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Jeff Skoll
Founder/Chairman, the Skoll Foundation; First President, eBay; Founder, eBay Foundation
The Commonwealth Club has invited me to speak on numerous occasions in the past, but, until now, I had always declined because I wanted to wait until I had something special to say. Now, I think I do.
When I was a kid growing up in Canada, I used to read a lot. Even at a young age, I could see that there were a lot of problems developing in the world: crime, drugs, environmental problems, wars and diseases. What’s more, it struck me that most of these problems derived from the inequities between rich and poor: rich and poor individuals, rich and poor communities, rich and poor nations.
It also dawned on me that it didn’t have to be this way, that the world had sufficient resources to create a more peaceful and prosperous world for everyone. As John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural speech in 1961, "If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich."
What I would like to talk about is a powerful force that may be our best hope for a brighter tomorrow. It is more than a fad, more than a trend, and it is taking place not just in the United States but all around the world. The force is called "social entrepreneurship."
I was fortunate to spend some time with John Gardner before he died. John was the former president of the Carnegie Foundation and the architect of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs. I asked John what he felt was the most important thing that we could do to ensure a brighter future for us all. John thought about it for a second and then said, "Bet on good people doing good things." To my mind, there has never been a better phrase to capture the essence of social entrepreneurship.
Social entrepreneurs are people who believe and act on the unshakable conviction that individuals, alone and acting in concert, can, in fact, change the world. Social entrepreneurs are citizens from all stations in life who see that things can be better, and who work to make them so. Social entrepreneurs are people who do so often at great risk and with little regard for personal gain. Social entrepreneurs are the heroes who preserve our environment, stand up for human rights and save lives in parts of the world many of us have never even heard of – like Sunnyvale or Mountain View, for example.
Social entrepreneurship isn’t new. Florence Nightingale, Maria Montessori and even the Indian emperor Ashoka, from the third century B.C., were social entrepreneurs in their day. What makes our particular time most interesting is just how quickly the social sector is growing in response to the challenges before us. In just the last ten years, the number of nonprofit organizations in the U.S. has doubled to over a million. In other parts of the world, they have multiplied a thousandfold.
I believe that the events of the world, including 9/11, have caused people to realize that the traditional ways of doing things are not working. We cannot simply rely on business and government to solve our problems. So what can we do? As John Gardner said, "Bet on good people doing good things." As someone who spent much of his life in Silicon Valley, John Gardner knew that there are a disproportionate number of these good people right here in our own backyard.
One great Silicon Valley social entrepreneur is Martin Fisher. After finishing his Ph.D. in physics at Stanford in the late ’80s, Fisher decided to do some charitable work in Kenya. Soon after arriving, Fisher saw an opportunity to take Western technology, like water pumps and hay balers, and make it more affordable for Kenyan farmers and entrepreneurs. Twelve years later, Fisher’s nonprofit organization, ApproTEC, has helped create over 35,000 new businesses in Kenya, and these businesses account for almost 1 percent of all of Kenya’s GDP. Fisher’s vision is to expand ApproTEC to all of Africa and, for the first time, create a middle class in that continent.
Another great Silicon Valley social entrepreneur is Jim Fruchterman. Jim founded The Benetech Initiative, an innovative nonprofit that develops technology to address social needs. Fruchterman created Bookshare.org, a book-sharing community for people with disabilities; the Martus Project that provides tools for the reporting of human rights information; and the Landmine Detector Project, among others. Fruchterman’s efforts have helped millions of people.
Good people like Martin Fisher and Jim Fruchterman are not alone, but they need our support. At the Skoll Foundation, our mission is to seek out, invest in, connect and celebrate social entrepreneurs. Through direct contributions to their work, we invest in social entrepreneurs worldwide through our various award programs. We even have a specific program for Silicon Valley, as we know how innovative and entrepreneurial our community is. We also connect social entrepreneurs via our online community, Social Edge, and at our annual world conference that we hold with our partner, Oxford University. But it is the last part of the mission, "celebrate," that I personally find most exciting.
Who do we turn to for leadership in a world where politicians are mistrusted, businesspeople are vilified and even the church has been scandalized? Where do we turn for inspiration when we turn on our TVs or go to the movies and see "Average Joe," Scooby-Doo and Kill Bill: Vol. 2?
We know there are incredible people doing incredible things all over the world. How do we learn about them so that we can join them in their great work?
I’ve established a company in Hollywood that is developing and producing movies that tell the stories of empowered individuals tackling social injustice: films in the tradition of Schindler’s List, Gandhi and Erin Brockovich. Of course, I am mindful of the Hollywood adage: The surest way to become a millionaire is to start by being a billionaire and go into the movie business! But I’m also a believer in Herm Albright’s advice: "A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."
In addition to the work my company is doing with movies, the Skoll Foundation, independently, has also funded the creation of a documentary series called "The New Heroes" that will air on PBS in early 2005. Hosted by Robert Redford and produced by Malone-Grove Productions, "The New Heroes" consists of four one-hour episodes, each episode focusing on three social entrepreneurs from around the world. We are very excited about the series, as we think it will open people’s eyes to the problems around the world and to the extraordinary men and women who battle these problems every day.
Each year millions of poor people migrate from the countryside to big cities in hopes of a better life. What they often find is just the opposite: crime, drugs, prostitution and even more grinding poverty.
In India, many of these migrants reach the city and never get farther than the train stations they arrived at, settling into the most wretched slums. They – and even more, their children – have little hope of escape. Until now. A local teacher, a tiny powerhouse of a woman named Inderjit Khurana, decided that if she couldn’t get the train platform children to school, she would bring the school to them.
There are extraordinary people, like Inderjit Khurana, doing important work all over the world. We believe that by telling their stories we will help individuals we feature inspire our audiences and, hopefully, accelerate much needed social change.
Silicon Valley is truly a place of excellence, and the impact of this tiny community on the world is completely disproportionate to its size. But with our abundance of talent and resources, we also have the opportunity to be the pioneers of social change, and it is this work, ultimately, that may be our greatest contribution.
Earlier in my talk, I quoted John F. Kennedy. Now I’d like to remind you of something said by his brother, Robert Kennedy, that I believe is the credo of social entrepreneurs all around the world. Kennedy said: "Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and say, ‘Why not?’" As social entrepreneurs, it is our challenge to dream of things as they should be. And it is our mission to make them so.
