Skoll 10: Traditional dance ends inspiring awards night

A packed Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford was in awe last night as eBay billionaire Jeff Skoll presented nine Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship as part of the Skoll World Forum.

Inspiring films of each of their projects followed a musical performance of Over the Rainbow and Imagine by Jimmy and Donnie Demers, two brothers who closed the Paralympics.

They were joined by three films from Skoll awardees from previous years: Paul Rice of Transfair USA, America’s fair trade movement and an equivalent to the UK’s Fairtrade Foundation; Joe Madiath of Gram Vikars, an organisation revolutionising rural Indian villages by building toilets; and Sakena Yacoobi of the Afghan Institute of Learning, who went against Taliban rule to educate young women.

The night’s speaker was Paul Hawken, author and CEO of OneSun Solar, who demonstrated the global support for social and environmental organisations with a Star Wars film credit style graphic. It listed organisations before Hawken told his audience that they would have to sit in their seats for two months, 24 hours a day, before the list came to an end.

‘The total number of these organisations is two million,’ he said. ‘That didn’t happen over night.’

Among the two million were the Skoll awardees of the night, recognised for setting up organisations with the potential for real global change. They included eco-campaigns that have led to nationwide change, a change in a 2,000 year old ritual of female genital mutilation and loans to help farmers out of poverty.

While the inspiring stories each had their own standing ovation, the highlight of the evening came from Skoll winner Molly Melching, who celebrated her win with a traditional dance embraced by the whole theatre.

The award recipients were:

Marc Freedman, Civic Venture: Started ten years ago with the aim of funding mentors, teachers and youth workers to help young people growing up in poverty. His new goal is to get ‘millions’ born in the baby boom era to get involved in ‘encore careers’, combining continued income and social impact in the hope that, together, they can solve some of society’s toughest problems from lack of education on healthcare.

Michael Jenkins, Forest Trends: Forest Trends was established in 1999 by leaders from conservation organisations, development banks, research groups and private investment funds. It aims to ‘expand the value of forests to society’, promote sustainable forest management and support innovative projects that are developing the market for ecosystem services. It does this by bringing together producers, communities and investors to scale up the market for social impact.

Carlos Souza Jr. and Adalberto Veríssimo, Imazon: Imazon is the first independent deforestation monitoring system for the Brazilian Amazon, founded by Veríssimo in 1990. In 2008, the Brazilian government launched a new policy to control illegal deforestation focused on areas identifies by Imazon.

Andrew Youn, One Acre Fund: This fund, founded by Youn, helps farmers in east Africa lift themselves out of poverty with micro loans. The loans help them introduce more profitable crops and farming techniques and provide farming inputs in exchange for a share of future revenues. He has already helped 100,000 farmers and aims to reach millions in the next ten years.

Scott Gilmore, Peace Dividend Trust: From the UN peacekeeping mission and frustrated with red tape, Gilmore set up an informal group of development and peacekeeping professionals to share ideas about improved operational efficiency. Launched in 2003, PDT now helps those in charge of peacekeeping missions learn from past failures, innovate and take practical steps to economic development. It has so far operated in 12 missions.

Ambrosuis Ruwindrijarto and Silverious Oscar Unggul, Telapak: Ruwi and Onte, as they like to be called, have been instrumental in shifting illegal logging in areas of Indonesia to community-led logging. Ruwi set up Telapak in 1997 and brought in local exert Onte in 2006. Together, they have changed their Telapak’s focus from raising awareness to rolling out community-based sustainable resource management and hope to scale up its model nationally.

Molly Melching, Tostan: Melching has lived in Senegal for 30 years developing informal education programmes for adults and young people. Campaigning against female genital mutilation has been an integral part of her work and it has led to the ritual being abandoned in 4,500 communities in Senegal, Guinea, Burkina Faso, The Gambia and Somalia, comprising more than three million people. More than 4,000 communities have also abandoned child marriage.

Find out more about Skoll award winners HERE.