How Skoll Awardees Faced the Pandemic with Innovation and Resilience

Facing the historic global challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Skoll Awardees and our larger portfolio of grantees have met this moment with empathy, determination, and innovation. “This is the moment that social innovators are made for,” our Board member, Cheryl Dorsey, said recently.

Over these many months, we’ve seen the incredible resilience of this remarkable community of innovators. Their vital role in reimagining inequitable systems that fail to meet the needs of all communities has never been clearer. While COVID-19 has laid bare the deepest fissures in our society and threatened those with the least resources, Skoll Awardees have seized this moment with the uncommon urgency it demands.

The short film above shares a glimpse of the overwhelming response of Skoll Awardees across geographies and sector to this pandemic—a vision for a better future within the challenges of the present. We’ve been consistently reminded of the power of proximity during this time of social distancing and virtual collaboration—those closest to the communities they serve are best placed to respond with urgency.

We have celebrated the impact of COVID-19 response work across the Skoll Awardee community. Here are just handful of additional highlights:

• To ensure that one million Community Health Workers would be properly protected with PPE on the frontlines, Skoll Awardees Last Mile Health, Living Goods, Partners in Health, and VillageReach partnered with other global healthcare organizations to launch the COVID-19 Action Fund for Africa.
• In Kenya, working in close collaboration with the Ministry of Health and a range of partners, Medic Mobile built a COVID-19 tracking system to improve reporting and surveillance.
• Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator deployed its call center infrastructure in partnership with the South African national government to administer its unemployment insurance fund. With Harambee’s help, well over two million people received government relief.
• In Malawi, Mozambique, and the DRC, VillageReach partnered with government to get timely, accurate health information to millions of people who needed it most.
• On the strength of its 25 years of local relationship building, Amazon Conservation Team has supported some 170 communities as COVID spread across the Amazon basin.
• Search for Common Ground found opportunities for peacebuilding in Yemen and Afghanistan even as the pandemic threatened to deepen divides.

The pandemic has shown the incredible potential of social innovators to leverage collective action, collaboration, and cross-sector partnership in crafting solutions for urgent challenges and spurring lasting systemic change.

During this extraordinary year, the Skoll Awardee community rose to the challenge, and we are so grateful for your work.

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Banner image: Medina Youth Council in Medina Yoro Foulah, Senegal, by Kevin Vigouroux