he British business school fosters this social entrepreneurship with its so called Skoll Scholarship and hopes to build a strong community amongst entrepreneurs who strive to make a difference.
The Skoll Scholarship provides financial support for up to five students a year to join the Oxford MBA and pursue entrepreneurial solutions for urgent social and environmental challenges. These students form a growing community of individuals who are increasingly finding ways to work together and create new alliances.
The 52 scholars, who have joined Saïd Business School since the programme was introduced in 2005, have effectively collaborated in a multitude of areas, one example being energy ventures that deliver energy to people living in poverty in Africa.
Skoll Scholar Jesse Moore (2006) for example is the co-founder of M-KOPA Solar, a Nairobi based company providing solar power in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, growing at over 500 new customers per day. To help grow the business, he brought on David Damberger (Skoll Scholar 2011), and recently Nikhil Nair (Skoll Scholar 2014) who completed a pre-MBA internship with the organisation.
Another example are Xavier Helgesen (Skoll Scholar 2010) and Erica Mackey (Skoll Fellow 2010) who co-founded Off.Grid:Electric which provides people in rural Tanzania access to solar power at an affordable price. They have been joined by Graham Smith (Skoll Fellow 2010), and more recently by Austin Harris and Mark Hlady (Skoll Scholars 2013) to expand the idea into new countries.