Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship

About the award

In 2009 BioRegional's co-founders, Sue Riddlestone and Pooran Desai, were awarded a prestigious Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.

Why did they win an award?
Against a backdrop of economic doom and gloom, and with the Copenhagen summit highlighting the need to address climate change, social entrepreneurs Sue and Pooran have been recognised for their inspirational work to help tackle both of these challenges.

The awards, which recognise the most innovative and sustainable approaches to resolving the world’s most urgent social issues, are made by the charitable foundation established by eBay's first president, Jeff Skoll.

The Skoll Foundation recognised the benefits of BioRegional’s approach – based on developing real-life examples of sustainable communities, products and production systems. BioRegional’s solutions, which include incubating eight companies and joint ventures to demonstrate the benefits of bioregionalism in a market economy, have the potential to be seen as the basis for a larger scale green new deal. BioRegional was recently described by UN Environment Programme Executive Director Achim Steiner as “reinventing our economy”.

The award includes a $765,000 grant to BioRegional which will allow significant expansion of its global ‘One Planet’ sustainability programme – working with government and business to put in place practical solutions that demonstrate how we can live within our fair share of the Earth’s resources.

BioRegional joins a prestigious global network of Skoll entrepreneurs, who are working around the world on issues including tolerance and human rights, health, economic and social equity, peace and security, institutional responsibility, and environmental sustainability.