The Power of Proximity: 2018 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship

The theme for the 2018 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship is The Power of Proximity. It explores the value of physical closeness to other people, and how this closeness can bring about understanding and empathy – and also innovation.

The Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, from 10-13 April 2018 in Oxford, England, seeks to accelerate methods and solutions to the world’s most urgent problems by uniting social entrepreneurs with partners for learning, leverage, and large-scale change.

How is The Power of Proximity related to innovation and social entrepreneurship?

When we get close, we hear things that can’t be heard from afar. We see things that can’t be seen, and sometimes that makes a difference between acting justly and unjustly.

Being physically close to the problems can have an impact on what to do about them in the local context. There is problably no greater example of this than the aid development sector, in which aid workers and humanitarians in developing countries often operate under the leadership of an organization in another country – a developed country. That’s because the funding comes fro the developed country and is accountable under a range of rules and regulations.

Nearly 65 countries are represented in the Skoll World Forum to adddress inequality and injustice. The Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship will discuss issues such as: (1) how to democratize development, (2) collaborative philanthropy models, (3) power and privilege in the aid development and humanitarian sector through funding flows, (4) the role of storytelling in communicating innovation, and (5) diversity and representation in impact investing.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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