Skoll Foundation Announces Winners of the 2025 Skoll Award for Social Innovation

(BUSINESS WIRE) -- The Skoll Foundation is pleased to announce the five organizations that will receive the 2025 Skoll Award for Social Innovation. The prestigious $2 million award shines a light on the extraordinary leaders and organizations advancing transformational social change to create a more sustainable, peaceful, and prosperous world for all.

The 2025 class of social innovators includes social entrepreneurs, movement builders, system orchestrators, and global coalitions driving collective action across issues ranging from community health, climate, sustainable housing, and democratic rule of law to financial prosperity.

They will receive their award and be spotlighted at the 2025 Skoll Awards for Social Innovation Ceremony, taking place on Thursday, April 3, 4:30-6:00pm BST at the New Theatre in Oxford, UK, and virtually during the 22nd Skoll World Forum.

“We are living in a time of profound upheaval. When crisis strikes, social innovators run toward the problem to step in with solutions that address root causes,” said Don Gips, CEO of the Skoll Foundation. “These leaders show us that the world may be fractured, but repair and lasting progress are possible when we work together across issues, sectors, geographies, and ideologies.”

The systems-level work of these five organizations requires sustained funding and partnerships, which the Award and the Forum aim to catalyze. Each Awardee organization receives $2 million in unrestricted funding to scale their work and increase their impact.

“As global challenges multiply, the 2025 Skoll Awardees continue to meet the moment with determination, innovation, and optimism for our collective future,” said Marla Blow, president and COO of the Skoll Foundation. “Whether it’s resourcing community health workers worldwide to enable lifesaving care, safeguarding the democratic rule of law, generating wealth through employee ownership, making sustainable and healthy homes accessible to all, or structuring school systems to keep students healthy—these social innovators are transforming our world.”

The 2025 recipients of the Skoll Award for Social Innovation are:

Apis & Heritage Capital Partners (A&H) is restoring the American Dream by helping low- and middle-income employees become owners of their businesses when sellers are ready to retire, ensuring continuity for businesses and prosperity for workers and communities. A&H converts profitable businesses with diverse, hardworking teams into 100 percent employee-owned enterprises by providing loans for upfront financing and consulting support to help new employee owners succeed. This model rewards the employees who have contributed to these companies’ success, giving them a stake in the company’s future growth and creating more resilient enterprises. To date, A&H has transitioned businesses with a combined value of $65 million to employee ownership, benefiting hundreds of workers and their families. With a large population of U.S. business owners planning to sell or retire in the next decade, A&H’s innovative model offers a ripe opportunity to close the wealth gap and build prosperity for Americans.

Community Health Impact Coalition (CHIC) is a global movement of community health workers (CHWs) and health organizations making professional the norm in community health—ensuring CHWs are salaried, skilled, supervised, and supplied to deliver quality care. Indisputable evidence demonstrates that CHWs dramatically improve health outcomes and save lives worldwide. Yet millions of CHWs—70 percent of whom are women—remain outside the formal health system. Despite decades of global health investment, one billion people who need care will never see a health worker. CHIC’s work was fundamental to enacting landmark 2018 WHO guidelines that shaped CHW-supportive policies in 194 countries. As a result, 47 countries now recognize and accredit CHWs within their national health policy.

EarthEnable improves the health and living conditions of rural African families and reduces the housing industry’s carbon footprint by working with community-based entrepreneurs and local masons to develop and install more affordable, sustainable housing materials. Worldwide, 1.6 billion people live in homes with dirt floors, which can house parasites and spread disease. Concrete is commonly used for flooring, but expensive for many, difficult to transport, and carbon-intensive to produce. EarthEnable is catalyzing a green housing industry in Africa, helping position the continent to advance a sustainable building sector. There is a growing urgent need for affordable housing in Africa: 70 percent of the buildings that will exist on the continent by 2040 are yet to be built, including millions of homes. More than 200,000 people across Rwanda, Kenya, and Uganda have benefited from EarthEnable’s innovative approach to affordable and sustainable flooring, which has created or improved more than 1,000 jobs in eastern Africa. By 2027, EarthEnable aims to help fulfill housing needs for 700,000 people.

Healthy Learners trains teachers in Zambia as school health workers and links schools with the public healthcare system, increasing health service access for children over five years of age. Free pediatric care in Zambia is primarily aimed at children under five, leaving a gap for millions of children between the ages of five and 17. Healthy Learners has partnered with the government and trained school health workers to monitor student health, perform basic first aid, provide preventative care, and refer severe cases to a clinic. This reduces absenteeism and enables students to learn and thrive. Healthy Learners works with 600 schools and serves more than 980,000 children across eight of Zambia’s 10 provinces. With Africa projected to be home to an estimated 42 percent of global youth by 2030, now is a critical time to ensure children have access to health and education. By 2028, Healthy Learners aims to reach 2.5 million children, or 70 percent of the primary school population.

Pacto pela Democracia (Pact for Democracy) is coordinating the non-partisan pro-democracy movement in Brazil, facilitating a broad coalition to counter anti-democratic forces and build trust in democratic institutions. Pacto pela Democracia has galvanized a cross-ideological coalition of more than 200 civil society partners united to preserve stability and democratic rule of law in Brazil. The coalition cultivates relationships with business leaders, academics, and journalists to build a cohesive, coordinated, and aligned pro-democracy ecosystem. Their work today has proved vital as rising autocratic threats, disinformation campaigns, and election-related violence are testing the resilience of democratic institutions. These efforts enabled the coalition to successfully protect the process and results of the 2022 Brazilian election, coordinating and deploying more than 80 collaborative actions to monitor and respond to election-related threats.

The Skoll Foundation catalyzes transformational social change by investing in, connecting, and championing social entrepreneurs and innovators who together advance bold and equitable solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.

Click here to register to attend the Skoll World Forum online, and email press@skoll.org if you are interested in receiving a press pass to attend the Forum in person, April 1-4 in Oxford, UK.

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