By Melissa Ip
Every year since 2004, the Skoll World Forum brings approximately 1,000 people to Oxford University for the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship to exchange ideas and discuss solutions for social change. At each gathering, a select group of social entrepreneurs are recognized and awarded for their contributions in creating a peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable world.
Today, the Skoll Foundation announced six social entrepreneurs who will receive the 2013 Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship. Their work ranges from attaining peace and human security to expanding access to quality education and healthcare.
Chris Underhill, BasicNeeds, raises awareness and drives more effective treatment of mental health problems that impact millions in developing countries, but are often misunderstood, underfunded and considered taboo. BasicNeeds works with mentally ill people across 12 countries through a holistic model to address community mental health, poverty and stigma.
Mushtaq Chhapra, The Citizens Foundation, provides affordable primary and secondary private education to low-income students, with a focus on girls. The organization works in urban slums and rural areas in Pakistan, where 25 million children do not attend school and the female literacy rate is 45 percent.
Gemma Mortensen, Crisis Action, brings human rights and humanitarian organizations together across continents to protect civilians from armed conflict. By enabling civil society to speak as one at moments of crisis, it spurs the world's most powerful decision makers into action.
Carne Ross, Independent Diplomat (ID), helps marginalized countries and groups have a say in international negotiations about their own future. An experienced team of former diplomats, international lawyers and experts in international relations, ID provides advice on diplomatic strategy to break open the closed doors of international diplomacy. ID's work ensures that those most affected are included in diplomatic discussions, making resulting agreements fairer and more likely to last.
Sal Khan, Khan Academy, strives to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere - through online content delivered directly to independent learners worldwide and through a blended learning model that includes direct implementations and its freely available online teacher toolkit. Its resources allow students to learn at their own pace to truly master a subject.
Gopi Gopalakrishnan, World Health Partners, improves the quality of rural health care at a large scale by creating a complete service delivery ecosystem. Among its services, it connects informal rural health providers to qualified doctors through telemedicine, thereby providing access to a wide range of critical health services and products.
These awardees will join a network of almost 100 Skoll social entrepreneurs from 80 organizations.
Source: Skoll Foundation
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