Skoll World Forum: The Final Session

I had the honor to play a small part in the last session of the Skoll Foundation’s World Forum this year.

The first speaker, Paul Collier - author of The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It - is a longtime hero and advisor to Acumen Fund. He spoke of the need to move beyond thinking about the bottom billion as consumers of products but rather as producers. He went on to talk about the need to think in broader terms about bringing a combination of business skills, public finance to enable the business environment, and real and concerted public action to bear. Mr. Collier also discussed the critical need to focus on job creation and on bringing affordable basic services like water, healthcare, housing, energy and education to the poor. It was thrilling to hear him, and I could only feel pushed to get better and smarter in taking our models for service delivery - and job creation - to scale, in part, through more effective partnerships with governments and philanthropies.

Paul Farmer - founder of Partners in Health and an eloquent advocate for human rights and public health - spoke of the need to focus more on social justice issues, to realize we are truly one world now and that the rich need to change if the poor are ever to have a chance. The clinic he is building in Rwanda is world class and, most important to Paul himself, brings dignity to the low-income members of the community it serves.

Former Vice President Al Gore astounded as usual with his capacious mind and keen grasp of detail around climate change and what we can do about it. He urged all of us social entrepreneurs to think of environmental issues and activists not as competitors to the social justice movement, but as part and parcel of the work we are doing. Certainly, my trip to the Sindh desert in Pakistan last week was a reminder of the link between poverty and global warming. The farmers who live in Thar and Nagarparkar have little water to speak of, and the high price of diesel fuel means it is prohibitively expensive for many farmers to afford the energy to extract water. A combination of solar power and drip irrigation could transform the desert in more eco-friendly ways, but we need to get the economics right - and this is something to discuss with advisors like Paul Collier and others.

Sally Osberg closed the session with an eloquent appeal that we move beyond thinking about the individual social entrepreneur alone and instead start focusing on institution building within the sector as well as on collaboration. I couldn’t agree more - it just part of the game plan that Acumen needs to understand better, hone and, ultimately, follow.I certainly emerged from the conference inspired by the enormous amount of energy, capacity and hope around me in so many of the social entrepreneurs at the conference. I believe this field is truly taking off and will help lead the next revolution which must necessarily not only address the gap between rich and poor but also help bring the poor into the opportunities of a global world.

Editor’s note: Additional coverage of the Skoll World Forum can be found at the Berkeley Bottom Line as well as the Skoll Scholars blog.

Share/Save