2018 Skoll World Forum Curation: Reflecting the Power of Proximity

Proximity is powerful. It’s a value that I’ve shaped my career around: bringing people from disparate places together, in person, to connect. While we live so much of our lives online, there is no substitute for the powerful bonds that can be made when meeting someone in person. It creates understanding, builds empathy, and ultimately drives collective action. The Forum is a magical convergence of people, purpose, and place where connections are sparked.

But proximity is about more than simply bringing people together. In order to create the most just and sustainable solutions, social impact leaders must get close to the communities affected by the challenges they seek to address. In proximity, we learn with humility and develop solutions that respect–and often leverage–existing values and customs. In addition to welcoming speakers and delegates who choose to “get proximate” in their work, we also sought out the leaders who have emerged from their own communities as powerful forces for change.

As Curator of the Forum, I wanted to dig deeper and seize the opportunity to hear from more voices from across the globe. I looked for those with lived experience who could share how their own proximity helped shape their vision for change. That means if you’re coming from the U.S. or U.K.,  you may see fewer familiar names in our speaker roster this year. You can’t import proximity, but we are certain that hearing directly from these leaders in Oxford will help us as a Forum community better listen, embrace nuance, develop a deeper understanding of the complex challenges communities face–and ultimately work together to develop more innovative, just, and sustainable solutions as a result.

While the Forum will maintain its usual breadth in topics, we designed the program to dive deep into the concept of proximity from a number of angles. To name a few:

• A session examining the impact of community health workers armed with technological tools will feature speakers from–and working in–several countries across the African continent.
• A session on agricultural innovations will feature leaders who have put smallholder farmers at the center of their models.
• We’ll also explore what proximity means in philanthropy. Can funders be the best stewards of capital when they often live and operate oceans away from the interventions they fund?  Do invisible barriers like implicit bias against women and people of color keep the best solutions from ever seeing the light of day?
• We’ll also examine the role technology plays in proximity. When data systems are exported from Silicon Valley, who benefits from these tools, and who gets left out of the equation?  Do emerging technologies flip the existing development paradigm on its head?
• While climate change discussions often focus on the international policy agreements necessary to divert disaster, research has shown that providing women in developing countries access to family planning and education could have an even bigger effect. At this year’s Forum, we’ll hear from Christiana Figueres, the architect of the Paris Climate Accords, indigenous leader Tara Houska, and a group of leaders who are working with women in Africa and Latin America to adapt to, mitigate, and reverse climate damage.

When viewing the overall program through a proximity lens, it naturally evolved in a more diverse, inclusive way. In 2018, more than 60 percent of our speakers are women, and more than 60 percent of our speakers are people of color, hailing from nearly 30 countries.

I look forward to meeting each of our speakers this year, whether from London or Lagos. I’m confident that collectively, they’ll create a Forum experience that is rich, welcoming, challenging, and will ultimately move us all to be more proximate leaders, wherever we work.