2009 Skoll Awards Ceremony
Video Description
Skoll Awardes at the 2009 Skoll World Forum receiving their awards: Bart Weetjens of APOPO; Soraya Salti of INJAZ Al-Arab, JA Worldwide; Jordan Kassalow of VisionSpring; Paul Van Zyl and Juan Mendez of ICTJ; Martin von Hildebrand of Fundacion Gaia Amazonas; Wendy Kopp of Teach for All; Pooran Desai and Sue Riddlestone of BioRegional Development Group; Gary White of Water.org; Munqeth Mehyar, Nader Khateeb and Gidon Bromberg of Ecopeace/Friends of the Earth Middle East.
Speakers
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Chair, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Dr. Rajendra Kumar Pachauri is the Chair of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the scientific intergovernmental body that provides decision makers and the public with an objective source of information about climate change. He is also Director General of TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute), an independent research organisation providing knowledge on energy, environment, forestry, biotechnology, and the conservation of natural resources. He is active in several international forums dealing with the subject of climate change and its policy dimensions. He was awarded the second-highest civilian award in India, the ‘Padma Vibhushan’ and received the ‘Officier De La Légion D’Honneur’ from the Government of France in 2006.
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Nader Al-Khateeb served as Chief Engineer for the Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour Water Authority from 1984 to 1993, where he was responsible for planning and fundraising, as well as operations and maintenance of the distribution network. After returning from leave to acquire his M.Sc. degree, he also became the Project Manager for their drainage and sewerage project. From 1994 to 1997, Mr. Al-Khateeb was a senior water resource engineer with the UNDP's Water Resources Action Program, working as a consultant in the effort to formulate and establish the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA). He then became associated with the PWA itself, coordinating a host of water and wastewater projects.
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Munqeth Mehyar received a degree in Regional Planning and Architecture from the University of Louisiana, USA in 1981, upon which he became the planning engineer for South Amman. Being a committed sportsman, he was the project manager for the German Balsam International Sports Company, and then the Middle East Manager of the Athlete Sports Contracting Company. He serves on the Board of Directors of both the Jordan Sports Federation for the Handicapped, and the Jordan Royal Ecological Diving Society.
Mr. Mehyar was awarded a medal from Al Houssain Distinguished Giving for his charitable activities. Further to being co-founder of EcoPeace Middle East, Mr. Mehyar is also the Founder and Director of the Jordan Society for Sustainable Development, an environmental NGO based in Amman.
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Wendy Kopp is CEO and Co-founder of Teach For All, a global network of independent organizations in 60 countries across every region of the world that are working to develop collective leadership to ensure all children have the opportunity to fulfill their potential. Prior to launching Teach For All in 2007, Wendy founded and led Teach For America. She led the development of Teach For All to be responsive to the initiative of social entrepreneurs around the world who were determined to adapt this approach in their own countries. Wendy holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University as well as honorary doctorate degrees from 15 universities. She has been recognized with numerous awards including the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the Wise Prize for Education and the Schwab Foundation’s Outstanding Social Entrepreneur Award.
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Sue Riddlestone OBE is CEO and co-founder of Bioregional, and a 2009 Skoll awardee. Sue and the team work with partners to create homes, communities and products and services which enable us to live well within a sustainable carbon and ecological footprint. Bioregional are behind many exemplary residential communities, including the iconic BedZED eco-village in London, and Bicester eco-town in Oxford.
To scale their work, Bioregional systematised their approach to create a sustainability framework called One Planet Living, used in over $30billion of real-estate development, as well as by municipalities, cities, organisations and companies around the world from Mexico to China, the USA and Australia.
Sue draws on this to influence policy and industry practice from zero carbon to eco-towns and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In 2013 Sue was awarded one of the UK’s highest honours, an OBE, for services to sustainable business and the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
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A native of Argentina, Juan Méndez came of age during a time of great upheaval in Latin America. As a result of his legal and advocacy work, he was arrested, tortured and exiled. He refused to be broken and dedicated his life to pioneering ways to protect human rights. Juan joined ICTJ as president in 2004. Paul van Zyl, a native of apartheid-era South Africa, committed to working against intolerance at a young age. He helped draft legislation to establish the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and was hired by Archbishop Tutu as its Executive Secretary. Paul co-founded ICTJ in 2001.
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Senior Vice President of Middle East/North Africa for Junior Achievement Worldwide,
INJAZ al-ArabSoraya Salti was Senior Vice President of Middle East/North Africa for Junior Achievement Worldwide, INJAZ Al-Arab. Her efforts had led to the expansion of INJAZ to 15 countries, in the most successful private public sector partnership in education reaching more than 1 million youth, in the region with the world’s highest youth unemployment. She won the 2006 Schwab Social Entrepreneur award for Jordan, became a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and was the first Arab woman to win the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.
The Skoll Foundation mourns the loss of Soraya Salti, founder of INJAZ al-Arab. In 2015, Soraya and her sister, Jumana, both died tragically and unexpectedly.
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Thirty years of working in sustainability.
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Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer, The Conduit
Paul served as the Executive Secretary of South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Paul also co-founded the International Centre for Transitional Justice, an organisation that works in over 40 countries that have endured massive human rights violations under repression conflict. Paul is also a co-founder and CEO of Maiyet, an ethical luxury fashion brand that cultivates traditional design and culture by partnering with global artisans. Most recently, Paul co-founded The Conduit, which serves as a home for those committed to improving the world by harnessing the power of creativity and entrepreneurship. The Conduit serves as a home for a diverse community of people passionate about social change.
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Jordan Kassalow is an eye doctor, social entrepreneur, and author. He is the founder of VisionSpring, the co-founder of EYElliance, and a Partner at Drs. Farkas, Kassalow, Resnick, & Associates. Jordan also founded the Global Health Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations and co-founded Scojo New York. Prior to his position at the Council, he served as Director of the River Blindness Division at Helen Keller International. Jordan is a fellow of Draper Richards Kaplan, Skoll, Ashoka, and is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. He was named one of Schwab Foundation’s 2012 Social Entrepreneurs, was the inaugural winner of the John P. McNulty Prize, and was recognized in Forbes Impact 30. VisionSpring has been internationally recognized by the Skoll Foundation, the Aspen Institute, and the World Bank; is a three-time winner of Fast-Company's Social Capitalist Award; and a winner of Duke University’s Enterprising Social Innovation Award. Additionally, he co-authored Dare
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Gary is the CEO and Co-founder of Water.org and WaterEquity, nonprofit organizations dedicated to empowering people in the developing world to gain access to safe water and sanitation. Gary developed Water.org’s WaterCredit Initiative, creating new financing options for poor populations to meet their water supply and sanitation needs. He also developed and now leads WaterEquity, the first-ever impact investment manager dedicated to ending the global water crisis in our lifetime, with an exclusive focus on raising and deploying capital to water and sanitation businesses that serve people living in poor communities throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Named to TIME magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people, Gary has been awarded the Forbes 400 Lifetime Achievement Award for Social Entrepreneurship, named to the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Water, and selected as Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur and a Skoll Foundation Social Entrepreneur.
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As the first President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation, Sally Osberg partnered with Jeff Skoll to build it into the leading philanthropy in the field of social entrepreneurship. During her tenure, the Foundation supported more than 100 entrepreneurial organizations driving equilibrium change on many of the world’s most pressing problems and developed innovative platforms for connecting civil society, government and private sector leaders with societal problem solvers. Among these platforms are the annual Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, the Skoll Centre at Oxford University’s Said Business School, and the Sundance Institute’s “Stories of Change” initiative.
In 2015, Sally and Roger Martin published Getting Beyond Better: How Social Entrepreneurship Works, which articulates a theoretical framework for social entrepreneurship and distills lessons for practitioners, academics and impact investors. Her thought pieces have appeared in leading social impact and business journals and books; in 2015, she and Roger Martin were honored by Thinkers 50 for their intellectual leadership in the field of social enterprise.
Prior to joining Jeff Skoll and the Skoll Foundation, Sally served as the founding Executive Director for Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose, a pioneering institution in the field.
Sally currently serves as the Chair of the Camfed (the Campaign for Female Education in Africa) USA Foundation, on the Philanthropy Advisory Council of the Royal Bank of Canada, on the Advisory Council of the Elders, as Vice Chair of the Social Progress Imperative and as a board director for New America and the Palestine-based Partners for Sustainable Development. She is also an Associate Fellow of the Said Business School of Oxford University.
She received her M.A. in English and American Literature from the Claremont Graduate School and her B.A. in English from Scripps College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
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Martin Von Hildebrand has spent the last five decades accompanying indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon. During this time, he has been a fundamental actor to obtain the recognition of indigenous communities rights in the National Constitution, including the collective ownership of their land and the development of their governments. They now own 26 million hectares of continuous rainforest. Their rights have been recognized, and they have set up many governments.
Currently, Martin, along with NGOs, indigenous organizations, civil society, governments, and private enterprises, is coordinating the protection of the largest stretch of rainforests on the planet (the northern part of the Amazon between the Andes and the Atlantic, 260 million hectares).
He is an ethnologist with a doctorate from the University of Paris VII, founder and the current president of the Gaia Amazonas Foundation. He has been awarded a dozen international awards.
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Musician / Singer,
Kate Victoria "KT" Tunstall is a Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist from St Andrews, Scotland. She broke into the public eye with a 2004 live solo performance of her song "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" on Later... with Jools Holland. She has enjoyed commercial and critical success since, picking up three nominations before winning a BRIT Award, and a Grammy Award nomination. She is also the recipient of an Ivor Novello Award.
She has released three studio albums internationally: Eye to the Telescope (2004), Drastic Fantastic (2007) and Tiger Suit (2010).
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Founder & Chairman, Jeff Skoll Group
Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Skoll Foundation
Founder and Chairman Emeritus of Participant Media
Founder of Capricorn Investment Group
Co-founder and GP of the RISE Fund
First fulltime employee and President of eBay
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Gidon Bromberg is the co-founder and 27-year Israeli Director of EcoPeace Middle East. Mr. Bromberg has written extensively on the relationship between water issues and Middle East peace and has presented before the UN Security Council, UN Climate Summit, US Congress, European Parliament and other international forums. Mr. Bromberg, an attorney by profession, is an alumni of Monash University in Australia, Washington College of Law at American University and Yale University's World Fellows program.
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Bart is a Zen Buddhist monk and social entrepreneur. With a vision to empower the most vulnerable communities of subsistence farmers in sub-Sahara Africa, he took the initiative to train HeroRATs as sustainable detectors in response to the global landmine problem.
When Mozambique officially announced itself free from landmines in 2015, Bart transitioned from his executive role to focus on the practice of Zen. In the same year he got involved in The Wellbeing Project which aims to catalyze a culture of inner wellbeing for all changemakers.
While exploring the relationship between personal growth and social action, Bart currently dedicates his time to leading Zen workshops with companies and organisations, public speaking, and personal growth coaching trajectories.
