Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship’s Post

📢 Calling all University of Oxford postgraduate students! Interested in a social impact career? Impact Lab offers students the chance to explore mindsets and approaches that help build an impactful career. Whether you are a Social Intrapreneur, Social Entrepreneur, or a Social Extrapreneur, this programme will help you develop as a leader driving positive change. Join our upcoming Impact Lab webinar with Nick Gregg and Elizaveta Belkina to find out more about our exciting co-curricular impact leadership programme: 📅 Thursday, 8th August 2024, 16:00 (BST): https://lnkd.in/eFe-6CSJ 📍Application link: https://bit.ly/4cCD5nJ

🎯Coal Phaseout in Germany: What is a ‘reverse auction’, and why should we hope to see more of them? 🏭 In order to combat the concerning long lifetimes of coal power plants, Germany has become the first country in the world to hold a ‘reverse auction’ to coax coal power plants into early retirement in line with climate commitments. 💰 The policy changes the power dynamics between the fossil fuel industry and the government by having coal power plants compete with blind bids for early retirement compensation packages before a 2027 deadline, after which closures can be mandated without monetary repayments. 📌 New research published in Climate Policy, and led by Skoll Centre Early Career Research Fellow, Dr Sugandha Srivastav of the Oxford Smith School & Institute for New Economic Thinking, has found that the nascent ‘coal phaseout auction’ model used in Germany is a transparent and cost-effective way to reduce fossil fuel use. This is because the model: ▪️ Puts pressure on plants not to inflate closure costs if they want to submit a competitive bid ▪️ Incentivises strong starting bids by staggering auctions and reducing the compensation available over time ▪️ Removes market insulation which traditionally protects coal power plants from closure due to long-term contracts ▪️ Gives consumers access to cheaper electricity in a market not dominated by the production of coal ▪️ Can be adapted to ensure sufficient competition in different contexts, as long as the relevant market has enough diversity in coal plant ownership to prevent collusion Although the policy is not transferrable everywhere, co-author Michael Zähringer of Frontier Economics points towards “Australia, United States and India as stand out examples where such a policy could be considered”. Alongside her role as a Skoll Centre Early Career Research Fellow, Dr Sugandha Srivastav is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow and lecturer in Environmental Economics at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment - University of Oxford. Her work explores how society can most efficiently incentivise investment in technologies that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deliver broad societal goals. Open to academic researchers across the University of Oxford, the Early Career Research Fellowship supports early career academics working to generate knowledge that accelerates social impact. Read the full article here: https://oxsbs.link/4cM0tPF

🌱 Applications for Impact Lab are officially open! Run by the Skoll Centre, Impact Lab is a co-curricular impact leadership programme that supports University of Oxford postgraduate students who are committed to an impact-driven career. 👉 Find out more and apply: https://bit.ly/4cCD5nJ    Interested in applying? Join our upcoming Impact Lab webinar with Elizaveta Belkina and Nick Gregg, and find out more about this exciting programme:     📅 Thursday, 8th August 2023, 16:00 (BST)  👉 Register for the webinar: https://lnkd.in/eFe-6CSJ (the Zoom link to the webinar will be in the Eventbrite confirmation email).       #SocialImpact #Impact #Oxford #Postgraduate #StudentOpportunity #ImpactLeadership Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, Rhodes Trust, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, The Oxford Character Project

Today there are 10 million social enterprises globally, generating around $2 trillion in revenue each year whilst creating positive impact (WEF, 2024). What can we learn from how these social enterprises operate to address the sustainability challenges we face today? This was the key question being debated by Skoll Centre Academic Director Marya Hill-Popper Besharov alongside Gorgi Krlev, Laura J. Spence, FAcSS, Aoife Brophy and Eleanor Carter at a recent event, People-centered Transformation to Sustainability, at Kellogg College, University of Oxford. 💡 Key Takeaways: ➡ Social enterprises avoid taking an ESG risk-based approach, offering alternative participatory and partnership models to mainstream business models that drive innovation for impact. ➡ Social enterprises adopt integrative mindsets, create protective guardrails, and act through experimentation, learning, and adaptation. ➡ The challenges we’re facing are interdependent. We need leaders in the social economy and mainstream business who move away from siloed thinking to an integrated, both/and approach. ➡ The diversity of geography within the social economy is impressive but enterprises need to be locally embedded, rather than imported models, so they understand local concerns and communities. 📺 You can watch the video and join in the conversation in the link below.   📚 You can also download Gorgi Krlev’s new book Social Economy Science: Transforming the Economy and Making Society More Resilient which provides a comprehensive analysis of the how the social economy provides value to society - link below. #impact #sustainabilitytransformation #people #discussion #event #research #socialeconomy

Last month, we celebrated an incredible milestone at the Africa Oxford Leadership Programme Graduation Dinner! 🎉   Over the past 10 months, the Skoll Centre, in collaboration with the Africa Oxford Initiative, has proudly organised this transformative programme for our Mastercard Foundation AfOx Scholars. Designed to complement their academic studies, the AfOx Leadership Programme has provided these exceptional individuals with in-depth leadership training, helping them to explore their leadership potential and learn practices for transforming systems and catalysing social change.   Bringing together a unique cohort of 45 scholars from over 20 African countries, from diverse fields of study—Law and Finance, Health, and MBA—to Public Policy, African Studies, Environment and Water Management, these young, mid-career, and senior professionals have enriched our community with their vast experiences and profound insights.   As we commemorate the end of this amazing journey, we look forward to witnessing the impact our scholars will continue to make. Their Ubuntu year of service marks the beginning of their next chapter in driving positive change across Africa and the world.   A heartfelt thank you to our partners at Africa Oxford Initiative for the invaluable collaboration! Thank you to our dedicated team at Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship for the outstanding work in delivering this initiative. Special appreciation to all faculty members and contributors – we appreciate your dedication and excellent delivery of this programme.   Here's to the future leaders, change-makers, and visionaries who are catalysing change within Africa and globally! 🌍✨   #Leadership #AfOxLeadershipProgramme #Graduation #SkollCentre #AfricaOxfordInitiative #MastercardFoundation #SocialChange #FutureLeaders

☀️ Thank you to everyone who attended last week's Insights for Action seminar at Kellogg College, University of Oxford! It felt like a perfect sign off to this year's series, so we'd like to say big thank you to Kellogg for hosting us, and to the sun for coming out just in time for the garden reception! 💬 We would also like to say a special thanks to Karim Harji and Samuel Vionnet for lending us their insights on impact valuation and monetisation, after a long and exciting week working on the Oxford Impact Measurement Programme! We also owe our Academic Director, Marya Hill-Popper Besharov, a big thank you for moderating each of our sessions this year, and bringing out the very best of our speakers and themes. 📢 If you missed last week's discussion, you can now find the recording on our YouTube channel here, along with the rest of of this year's seminar recordings: https://oxsbs.link/3xfQMcA 📅 We are looking forward to seeing you in October to kick off the next series!

Congratulations to Skoll Scholar Diana Chao for receiving the Social and Humanitarian Award at the Asian Women of Achievement Awards in London last week, in recognition for her work as Founder and Director of Letters to Strangers, the largest global youth-for-youth mental health non-profit seeking to destigmatize mental illness and increase access to affordable, quality treatment, particularly for youth! Thank you for bringing such warmth and joy to your work, and to the Skoll Community👏💌 #AWA2024 #AsianWomenAchievementAwards #SocialImpact #Changemaking #Leadership #SkollCentre Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

We are delighted to be exhibiting alongside Oxford's most exciting start-ups this evening at the Weston Library! If you'd like to find out more about the work that we do at the Skoll Centre, and the educational opportunities we offer, come and say hello! 👋

Join me this Friday, in person or online, for an important conversation about impact monestisation! Details below.