I just returned from Washington DC, where I attended a marathon meeting on Capitol Hill on US government leadership on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) called, “U.S. REDD Appropriations: ‘The Copenhagen Pledge’ Support & Strategy Initiative.”  The 5 hour meeting included representatives from the offices of Senators Leahy and Kerry, Congresswoman Lowey, and Donna Lee of the State Department (AKA the REDD negotiator).  Participants also included top level leaders from the private sector (American Electric Power, Duke Energy, Marriott International, PG&E and others), NGOs (Conservation International, Environmental Defense Fund, NRDC, Woods Hole Research Center, Union of Concerned Scientists, Sierra Club and others), and some funders (Ford / Climate and Land Use Alliance-CLUA, Moore Foundation, Clinton Foundation, and us at Skoll.)

One thing to keep in mind when talking about REDD is that, according to a 2008 report, 48% of global deforestation is in Brazil and Indonesia.

In Copenhagen, the Obama administration committed $1 billion over three years for REDD funding.  Other countries also contributed, for a total pool of $3.5 billion for use through 2012. The next step in that coordination process (some are calling it the Sarkozy process, or the Interim REDD Partnership) is a March meeting that French President Sarkozy is having with donors to assure money is spent effectively. A larger ministerial level meeting to formalize the agreement is scheduled for Paris in May.

The appropriations processes (underway now—to be approved in the coming weeks and months) in both the House and Senate are at the moment trying to make that pledge happen–i.e., fit this funding into the federal budget–and are figuring out what this will look like. This means that some sort of plan for US REDD implementation needs to take form quickly.  The current request is for $233 million for FY10 and $347 million for FY2011.  The biggest chunk would go through USAID, but also funded by this would be State Department programs, the World Bank Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, and the Treasury Department (in order to fund other commitments–Forest Investment Program, Global Environmental Facility and Tropical Forest Conservation Act).

Support for REDD appropriations funding is crucial in the coming year.  This meeting was meant to pull together a strategy for shoring up this funding and helping to make sure that the funds are spent wisely.  The discussion centered on strengthening US policies to reduce emissions from tropical deforestation, with a strong focus on the Copenhagen pledge.  Tim Rieser, a senior aide to Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, was a key participant. He will play an important role in advising Senator Leahy and the Appropriations Committee on how to respond to the Obama Administration’s recent fiscal year 2011 budget request for reducing deforestation. Donna Lee noted that the US can learn a lot from Norway, the clear leader in REDD funding–they have a $1 billion commitment to Brazil alone. She also said the State Department was making efforts to coordinate at the country level, giving the example of a recent gathering of donors hosted by State in Indonesia to talk about deforestation there.

The meeting afforded an opportunity to develop consensus views on spending priorities, to be communicated to Congress and the Administration.  To be sure REDD funds will be used as effectively as possible, the group held discussions about capacity building needs, criteria for prioritizing countries, mobilizing private investment and other key issues.

The fourth episode of the BBC World News series on social entrepreneurs features the heroic rats of Apopo, founded by 2009 Skoll social entrepreneur Bart Weetjens.  These HeroRats are trained to detect landmines and tuberculosis using their sense of smell.  The 8-part series, called Alvin’s Guide to Good Business, is looking at social entrepreneurs doing innovative work around the globe.  BBC World News online has an companion article on HeroRats here.   If you are in a market where you receive BBC World News, you can check out the broadcast schedule for the episode here.

Check out the video below, and get involved.  Adopt a rat, pass the story along via your blog and twitter feeds, friend HeroRATS on Facebook.  Check out the HeroRATS page for ideas.

Students in a YouthBuild program got some high level attention yesterday, with a visit from President Obama. YouthBuild USA was created by Dorothy Stoneman, a 2007 Skoll social entrepreneur. The President visited a YouthBuild program in Savanna, Georgia, where the students were taking vocational training on air conditioning. “They’re learning about solar cells; they’re learning about efficient heating and cooling systems. You’ve got young people here who, through the YouthBuild program, are gaining job skills that will help them the rest of their lives,” said Obama in a local media story. Read about it here and here.

The third episode of the BBC series on social entrepreneurs, Alvin’s Guide to Good Business, is now available online.  It features Marine Stewardship Council, led by 2007 Skoll social entrepreneur Rupert Howes.  For those with access, the show will air on BBC World News over the next week.  You can see the schedule here.

Marine Stewardship Councilworks with fisheries, seafood companies, conservation groups and the public to promote sustainable fishing through a certification program. Here’s an online companion article on the BBC webite.

We have just put up on our site a description of our capital model.  It talks about how we deploy our capital via grants, program-related investments, and our endowment to support positive social change.  We look at it as a continuum of different financial tools that are working in the same direction.  You can read about our approach here.  You can also read in more detail about our program-related investments, which are below-market loans and equity holdings that supplement/complement our grantmaking, here.

Search for Common Ground, led by co-founders and 2006 Skoll social entrepreneurs John and Susan Collins Marks, explores innovative ways to use media to bridge divides.  They’ve hit on a winning formula leveraging the popularity of soccer in Africa.  “The Team” brings together soccer players from different tribes to tackle historic animosities.  Search for Common Ground produces a version of “The Team” in 12 countries. NOW on PBS recently ran a story about this initiative.  You can watch that below.  Here’s a great article from ESPN that also talks about the initiative.

Social Edge, the community site of the Skoll Foundation, has just introduced the Social Entrepreneur Search Widget, an application programming interface tool to allow folks to search for social entrepreneurs within the networks of a series of leading social entrepreneurial organizations - including Civic Ventures, Draper Richards Foundation, PopTech, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, and, of course, the Skoll Foundation.  You can read more about the widget on Social Edge, and access it from these organizations’ websites.  The Skoll Foundation’s is here.  We’ve made it easy to add the widget to other websites, so we encourage you to use it.  Please check it out and let us know if you find it useful.  And tell your friends!  Thanks.

The second in an 8-episode series on social entrepreneurs on BBC Worlds News is now available online.  For those of you who get BBC World News, it will be broadcast four times over the next week.  Called Alvin’s Guide to Good Business, the series is led by financial expert Alvin Hall, who brings his experience of 25 years on Wall Street to bear in looking at eight social entrepreneurial organizations working around the globe.

In this episode, Alvin travels to India, where farmers struggle to grow their crops during the long dry months. IDEI tries to help by making affordable irrigation products that feed plants a drop of water at a time. But can farmers really make enough money to pay for them? And can IDEI’s inspirational boss, Amitabha Sadangi, accept Alvin’s challenge to groom a successor? 

Watch the episode in full below.

Roshaneh Zafar, a 2006 Skoll social entrepreneur and the founder of the Kashf Foundation, provides a great overview of the microfinance market in Pakistan in this video interview.  It includes a discussion of the factors behind Kashf’s decision to become a deposit taking institution.  It’s a really interesting 7 minute film.  Have a look.

The gathering of social entrepreneurs at the Indian Business School in the heart of HITECH city in Hyderabad – in some ways represents the physical nexus of technology, business and changemakers. It has been a day filled with rich conversations – where in each session the wealth of knowledge was beyond the panelists, as the audience included a diverse/global representation of Ashoka-Lemelson fellows.Highlights from the session “the New Leaders: Serial Inventor-Entrepreneurs and the Lessons Learned”. The journey from technological innovation, to design, to production, to distribution is a long and hard road – this discussion was on some of the challenges social entrepreneurs encounter during this process. Skoll Awardee, Albina Ruiz/Ciudad Saludable was one of the panelists along with Harish Hande/SELCO, David Green/AUROLAB, Tri Mumpuni /WIYATNO and Joseph Adelegan/Cows to Kilowatts. Some of the key points raised were:

• Scaling strategies have to be derived around the “needs” of the beneficiaries rather than “wants”
• As one establishes a for-profit to address a social mission there needs to be a strong emphasis on accountability
• It is important to have a strong feedback mechanism on processes and programs. The value of products developed need to have financing that match this need – so one can make quality programs/products at an affordable price. (eg: Aravind eye hospital). Often low cost/efficiency per unit is the focal point – while that is important, people value quality which must be met.
• Need to demystify the margin structures in manufacturing and distribution – provide more clarity on costs throughout the value chain.
• Often organizations seek just grant funding which subsidizes opportunities and thereby does not allow for creative financing (of mixing soft and hard funding / and where they need to be effectively applied)
• There is still an acute shortage of flexible, early stage, risk-taking capital for for-profit social enterprises

Highlights from the session “Bridge to the Future: Building the Business Social Bridge” – In the past, innovative social sector organizations had business plans and innovative businesses had social missions. Today, businesses and social sector organizations are collaborating in increasingly sophisticated ways, sharing revenue, product development, and distribution networks to achieve a variety of business and social change goals. This discussion was on the principles that underline effective collaborations. Interesting mix of panelists – social entrepreneurs (Prema Gopalan/ Swayam Shikshan Prayog, Hilmi Quaraishi/ZMQ) and corporate social responsibility representatives (Vikas Goswami/Microsoft, Krista Bauer/General Electric). We saw a short film on the partnership between ZMQ and Microsoft (http://www.youtube.com/ashokavideos#p/a/u/1/LotQFahHWUw) that set the stage for the central theme of the discussion – how to build a partnership that is beyond a single transaction & how to unlock creative financing opportunities? Some of the key points were:

• While there might be “strong selfish interests” you can work toward a “a common purpose”
• Keep the ultimate beneficiaries central to negotiations between the social enterprise and the company
• Don’t approach profit as a “dirty word” – it is fundamental/central to a company’s existence
• Have to educate companies to look at non-profits on multi-aspects beyond just reaching a new market/target population and encourage them to be “co-creators” – companies need to be prepare for financing with a long-term risk model
• Have a rationale, transparent revenue sharing model as there is inherently a power imbalance with the companies. So it is important to be clear on pricing and a realistic timeline (how long it will take to scale/reach volumes)
• CSR must be recognized as integral to business – not a charity program on the sidelines
• Present opportunity in the language of the company ie: business plan, financial models – often NGOs may have all the data but present information in a manner that is not educative to the companies
• Sometimes the partnership does not make sense – if it is not viewed as an integral strategy to both organizations. So, to save future headaches and heartbreaks and failures, there need to be milestones that assess the health of the partnership and decide on clear go-no go criteria.