The Skoll Foundation story really begins with Jeff,
when he's a young man.
I read a lot of books,
I thought I would be a writer
to get people involved in the big issues of the world.
I decided to get to a point
where I could afford to write those stories.
So I became an entrepreneur.
When he has the wonderful opportunity
to partner with Pierre Omidyar and start eBay,
a phenomenon is in the making,
and he finds himself in 1998
when eBay goes public,
a very wealthy young man.
All of a sudden I had more resources
than I ever dreamed of.
And beyond writing stories,
I realized that there was a vast amount of resource
that could be put to use
to make a difference in the big issues of the world.
Sally Osberg took me to meet her mentor, John Gardner,
architect of the Great Society programs
under Lyndon Johnson,
and I asked him, what could we best do
to make a difference in the world
and ensure that humanity would survive into the future.
And John said, "Bet on good people doing good things."
What he meant was that there were big problems
ahead for the world,
but there were also people who would stop at nothing
to solve these problems.
The Skoll Foundation was created to provide fuel,
give power, and tell the stories of great change leaders
who have come up with a social innovation
that will either be a new way of solving a problem
or bring together different communities
to go address that problem in unique ways.
These are entrepreneurs,
they're intrepreneurs as we like to call it
within government or the private sector,
they're system orchestrators or movement leaders,
even coalitions,
they can be called a number of different things.
But ultimately these are groups of people
who want to change the way things are,
and they are closest to the communities
where these challenges exist.
We're really focusing on five of what we believe
are the biggest strategic challenges
facing our globe; climate change,
democracy and governance, racial justice,
inclusive economic growth,
and health system strengthening
with the focus on the pandemic that we sit in today.
We also aim to be catalytic in everything we do.
How can we actually get leverage
out of not only our funding but our actions,
and connecting and championing the social innovators
to others that can help give them
access to more funding,
access to the networks of people
that are gonna help them scale their solutions
to leaders in government,
leaders in other foundations
to other social innovators
from whom they can build community with
and work together with potentially.
That's a big part of what we do through informal connections
to our flagship event that we hold every year,
the Skoll World Forum.
We bring together social innovators
and create a problem solvers from all around the world.
We gather each year to create a sense of community,
a place of trust to share best practices,
and to connect with one another
after the hard work that we do all year
in some of the most isolated areas in the world.
You've come here to share your wisdom,
your insights, and your knowledge.
Here you're with thousands of people
who are actually tackling almost every challenge
from different angles,
with different methodologies.
It's a little microcosm, if you like,
of the way humanity could come together
and work together.
The Skoll World Program is three years
of unrestricted funding
alongside being up welcomed in with open arms,
to our Skoll World community.
It's really about finding these social entrepreneurs
and other social innovators
that we want to shine a light on.
And then lastly, we champion,
we try and help them tell the story of the idea
that they're trying to put forth into the world.
And we do that through social media,
through film, through convenings,
through putting them on stages around the world.
Giving us confidence, giving us faith,
bringing contacts, bringing resources.
It changed the life of my organization,
the life of me personally,
it changed the life of thousands
and thousands of people in Afghanistan.
It's a lifetime of having a community to journey with.
I think I described my own story today,
it is a bit of a fairy tale.
It's surreal how much has happened so quickly.
The question comes with, what do you do with that access?
I figure you kind of chaperone it
and devote it to good causes
and give it away over time.
I started the Skoll Foundation
to make a difference in the biggest issues in the world.
We believed then that social entrepreneurs
were an incredible lever for good.
And then in years later, we've now seen
that, that is the case.
Innovate, learn, fail, sometimes succeed,
build on that success, learn from that failure.
And if we do that well,
we'll have made a huge difference
and help achieve just vision of a sustainable world
of peace and prosperity for ourselves.