 Ladies and gentlemen, and everyone joining us on livestream, welcome to this press conference here at the World Economic Forum on Africa 2015 in Cape Town. We're announcing today a partnership between the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and the Motsepi Foundation. And joining me here, I'm pleased to introduce Hilda Schwab, Chair and Co-Founder of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, and Dr. Precious Maloy Motsepi, the Co-Founder and Vice-Chair of the Motsepi Foundation. Also with us on the podium is Catherine Milligan, who directs the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. And we'll be hearing from both Hilda and Precious about their foundations and what the partnership means. I'm going to start by asking Hilda just to outline a little bit about the work of the Schwab Foundation and what it does, and also what it does here in Africa and why this partnership is so important. Hilda. First of all, I would like to go back to 15 years ago when the Schwab Foundation was founded. The reason for that is that the World Economic Forum is a partner, is a podium for decision makers from business, government, civil society. And we thought that it would be important to integrate people who work on the ground, on the grassroots level, and went out to look for social entrepreneurs who have created viable, big organizations. This is the background. And of course, we are working together with partners. And Precious and I, we met last year in New York. And I was impressed about her commitment and about her entrepreneurial drive. And we started to explore a partnership. And we met again in Davos at the World Economic Forum when we finally outlined how this partnership could be built up. Now, we have a common vision to accelerate social entrepreneurship in Africa. The Schwab Foundation has been active in Africa since 2000. We had a couple of, at the very beginning, many big social entrepreneurs that we awarded with the prize, as you have just seen in the last half hour. And the Schwab Foundation has the largest network of late-stage social entrepreneurs in the world in the meantime. And more of 70 social entrepreneurs are based in Africa or have significant operations in Africa. And the Motsepi Foundation, on the other hand, you will hear from Precious certainly, has a long-standing commitment to entrepreneurship and economic empowerment in Africa. So now that the World Economic Forum has been recognized as an international organization for public-private cooperation, it is an ideal platform to bring talented social entrepreneurs who have created proven, cost-effective models together with decision-makers in government and in corporations who have the resources and the infrastructure to take those solutions to scale. Hilda, thank you very much. Precious, can I ask you just to tell the viewers and people in the room a little bit more about the foundation and what this partnership means from your perspective? Yes, thank you. So the Motsepi Foundation was founded in 1999 by my husband, Precious Motsepi, and I. We subsequently joined the Giving Pledge in 2000, which is a group of families that have pledged to give half of their family wealth to help the poor. Our foundation was started because we believe that we need to help the poor, the marginalized and unemployed to contribute towards the upliftment of their living conditions as well as their living standards. So we work in three main areas. Globally, we have contributed towards research in HIV as well as in cancer, trying to find a cure for HIV by 2020. We also contribute towards Africa as a continent. We have given to the countries that were affected by Ebola in the last year. We gave to three countries. We also donated to the African Union in the quest to fight Ebola in the region. In South Africa itself, we work with communities. We have pledged over the next three to four years 500 million rents towards programs that are sustainable and also towards programs that are in areas that we think are very important to help Africa to become economically savvy and sustainable. We contribute towards education, and in particular, we're looking at areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics because we believe that this is an area where we will be able to absorb a lot of the jobs that are necessary, jobs and skills for Africa in the coming years. We focus on jobs for youth as well as for women. We focus on cultural and sports and recreation areas, and we also support religious organizations as well as traditional leaders. The reason that we felt that the partnership with the Shab Foundation is important is because, as I have already said, that entrepreneurship is one of those areas that we believe on the continent will help to create the jobs that we need. The Shab Foundation has established the sector of social entrepreneurship over many years and has excelled in this sector. We believe that by participating, by partnering with them, we will be able to identify social entrepreneurs on the continent who need to be showcased, who need to share their knowledge as well as their expertise with other entrepreneurs that are coming up on the continent. We also believe that they serve as amazing role models for entrepreneurs on the continent. As part of our partnership, we will be also looking at research around the field of social entrepreneurship, particularly in assisting to scale small social entrepreneurs to another level. I'm very excited with what Hilda is introducing, what she calls systems entrepreneurship, because I believe that is one way that we can make sure that the social entrepreneurs create more impact. The other area of partnership will be around promoting and helping with scholarships for social entrepreneurs who will be studying at Harvard University in a program that is specifically and tailor made for social entrepreneurs. Fantastic. Hilda, can I just ask you just to give us a little bit more detail on that partnership? Yes, well, I announced our partnership. I'm delighted. This will be a three-year, one million Swiss francs partnership between our two foundations. And we will advance the social entrepreneurship agenda in Africa. Raise awareness, as Precious said. Engaging media. We will celebrate proven social innovators like we did just now. And we will continue a yearly selection and award process in South Africa and in other African countries. The grant will also be used to contribute to the global knowledge in the field. We will do case studies together with universities and research on best practices. We can also provide a scholarship to African social entrepreneurs. Social entrepreneurs who are based and who are working in Africa. We have a possibility to send the social entrepreneurs to a Harvard executive education module at the Harvard Kennedy School on social entrepreneurship as system change. And we are really concentrated, focused on system change because it is absolutely crucial that all the good work that the social entrepreneurs do in one country or in one region be elevated to the next level and are starting to spread and to become big. And this is with help of governments who understand what it is all about and especially without corporate partners at that time. I am very grateful for this partnership. Thank you. Precious. Both foundations really have built social entrepreneurship. Now it's an accepted term. It's a term a lot of people use to describe what they're doing. But actually when you both started your foundations it was a concept that was barely heard of. So what you're talking about in this partnership is really developing it with an African focus and helping highlight the key African players and do the kind of research in business schools and universities that's going to help provide this kind of backbone of knowledge for anyone wanting to go into the field. So it sounds very exciting. Yes, it is very exciting indeed. As I said, we believe that social entrepreneurs can really make a huge contribution towards poverty alleviation on the continent. Job creation towards finding solutions to very difficult challenges on the continent. We've just come from a plenary where the presidents were talking about Ebola and how we find and create systems that will help us to prevent future pandemics. And from what I've seen, the network of social entrepreneurs that in the network that the Shrock Foundation has started, we have incredible innovators. These are people who look at problems, analyze data, put together solutions that will be relevant for the context within which they work. Thanks to both of you and thanks to Catherine for joining me here. If you have any questions for either Precious Hilda or for Catherine, you just raise your hand and just let me know where you're from and your organization. We have a very brief window with them before their next engagements. So if you have a question, please pop your hand in the air and we can discuss a little bit more about the social entrepreneurship and what's said to be foundation. I have a question for both Hilda and Precious, which is from your perspective, what are some of the most exciting projects coming out of social entrepreneurship in Africa? You just mentioned the need for looking at Ebola. I just wonder, Precious, is there anything particularly from your experience that you think really is something that the media should be showcasing a little bit more or learning a little bit more about? There's quite a few projects. Our partnership is new and I think going forward, what we will bring to the party is being on the ground, really identifying those social innovators and bringing them to the light, you know, identifying people who do amazing things on the continent. I was just in meetings earlier with somebody who told me about also in the energy space, solar power, lights they use for very pro-communities and rural places where using these lamps they can light up the whole village and that creates an ecosystem around itself because not only are women able, not only do they feel safe within the community, they're also able to prepare food and meals for their families. Children are able to do homework later. There's a sports center where children can play, you know, late after school, so the issue of darkness is completely eliminated just using this one simple system that is, you know, solar powered. And I think there are many, many examples of social innovators who come with unbelievable solutions to local problems and using local context. Hilda, you've just been announcing some of the winners, but I mean is there anyone who, to your mind, is not getting some of that light shone on them from African social entrepreneurship? It's difficult to say because there are so many fantastic models in being in healthcare or in agriculture, for instance. There are social entrepreneurs who work on tools, little tools that are very easy to handle and very easy to repair and that bring a big, much more income for the farmers. Education is another very, very important thing, as we heard in the plenary session, of course, skills development. And there are many social entrepreneurs who work in that field. It's unlimited, almost. So we really have a variety of fantastic social entrepreneurs who do great, great jobs. Catherine, can I just bring you in on that? Yeah, just quickly to add, you know, there are a few here present today. COVID-19, Samir Heiji, Martin Fisher, Catherine Lucy, for members of the reporting press who might want to talk to a social entrepreneur and unpack what does this mean and what are they living day to day? I'd like to come back to something that Dr. Precious mentioned earlier about serving as role models and sharing their knowledge and expertise because that's something that we are really excited about, that the partnership is going to help us further. And it is very much around this concept of a system entrepreneurship and system change. And by that we mean, and I can take Kickstart, I can take the Vision Institute that COVID and Brian Holdren have advanced. You know, they reach 200,000, they reach a million, but the need is so much greater. They need to 60 million farming families who need access to irrigation tools. How do you bridge that gap? You cannot do it through direct organizational growth. It has to be through collaboration and partnership. So this question around how do you influence that broader system in which you work to have that level impact at a much faster pace than we've been able to do so far? And it's very exciting. I think it really is cutting edge. It's where the sector is going. And I'm just thrilled to see that, you know, we are leading that initiative and that effort among this community right here in Africa. Thanks. All of you, if we probably have time for a quick question at the back. Philanthropy forum. And you're both shown such extraordinary leadership in this regard. I'm wondering if there is a way that you will be sort of finding platforms for systematically connecting these innovators to other philanthropists and social investors who often complain about the lack of a pipeline when, in fact, there's some pretty remarkable people that you have identified. There are a couple of meetings between philanthropists. I think Katherine has even participated in some. Maybe you can say something about it. So this is really exciting. We have piloted a few workshops at World Economic Forum meetings. I would be very open to exploring other opportunities. I think that both philanthropists and impact investors are increasingly exciting and excited in these models. I think it's a question also of ensuring that it's not just about firm level impact, but particularly when you talk about this system change, that we are educating the donor community as well, and that we are helping them understand that there is sometimes a preference for direct programs, right, and that you can demonstrate the impact of it. But this system level work sometimes involves advocacy. It sometimes involves sort of business development with corporate partners. It's a little bit harder sometimes to bring funders around to understanding the value of it. And yet the payoff, the potential payoff, is so much bigger. That's an agenda that, you know, we're very excited to drive forward. And I'd love to pick that up with you. And both of our, all of our panelists have got packed agendas as I'm sure you have this meeting. So if we have time, we can probably squeeze one more question in. But otherwise, I'm going to call proceedings to a close and look forward to you taking up any questions with them outside the meeting in the next day and a half. Thank you for joining us. And I hope you'll be interested to find out more online about this partnership between the Schwab Foundation and the Motsobi Foundation. There's a press release available just outside. Thank you all for joining us and see you at the next session.