Daring to be Great at Skoll
I love Oxford, England. Great history, fascinating architecture and the certainty of another great week with the dynamic Skoll Foundation community.Last year, Water For People was selected as a recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. It was a humbling moment for Water For People, a great honor, and an award that gave us confidence that we may be on the right track programmatically.
It has been a significant year for us at Water For People since I last stood in Oxford. We launched Everyone Forever here one year ago. Everyone Forever is an outcomes-based water and sanitation program that we hope will lead to better results at a grander scale (see here for details). We had been working towards these goals around the world for a number of years yet we were unsure of the exact words, the best way to convey the message and most importantly when would be the right time to roll it out publicly. We tested our voice within the Skoll community last year to great effect.And that is what I like most about the Skoll community – the staff, other entrepreneurs, and the community that participates and enriches the Skoll World Forum. Optimism and a hunger for new approaches in key sectors – education, health, water, sanitation, climate change, etc – where old approaches have not really led to the transformative results we all want. Skoll is a welcoming environment where you can dare to try new things for bigger impact, and be heard and pushed from a positive place of support.
I am really looking forward to this year’s program. I am anxious to reconnect with my friends who I learned so much about last year as we moved through the Skoll community for the first time – Rebecca Onie of Health Leads, Ellen Moir of New Teacher Center and Madhav Chavan of Pratham. The new Skoll awardees are spectacular but I must admit I selfishly have a real desire to connect with Proximity Designs (Skoll Entrepreneurs: Jim Taylor and Debbie Aung Din pictured to the right) as I think they are unusually remarkable. And I look forward to being challenged, hearing what others are up to and perhaps even offering some new ideas yet again. You can do that at Skoll, and I value that immensely.
