyers. Other well-known Ashoka associates include Muhammad Yunus, founder of the microcredit movement and now a member of Ashoka’s World Council; as well as two social entrepreneurs featured in the PBS series, The New Heroes: Fabio Rosa, who brought cheap electricity to rural Brazil; and David Green, who helped restore sight and hearing to millions in India by lowering costs and transforming how care is organized. In 2003 the Skoll Foundation partnered with Ashoka to create the Global Academy for Social Entrepreneurship, the first attempt to harness the talents of world-class entrepreneurs to open up new, underserved markets on a global scale. One of the Academy’s projects is the new Social Entrepreneurship Series of DVDs of interviews with individuals who have built global organizations and movements. A three-year $3 million grant that Skoll awarded to Ashoka this year will help expand its global network, improve the quality and speed of the network, and shape support systems for social entrepreneurs. By 2007, Ashoka plans to elect 30 percent more Fellows and expand into seven new countries, create knowledge products and develop and test new financial products that will direct capital to social entrepreneurs. A Quiet Reformer Bill Drayton doesn’t look like a radical reformer. Dressed in pin-striped gray suit with a blue shirt and pullover, with wispy hair and rimless glasses, the 62-year-old is a slight, ascetic-looking man who speaks in a soft voice. Judging by his modest demeanor, you would never guess that he is a graduate of Harvard and Yale Law School, was a Rhodes Scholar, a McKinsey management consultant, a MacArthur “genius” Fellow and served as second in command at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Carter administration. As he travels around the world interacting with Ashoka’s huge network of social entrepreneurs, he knows from the excitement they generate that he’s on to something big. Young people are especially receptive. “Students get it. They understand this is the future,” he says. In fact, Ashoka has created an independent but closely aligned partner, Youth Venture, that is dedicated to helping young people become lifelong leaders. There is much work to be done. Bill calculates that the richest 20 percent of people have 82.7 percent of the world’s income, while an awful lot of people have next to nothing—and the gap between rich and poor is continuing to grow. He has his eye on the horizon. “Think of what it would be like if 50 percent of the population were changemakers,” he says. “You start imagining what human society would be like at that stage. It would be incredibly different. It would operate much more like the human brain, with synapses firing in all directions.” Bill believes we need to radically change the way we treat our young people in order to get there. “Today,” he says, “if someone reaches age 21 or 22 and has not practiced applied empathy, teamwork and leadership, they won’t define themselves as changemakers—and they, in fact, won’t have the necessary skills.” His vision of the future is so clear that he is aghast at the thought of those who don’t understand it. “How can you do a good job if you don’t understand this amazing historical phenomenon?” he asks. “Five years from now, any business strategist who doesn’t understand it should be up for malpractice.” His ultimate goal is that everyone will be changemaker. “That world,” he notes, will be fundamentally different and a far safer, happier, more equal and more successful place.”
'Uncommon Heroes' Films Now Available Featured in the films are Victoria Hale of Institute for OneWorld Health, which develops develop effective, affordable medicines for infectious diseases that disproportionately affect people in the developing world; Amitabha Sadangi of IDE-India, which provides drip irrigation systems and other income-generating technologies to farmers; Ann Cotton of CAMFED (Campaign for Female Education), which helps educates girls in poor, rural communities in Africa; and Martin Burt of Fundacion Paraguaya, which support 30,000 microentrepreneurs and has turned an agricultural school into a model enterprise. You can view these films on our Skoll Web site at http://www.skollfoundation.org/videos/. If you would like to order a free DVD of the films, please email Phil Collis at pcollis@skollfoundation.org. The DVD is region free and encoded for NTSC. View Highlights from the Skoll World Forum 'The New Heroes' Touches Viewers Around the World Click here to order a copy of The New Heroes from PBS. Awardees Take Center Stage in Annual Report New Guidelines Coming Soon
Paul C. Light, a professor at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, hosts “Let There Be Light,” a launching pad for observations about social entrepreneurs. He writes, “The field of social entrepreneurship has not come to complete closure on the basic definition of social entrepreneurship. Much of the difficulty surrounds two basic questions that have yet to be fully resolved: First, what exactly is social entrepreneurship, and how is it different from entrepreneurship more generally? Second, how would researchers know a social entrepreneur if they saw one?” The second new feature comes from marketing expert Diana Reid, who gives social entrepreneurs practical advice on marketing and communications in “Reid on Marketing.” She writes, “In our quest for passion and emotion and important do-gooding, we’ve thumbed our nose a bit at one of the things we really need to help fuel the change we seek to unleash." Check out her most recent four-part series on audience/stakeholder identification and prioritization, her "Ten Steps to Develop your Brand Identity,” or her series on positioning statement and supporting points. |
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"A tiny elite has run almost everything for millennia." Bill Drayton is on a roll. In just 20 minutes, he courses through 1,500 years of human history, explaining how the economy of the West was stuck from the Roman Empire until business took up a radically new entrepreneurial and competitive architecture around 1700. This change increased productivity and generated wealth, he says, but left half of society behind: the part concerned with social needs such as education, public welfare and the quality of life.
The numbers are in for The New Heroes, a PBS documentary series sponsored by the Skoll Foundation and hosted by Robert Redford that tells 12 dramatic stories of social entrepreneurs who bring innovative, empowering solutions to intractable social problems around the world:
We’ve extremely proud of our new annual report for FY2005. The small book captures the Skoll Foundation’s philosophy and tells the stories of some Skoll Award recipients in a format similar to a photo album, with pages that have the appearance of handmade paper and many pictures.
Our program officers are finalizing the guidelines for the 2007 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship, which will be posted on our 
Liqui, from a rural community participating in the Sonidos de la Tierra project in Paraguay, performed in Venice this spring with social entrepreneur Luis Szaran and other youths whose talents have been discovered through Sonidos’ programs. 