Social entrepreneurs: awards for tackling big issues

FORMER PRESIDENT Mary Robinson said yesterday the effects of climate change were happening now and were having a “devastating” effect on the developing world.

Mrs Robinson said there was a belief in the developed world that climate change would affect us only in 20 to 30 years’ time, but the reality was already under way in parts of Africa and south Asia.

"For so many communities already it is devastating, it is completely undermining them," she told an audience of social entrepreneurs at the Ashoka Social Entrepreneurship Forum and Awards 2010, partially sponsored by The Irish Times.

Ashoka is the first world’s largest association of social entrepreneurs, which unites companies such as McKinsey and Deloitte with social innovators and provides seed capital for projects which benefit society in general.

Mrs Robinson recalled a recent meeting organised by Oxfam in Cape Town where five farmers from different parts of Africa told of how drought and unpredictable weather were affecting their ability to farm.

Mrs Robinson said the relative failure of the Copenhagen summit had led to scepticism on the effects of climate change in the US, Europe and in the Irish media. “We only have to have snow today for people to say that this climate change is a myth. Unfortunately, it is not.”

She quoted chemistry Nobel Prize winner Mario Molina, now an adviser to the Mexican government on climate change, who said science proceeded on the basis of probability.

On the core issue of climate change, he believed there was a 90 per cent chance that it was caused by human behaviour.

Mrs Robinson, who is moving back to Ireland after 13 years away, first as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and later with advocacy group Realising Rights, said she feared for the future of her four grandchildren, who will be in their 40s in 2050. “I don’t know they will have a safe world if we don’t make the right decisions in the near future.”

Irish-based social entrepreneur Dr Steve Collins became the first Ashoka senior fellow for his work in tackling malnutrition in the developing world. His Irish-registered charity Valid Nutrition is the only company in the world manufacturing ready-to-use foods, which it does in Malawi.

Mary Nally, founder of the Third Age Foundation (TAF), was awarded an Ashoka – Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Fellowship. TAF provides two services for older people, a senior help line, and Fáilte Isteach, an English language programme for immigrants.