SWF07: The winners of the Awards for Social Entrepreneurship

Running notes from the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford, UK - Second day/4 (Website - SocialEdge)

The 2007 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship have been presented tonight to:

• Vicky Colbert of the Foundation Escuela Nueva, which she created with rural Colombian teachers to foster education for underserved children through a more flexible approach and stronger school-community ties, developing it into a national, then international movement reaching 5 million pupils in various Latin American countries, Uganda, and the Philippines.
• Craig and Mark Kielburger of Free The Children. They started it in their early teens as a classroom fundraiser and grew it to become an international organization with 1000 chapters in schools across the US and Canada fighting poverty, exploitation and powerlessness among children.
• Sebastien Marot of Friends International, an initiative to take Cambodian kids off the streets and help them reintegrate society.
• Susan Burns and Mathis Wackernagel of the Global Footprint Network, developers of the Ecological Footprint, a tool that tracks the extent to which human demand on nature exceeds what the planet can regenerate. this measure, applied by countries, hundreds of cities and organizations across the world, as become a leading sustainability indicator. Their goal is to institutionalize it in at least 10 countries by 2015.
• Joe Madiath of Gram Vikas, an organization helping develop the state of Orissa, one of the poorest Indian regions.
• Roshaneh Zafar of the Kashf Foundation (Kashf means "miracle"), focusing on microfinance for women in Pakistan. Started in 1996, the Foundation made 228'000 loans in 2006, has 135'000 clients and a recovery rate of 99.9 percent.
• Rupert Howes of the Marine Stewardship Council, focusing on reversing the decline in global fishing stocks through a marine certification and an eco-labeling program.
• Dan Viederman of Verité, which works on improving working conditions around the world.
• Dorothy Stoneman of YouthBuild USA, an alternative school where dropout youths re-enroll, complete high school, and at the same time work to build affordable housing for the homeless.

Here's how Sally Osberg, CEO of the Skoll Foundation, describes social entrepreneurs: "practical innovators who create sustainable engines at the grassroots level, a new kind of leaders who meld the discipline of business with the perspective of those less fortunate". The awardees each receive three-years grants of USD 1'015'000.