Skoll Foundation Adds Eleven Pioneering Organizations to its Global Portfolio of...

Skoll Foundation Adds Eleven Pioneering Organizations to its Global Portfolio
of Leading Social Entrepreneurs

Unrestricted Grants to Allow Each Organization to Expand its Impact to Achieve
Sustainable Change

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Skoll Foundation
today announced Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship for 11 organizations
working around the world in the areas of tolerance and human rights, health,
environmental sustainability, peace and security, and economic and social
equity. The recipients, who will each receive three-year grants of $1,000,000,
join a growing global network of Skoll social entrepreneurs, now numbering 59,
who have created innovative, proven solutions for tackling the world's most
urgent social and economic challenges.

The Skoll Awards program is the foundation's flagship investment initiative.
It provides social entrepreneurs, whose models for sustainable change have
already yielded significant impact, with unrestricted funding to scale their
programs and amplify their reach across regions, countries and continents.
This newest group of Skoll entrepreneurs has demonstrated measurable impact
across a variety of issues and geographies, including:
-- providing some of the world's most destitute populations with access to
modern, high quality health care;
-- training indigenous tribes in the Amazon to use technology to protect
millions of acres of rainforest;
-- using the Internet to connect individual donors in the global North with
entrepreneurs in the global South;
-- empowering women in Africa with HIV/AIDS to mentor pregnant women and new
mothers with the disease, to ensure a healthy and productive life.

"We know solutions exist around the world that have transformed millions of
lives, in a sustainable way, across education, health, environmental and other
social systems," commented Sally Osberg, President and CEO of the Skoll
Foundation. "We think the new Skoll social entrepreneurs represent some of the
best, most innovative, of those solutions, and bring an exciting new level of
energy and creativity to our portfolio." Osberg added, "These remarkable
individuals and their tireless teams are tackling issues that require our most
immediate attention. And most importantly, the models they have developed have
the potential for vastly increased impact."

The 11 organizations receiving the Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship
are: Amazon Conservation Team, American Council on Renewable Energy, Arzu,
Digital Divide Data, Half the Sky Foundation, KIVA, mothers2mothers, Partners
in Health, PeaceWorks Foundation, Population and Community Development
Association, and Visayan Forum Foundation.

Lance Henderson, Vice President of Programs & Impact for the Skoll Foundation,
noted, "We were extremely impressed with the most recent pool of applicants.
Both the nature of the innovations and the degree to which those innovations
are effecting positive change are indicative of how the field of social
entrepreneurship continues to grow and mature."

The Skoll Awards will be presented by Skoll Foundation Chairman Jeff Skoll,
Skoll Foundation President and CEO, Sally Osberg and special guest, former
President Jimmy Carter, on March 27 at the fifth annual Skoll World Forum on
Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Oxford in England. The Skoll
World Forum convenes a global community of outstanding practitioners and
thought leaders in social entrepreneurship to set the future agenda for
visionaries who want to transform society.

The Skoll Foundation accepts applications and grants awards on a year-round
basis through an open competitive process, with new award winners celebrated
once each year in March at the annual Skoll World Forum. The application
deadlines remaining in 2008 are March 18, August 5 and November 4. More
information about the Skoll Awards can be found at
www.skollfoundation.org.

THE SKOLL AWARDEES IN DETAIL

Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) - Mark Plotkin, an ethnobotonist, and Liliana
Madrigal, a conservationist and crusader for indigenous rights, created ACT in
1996 to preserve the cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon and
develop their capacity to provide enduring protection of their rainforest
home. Mark and Liliana have shown that, given the opportunity and training,
indigenous people are the most reliable stewards of their own territory. Since
its inception, ACT has mapped and provided land management for 40 million
acres of Amazon rainforest and anticipates reaching 80 million acres in three
years. Its programs have benefited 26 indigenous groups across Brazil,
Columbia and Suriname. ACT is headquartered in Arlington, VA.

American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) - Michael Eckhart first
understood the promise of renewable energy in the 1970s when he did pioneering
energy studies under funding by the Carter White House. In 2001, Michael and
others founded the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) to establish
an "all renewable" organization for the U.S. ACORE seeks to bring together all
renewable energy industries to create a new power base that speaks with one
voice and has the strength, influence and research needed to match the power
of organizations representing traditional carbon-based industries. ACORE's
goal is to have 25 percent of U.S. electricity and fuels come from renewable
sources by 2025. By 2011, it plans to increase membership from 500 to 1,000
organizations. ACORE is headquartered in Washington D.C.

Arzu - Connie Duckworth made history as the first female sales and trading
partner at Goldman, Sachs & Company. A longtime women's advocate, she visited
Afghanistan and was shocked by the hardships the women faced. There are few
countries in greater need of development than Afghanistan and few countries
where the women are less empowered. In 2004, Connie founded Arzu to help
female rug weavers and their families break the cycle of poverty by providing
them with above-market compensation for their rugs and access to health care.
In exchange, they send all their children under 15 to school full time and all
women in their home attend literacy classes. Arzu now supports 700 weavers and
aids more than 2,100 individuals through its core program, making it one of
the largest private employers in Afghanistan. By 2011, Arzu plans to double
the population it assists. Arzu is headquartered in Chicago, IL.

Digital Divide Data (DDD) - On a 2001 vacation, Jeremy Hockenstein was struck
by Cambodia's juxtaposition of extreme poverty with emerging technology. He
created Digital Divide Data to break Southeast Asia's cycle of poverty by
providing high-quality technology services to the global market. Mai
Siriphongphanh recognized the potential of DDD and brought her social
entrepreneurial savvy to the team in 2003. Founded upon an innovative and
sustainable work/study model, DDD offers excellent wages and educational
benefits to disadvantaged segments of Lao and Cambodian populations, enabling
them to accelerate the development of local IT industries and equipping them
for better futures. In addition to salary, workers' educations are subsidized
by matching scholarships from DDD. Growing rapidly, having impacted 7,000
people already and generated $14 million in increased wages, DDD is shaping a
new corps of leaders empowered to shepherd their countries' development. DDD
is headquartered in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Half the Sky Foundation (HTS) - Jenny Bowen learned first-hand the devastating
effects of institutionalization of children when she and her husband adopted a
toddler from a Chinese orphanage who was severely under-developed. In time,
her new family's loving attention enabled their daughter to blossom, and the
idea for Half the Sky was born. HTS establishes and operates infant nurture
and preschool programs, provides personalized learning for older children and
establishes permanent family care and guidance for children with disabilities.
It works in 38 state-run orphanages across China, and, in 2007, was invited by
the Chinese government to expand its model to 300 institutions and beyond. It
now has 4,000 children in its programs at any given time. HTS's long-term
strategy is for local governments in China to operate the life-changing
programs themselves. Half the Sky is headquartered in Beijing, China.

KIVA - After seeing first-hand in East Africa how a small loan could change
the life of an entrepreneur in the developing world, Matt Flannery co-founded
Kiva.org in 2005 with his wife Jessica, to enable individuals to loan as
little as $25 to emerging businesses. Premal Shah joined Kiva as its President
to help scale the idea. Kiva enables a world where people separated by long
distances can connect through lending for the purpose of alleviating poverty,
while also promoting strong, persistent interpersonal connections that improve
cross-cultural understanding. Kiva's unique model provides debt to mid- and
small-sized Microfinance Institutions, offering the chance to extend coverage
to new populations outside the reach of larger institutions. In its first
three years, over 148,000 internet lenders made $22 million in loans to 33,000
entrepreneurs in 40 developing countries. Kiva aims to scale to one million
internet lenders and over $100 million in loans by 2010. Kiva is headquartered
in San Francisco, CA.

mothers2mothers - Long-time friends Mitch Besser, a physician and medical
researcher, and Gene Falk, a media executive and AIDS activist, established
mothers2mothers after seeing the absence of care for pregnant women in South
Africa newly diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. They discovered that 30 to 40 percent of
these women gave birth to HIV-positive babies, even though mother to child
transmission treatments have virtually eliminated pediatric AIDS in the
developed world. M2m is a grass-roots program designed for under-resourced
health care systems that trains and employs new mothers with HIV to provide
education and support to their peers, empowering them to access lifesaving
treatment for their babies and themselves. Currently operating in 160
locations in four countries, mothers2mothers aims to support over 3.6 million
women and children in more than 11 nations by 2011. Mothers2mothers is
headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa.

Partners in Health - When Paul Farmer founded Partners in Health in 1987, he
wanted to prove that cost-effective, high-quality health care could be
delivered in hopeless contexts. Focused on health care as a fundamental human
right and believing in the power and potential of community-based healthcare
systems, Paul and his team developed a highly effective model, first in Haiti
with its "accompagnateur" model, that has gone on to change World Health
Organization (WHO) policy. The program has grown from 60,000 patient visits in
2001 to 1.7 million in 2006. Partners in Health now operates in seven
countries worldwide and expects to disseminate its model more broadly in the
coming years.

PeaceWorks Foundation - The son of a Mexican Jew and a Holocaust survivor,
Daniel Lubetzky began advocating and fostering entrepreneurial joint ventures
between Arabs and Israelis in 1989 to bring stability to the Middle East
through economic cooperation. He then founded the PeaceWorks Foundation in
2002 to encourage political moderates to build a new movement to unite for
peace in the Middle East. The foundation's OneVoice Movement reframes the
debate into one that positions the vast majority - composed of moderates from
both sides - against violent extremism. One Voice has trained 3,100
Palestinian and Israeli youth leaders and recruited more than 650,000
signatories to demand immediate uninterrupted negotiations towards the
conclusion of a peace agreement. The PeaceWorks Foundation is headquartered in
New York.

Population and Community Development Association (PDA) - As a young economist
working for the government in Thailand, Mechai Viravaidya saw a link between
rapid population growth and poverty. He launched the Population and Community
Development Association (PDA) in 1974 to distribute contraceptives and
introduce sex education in rural communities and schools. The population
growth rate dropped from 3.2 percent in 1974 to 0.5 percent in 2005. In the
early 1990s, when HIV/AIDS hit Thailand, Mechai harnessed the PDA network and
media and launched an aggressive public education campaign. Within 10 years
Thailand was able to reduce HIV infections by 90 percent. The organization has
enlisted private partners in over 450 Village Development Partnership programs
that enable the poor to generate income without having to migrate to cities.
By 2011, PDA plans to expand the Partnership program to at least 100 more
villages. PDA is headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand.

Visayan Forum Foundation - As a child in the Philippines, Cecilia
Flores-Oebanda helped her family survive by selling fish and scavenging
garbage. As freedom-fighters against the Marcos dictatorship, she and her
husband were imprisoned for four years and separated from their oldest son.
Their two other children were born in detention. After democracy prevailed,
Cecilia founded the Visayan Forum Foundation (VFF) in 1991 to eliminate human
trafficking through public-private partnerships that rescue, protect and
reintegrate victims. The organization has served 18,500 victims and potential
victims to date and has filed 66 legal cases on behalf of 166 complainants. By
2011, VFF plans to expand its multi-sectoral networks and expand its program
against human trafficking. The Visayan Forum Foundation is headquartered in
Manila, Philippines.

About the Skoll Foundation
The Skoll Foundation was created in 1999 by eBay's first president, Jeff
Skoll, to promote his vision of a more peaceful and prosperous world. Today
the Skoll Foundation advances systemic change to benefit communities around
the world by investing in, connecting and celebrating social entrepreneurs -
individuals dedicated to innovative, bottom-up solutions that transform
unequal and unjust social, environmental and economic systems.

The Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship is the foundation's flagship
program. There are currently 50 organizations represented by 59 remarkable
social entrepreneurs in the program, working individually and together across
regions, countries and continents to evolve the field of social
entrepreneurship into a global movement for social change. The Skoll
Foundation connects social entrepreneurs and other partners in the field via
an online community at www.socialedge.org, and through the annual Skoll
World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. The foundation also celebrates social
entrepreneurs by telling their stories through partnerships with the PBS
Foundation and the Sundance Institute, with the goal of promoting large-scale
public awareness of social entrepreneurship.

For more information, visit www.skollfoundation.org.

SOURCE Skoll Foundation

Bruce Lowry of the Skoll Foundation, +1-650-331-1020,
blowry@skollfoundation.org; or Julie Jacobs, +1-212-579-9071,
jacobspr@nyc.rr.com, for the Skoll Foundation