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5 social enterprises innovating for change

By Devex Editor // 20 May 2020

With the current pandemic and economic crisis unfolding and the Sustainable Development Goals deadline less than 10 years from now, it’s more important than ever to identify groups making progress toward a more just and equitable world, using innovative approaches to tackle global issues at scale.

This year’s Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship highlighted several examples of leaders driving change and seeing the opportunity to expand their impact.

“The current COVID-19 pandemic reminds us of the importance of this type of solutions-oriented global leadership, and of our common humanity,” said Jeff Skoll, founder and chairman of the Skoll Foundation, in an email announcing the awardees. “The Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship shines a light on emerging leaders who fearlessly work in their own way to create a more sustainable, peaceful, and prosperous world for all.”

This year’s awardees — who each received $1.5 million to bring their work to scale — tackled issues ranging from climate change and maternal and child health to corruption and violence.

Devex spoke to the 2020 Awardees to learn more about their work.

What are the

skoll awards?

The annual Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship highlight the work of a select group of social entrepreneurs whose innovations have had a proven and significant impact on some of the world’s most pressing problems. Awardees are selected for their work in areas of environmental sustainability, education, economic opportunity, health, peace and human rights, or sustainable markets. Each awardee receives a $1.5 million investment or core support grant designed to support the scale of their work over three years.

Past Skoll Awardees include Dr. Raj Panjabi, co-founder and CEO of Last Mile Health, Gary White, co-founder and CEO of Water.org, Karen Tse, founder and CEO of International Bridges to Justice, and Safeena Husain, founder and executive director of Educate Girls, to name just a few.

Tackling violence in the Americas

Celina de Sola is a co-founder, alongside her husband Ken Baker, of El Salvador-based Glasswing International. This nonprofit works to address the root causes and consequences of poverty and violence in the Americas.

In the countries where the nonprofit works, homicide rates are higher than anywhere else in the world, with gang-related crimes, corruption, and gender-based violence widespread, driving people to migrate in search of a safer life.

Growing up in this environment, many children and young people are exposed to trauma, violence, and gang culture. Glasswing works to break this cycle by creating community hubs in schools and health facilities to deliver volunteer-led, psycho-social support programs that enable healing and social cohesion. The idea is to create a place where people can transform their community, de Sola said.

“Everything we do is completely dependent on collective action,” she said, adding that volunteerism empowers and brings people together, while building trust and social cohesion.

Operating in 10 countries in the region, Glasswing was formed on the premise that community-centered solutions are key. “We envisioned an organization that could not only convene, bridge, and catalyze action across sectors, but also maintain community priorities at the center,” de Sola said.

Engaging with local governments, Glasswing also runs community school-based projects that focus on skills development and community mental health interventions. Since 2007, this work has reached more than 398,100 children and youth and contributed to improving school attendance, decreasing violence among young people, and enhancing class performance.

With the Skoll Award funding, de Sola hopes to expand Glasswing’s reach and partner with more governments and NGOs to scale its impact.

Creating evidence-based research for a better environment

Drew Kodjak leads The International Council on Clean Transportation, an organization working to tackle air pollution and climate change by providing research and analysis to environmental regulators. Increased access to information has the potential to improve the environmental performance and energy efficiency of road, marine, and air transportation, and accelerate the implementation of policies that safeguard the environment.

Transport currently accounts for 24% of direct carbon dioxide emissions from fuel combustion worldwide. In order to prevent a global rise in temperature of two degrees Celsius, transportation will be a key emissions source to tackle. Governments have a unique opportunity to lead the way on regulations to clamp down on emissions, and ICCT offers them support to do just that through data and analysis.

“Government officials have a tremendous amount of authority and responsibility and can do more faster and better if they receive additional support from a team of global experts,” said Kodjak.

Over the past four years, ICCT has contributed to the adoption of 48 transport regulations by governments, which will impact pollution and climate emissions in countries such as India, China, and Brazil. It has also helped to create 23 regulations designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It also exposed Volkswagen's use of software to dodge emissions regulations several years ago, and is helping the automotive industry in its transition to electric vehicles.

“It’s a far more complicated, broader set of challenges that we face today instead of five years ago,” said Kodjak, adding that this makes winning the Skoll Award particularly timely. “We’re in a growth mode … largely in response to the fact that foundations and donors recognize we only have about 10 years to get to the bottom of the climate challenge.”

The Skoll Award will allow ICCT to invest in improving the long-term viability of the organization and extend its approach to provincial as well as national governments.

Improving maternal health in India

As a doctor in India, Dr. Aparna Hegde has all too often seen the devastating consequences a lack of access to adequate health care facilities, resources, and information can have on expecting mothers and children.

“I saw this play out regularly; women and children dying because of systemic issues that should never have been fatal,” said Hegde, explaining that it is important for women to receive specific information during different stages of pregnancy and infancy and for health workers to be trained to diagnose risk factors at an early stage. Yet for many women, circumstances mean they aren’t able to access that level of support and may experience complications that lead to the death of the infant or mother.

To prevent these deaths, Hedge felt that scaled solutions at the community-level were needed and that technology was the key to enabling that. She launched ARMMAN when she was still a junior doctor. The organization uses mobile phones to provide pregnant women and mothers with targeted health information and to train health care workers.

Information is empowerment, Hegde said, explaining that the mMitra program is a free voice call service that shares critical information, such as which supplements expecting mothers need to take, when check-ups and tests are required, and how to meet the various needs of a child. While it was initially difficult to get women to engage — many were only used to receiving calls from family members and weren’t used to making decisions about their own health — mMitra now has 2.2 million subscribers.

But in extremely underserved remote and rural parts of the country, information alone is not enough, Hegde said. Here, ARMMAN has trained community health workers to provide home-based prenatal, postpartum, and infancy care.

In 2018, ARMMAN partnered with India's ministry of health to extend maternal and child care across the country and roll out a mobile academy program that trains community health workers on counseling and soft skills.

“Collaboration and humility in partnership are extremely important,” said Hegde, adding that the same platform is now being used by the government to share messages about COVID-19.

Improving civic engagement in the US

Recognizing the gap between democratic ideals and the complicated United States election process, Tiana Epps-Johnson, Whitney May, and Donny Bridges launched the Center for Tech and Civic Life. The nonprofit uses ballot data to provide people with accurate and easy-to-digest information about the candidates in their area. The goals are to engage more people in the voting process by modernizing it and making it easier to understand, to create higher-performing election offices, to generate increased public confidence and trust, and to support a more resilient and adaptive election system.

Finding electoral information has historically been challenging for individuals, but by using data and technology, CTCL is able to provide information about ballots, what election officials do, who they are, and how they can be contacted.

Showing how widespread the demand for this type of information is, in 2016, the organization saw nearly 200 million hits accessing its ballot data.

The group also offers affordable training and tools for local election administrators to make sure elections are more trustworthy and inclusive. In 2019 alone, they trained election officials who serve over 80 million voters. Epps-Johnson said the Skoll Award has come at a critical time as it will help to immediately adapt training to help election departments during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using journalism to hold power to account

Drew Sullivan and Paul Radu formed the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project in 2006. The organization is an investigative reporting platform, working with journalists from 50 member centers to expose crime and corruption so the public can hold power to account.

“We decided in the first part of the 2000s to create our own networks, to be efficient in exposing criminals, and stopping them from doing business as usual,” said Radu, highlighting that media ownership was also tied to organized crime in parts of Eastern Europe.

While authorities often have limited means of investigating cross-border crimes, reporters have the networks and capabilities to fill that void, explained Radu. With OCCRP Aleph, an investigative data platform powered by software developed by OCCRP, journalists can search and cross-reference more than one billion records to trace criminal connections and patterns and collaborate across borders. “By using technology and mining information in an efficient manner, we’re better serving the public,” Radu said.

So far, the organization’s work in exposing corruption and crime has contributed to 471 indictments, arrests, or sentences, 387 government actions, 357 official investigations, and 53 high-level firings or resignations.

Looking to the future

This year’s awardees harness the spirit of innovation and collective action. For other social entrepreneurs looking to tackle problems in their community, CTCL’s Epps-Johnson advises that they listen. “Being a good listener with humility is really critical to developing solutions to community issues that stem from actual challenges people are experiencing,” she said.

Asking questions is key, Glasswing's de Sola agreed. “Sometimes, the most low-tech, simple things can be the most important in identifying local solutions and that’s [done by] asking a lot of questions to different people and different kinds of stakeholders in communities,” she said, adding that innovation can come from unexpected places.

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