I was privileged to attend an event at the Desmond Tutu Center in New York yesterday where Verite launched a ground-breaking initiatived called HELP WANTED: Hiring, Human Trafficking and Slavery in the Global Economy. As part of the HELP WANTED initiative, Verite released a major report from a year-long investigation that illustrated the prevalence of forced labor and human [...]

The Skoll World Forum moved into full speed yesterday, with a set of sessions ranging from conflict and water to the neuroscience of caring and how social entrepreneurs work in disaster zones (and many more).  Paul Hawken, the environmentalist, social entrepreneur and author, gave a really compelling keynote speech about the global movement in support [...]

Consulting firm McKinsey & Company is focusing on social entrepreneurs currently on “What Matters,” its online platform for talking about key business issues.  Timed in conjunction with the Skoll World Forum, which McKinsey is supporting this year, the current “What Matters” asks the question, “Can social entrepreneurs create large scale change?”  There are currently five [...]

I attended the Global Zero Summit in Paris this week, representing Larry Brilliant of the Skoll Global Threats Fund, which is a financial supporter of Ploughshares, an organization that supports peace and security worldwide.  Global Zero is pushing for the elimination of all nuclear weapons based on a multi-stage, multi-year plan that all the world’s [...]

Whew, what a day!  Things started out at about 8 a.m. and it is now 1 a.m., although, in fairness, the last couple of hours were elective, but interesting.
The day was divided into several parts: meetings with youth, interviews, civil society, ambassadors and business leaders.  The Elders (minus me and Richard, sadly) also met with [...]

The Elders delegation arrived in the region today.
I had a pleasant walk to the Old City of Jerusalem this afternoon with Richard Branson, who had not been to Israel before.  I offered to show Richard around, but any credibility I had as a tour guide was promptly diminished when I got us lost en route to [...]

I am honored to be a part of The Elders delegation visiting Israel and the Palestinian Territories from Aug 24-28.  We are meeting with a number of civil society and business leaders, as well as political leaders, to listen, learn and lend momentum to the peace process.
The Middle East has been an area of interest for me for some [...]

Verité, whose Exec Director, Dan Viederman, was a 2007 Skoll Social Entrepreneur, has launched a new information outreach program, “Verité Works:  Reports and Reflections on the Global Workplace”, with a look at China.  The initial edition focuses on capacity building among civic society organizations in China.  While this might seem incidental to good labor practices [...]

Skoll social entrepreneur Ceres continues to drive momentum for action around global warming, enlisting five major U.S. companies in a new effort to encourage the U.S. to adopt aggressive policies to fight climate change. The founding members of Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP) are Levi Strauss & Co., Nike, Starbucks, Sun Microsystems [...]

Skoll social entrepreneur, Verite’, which works to ensure that people worldwide work under safe, fair and legal working conditions, has just landed a contract with the U.S. Department of Labor to study and help alleviate forced labor practices in eight countries.   According to the press release (not yet available online), the new program is [...]