ACCELERATING IMPACT OF YOUNG SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS THROUGH GLOBAL CONVENINGS

Lessons from the Emerging Leaders Initiative

by Elyssa Lewis, February 2020

Thank you for your interest in the Emerging Leaders Initiative report (Feb 2020). To download the full PDF, please complete the form below.

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Report abstract

As the field of social entrepreneurship matures, the next generation is coming to the fore. Thus, the Skoll Foundation and the Mastercard Foundation teamed up to create the Emerging Leaders Initiative (ELI) with the goals of supporting this emerging generation of leaders and bringing their perspectives into global conversations. Beginning in 2014, the program brought together 10-12 young social entrepreneurs each year from around the world to the Skoll World Forum, a premiere global convening of social entrepreneurs and other innovators that takes place in Oxford. The Initiative was designed to accelerate leaders’ careers and impact by leveraging the entirety of the Skoll World Forum’s offerings. In addition to receiving an invitation and covering all the costs of attendance, the program provided skill-building workshops with leading experts on topics including networking and storytelling, as well as take-home assets such as a professional headshots and videos. The formal Forum programming also directly incorporated the Emerging Leaders’ voices and stories as speakers.

ELI’s theory of change builds off that of the broader Skoll World Forum. Convenings such as this are powerful opportunities for changemakers, policy shapers, activists, social entrepreneurs, and thought leaders to come together, exchange ideas, learn from one another, and accelerate solutions to global challenges. Skoll views four main outcomes for Forum delegates: Connection, Learning, Visibility, and Growth. However, young social entrepreneurs, especially from the Global South, have often been underrepresented, and thus excluded from these benefits, due to bottlenecks such as insular networks and limited guest lists, as well as barriers like cost, location, and visa restrictions.

But overcoming global challenges requires global, representative perspectives. The Skoll World Forum and convenings like it are not achieving their full potential without that representation and inclusion. The ELI program was one step on the journey to create an equitable, inclusive convening that supports the next generation of leading social entrepreneurs. While ELI has now come to an end, insights from the Leaders themselves over the last six years reveal some important lessons for Skoll and other global conveners on how to authentically include young, diverse voices and leverage these platforms to accelerate their impact.

This report is the result of an internal evaluation of the ELI program by the Skoll Foundation. It draws insights from several sources, including semi-structured interviews with 13 Leaders from across the cohorts (August-September 2019), an online follow-up survey conducted in September 2019 (n=14), pre-program surveys from 2017-2019 (n=22), post program surveys from 2015-2019 (n=42), interviews with program staff, program documentation, and the general Skoll World Forum Delegate surveys from 2017-2019 when the Story Studio was opened up to all delegates.