Social Innovation

NEW YORK, September 21, 2010 – Exxon Mobil Corporation today announced a $1 million commitment at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) to invest in the expansion of high impact, sustainable technologies that advance women economically in the developing world.

The program is expected to directly benefit more than 13,500 people, with indirect benefits reaching more than 475,000 in the next two years.

The new commitment will help innovators in scaling up technologies that benefit women economically and were identified through ExxonMobil’s partnership with Ashoka’s Changemakers in the Women | Tools | Technology: Building Opportunities & Economic PowerChallenge, launched at last year’s CGI. The new financial support from ExxonMobil will help provide consulting support; facilitate the innovators’ connections with other social entrepreneurs, business and technical experts; and identify best practices.

“The programs identified through the 2009 commitment use technology to improve the lives of women in developing countries,” said Suzanne M. McCarron, general manager, ExxonMobil public and government affairs. “By further supporting these programs, we will be advancing technologies that are proven to create more economic opportunities for women and, as a result, strengthen their communities.”

A significant barrier to economic advancement is a lack of access to energy. An estimated 1.6 billion people in the world have no access to electricity and approximately 2.4 billion rely on biomass fuels like wood, charcoal, or dung for cooking and heating. This undermines the productivity, education, health and safety of these people - 70 percent of whom are women and girls.

ExxonMobil grants will be provided to select innovators who advance technologies to increase access to energy through innovative sources to address the energy gap. These technologies help women increase their productivity and effective participation in the economy. The grant recipients include Kopernik, Solar Electric Light Fund, Solar Sister, Productive Agricultural Linkages and Marketing Systems (P.A.L.M.S) and smallsolutions.

“My country will be a better place when more women have access to technologies,” said Leticia Brenyah, an ExxonMobil-supported innovator from Ghana who spoke at CGI as part of the meeting’s Empowering Girls and Women focus area. “When women thrive economically they improve their lives, families and country.”

As part of its support for the programs identified through the Women | Tools | Technology program, ExxonMobil will work with partners Ashoka’s Changemakers, the International Center for Research on Women and the Thunderbird Emerging Markets Laboratory (TEM Lab) to support the further development of a number of concepts involving the use of innovative technologies to enable women’s access to energy in a sustainable and scalable manner.

TEM Lab will deploy on the ground consulting teams to help diagnose business problems and opportunities with the goal of strengthening program effectiveness.

“We are excited to enter into this meaningful partnership which leverages business and technology expertise to enable innovators to improve their capacity,” said Angel Cabrera, president of Thunderbird School of Global Management.

Innovators will have the opportunity to engage with experts at CGI and utilize the Ashoka’s Changemakers Discovery Framework to better understand the challenges and opportunities in bringing their concepts to scale.

“The passion and new ideas represented by the solutions sourced through last year’s commitment and the subsequent Women | Tools | Technology: Building Opportunities & Economic PowerChallenge represent a powerful new force for advancing women’s economic opportunities globally,” said Bill Drayton, chairman and CEO of Ashoka. “I look forward to not only the deep and lasting impact these leaders will create, but also the future generations of changemakers they will inspire along the way.” 

As part of the 2009 CGI Commitment, ICRW’s research report,“Bridging the Technology Divide,” provided insights into how technology can help advance women economically.  ICRW will continue to provide monitoring and evaluation support for the commitment activities.

“A year later, it is great to see how innovators have turned good intentions into actions that effectively integrate women in various stages of the technology lifecycle to give them the tools they need to thrive,” said Sarah Degnan Kambou, president of ICRW.

• Women | Tools | Technology Challenge winners are Bicycling Empowerment Network Namibia (Namibia), Lua Nova Association (Brazil) and Solar Electric Light Fund (Benin)
   
• Challenge received 268 solutions from 67 countries to advance women’s economic opportunities through technology
   
• ExxonMobil and Ashoka’s Changemakers to support follow-up activities including collaboration workshops to connect innovators with potential partners

IRVING, Texas, JUNE 29, 2010 – Ashoka’s Changemakers, ExxonMobil and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) announced today the three winners of the Women | Tools | Technology: Building Opportunities & Economic Power Challenge. The winners were selected from 268 project entries from 67 different countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

The winning entries came from Bicycling Empowerment Network Namibia, Namibia, Lua Nova Association, Brazil and Solar Electric Light Fund, USA (working in Benin).

"It is inspiring to see such a wide range of innovative solutions catalyzing women’s economic advancement through technology around the world,” said Diana Wells, Ashoka’s Changemakers’ president. "We are thrilled to have received so many worthwhile ideas through this Challenge, and we are honored to be able to support the groundbreaking work being done by the winning innovators."

The three winners are changing women’s lives in a variety of ways. The Solar Electric Light Fund USA (working in Benin) has designed solar-powered drip irrigation systems that enable women farmers in Benin to grow crops during the African nation’s annual six-month dry season, boosting their family income and nutrition. Bicycling Empowerment Network Namibia is providing training and equipment for women to run community-based bicycle workshops in Namibia, allowing them to become adept at bicycle mechanics -traditionally a male-dominated field. The Lua Nova Association is providing underprivileged and abused women with the skills they need to help sustain themselves and their families by designing and building their own homes.

The public was invited to vote online for the three best solutions from a group of 10 finalists previously selected by an expert panel of judges for excelling in the areas of innovation, social impact and sustainability.

“The innovative concepts from the Challenge will make significant improvements in the lives of women in developing countries, allowing them to become key economic players in their communities and better provide for their families,” said Suzanne McCarron, president of the ExxonMobil Foundation. "We look forward to helping these innovators gain traction for their ideas so they can ultimately reach more people with their Challenge solutions.”

Each winner will be featured on Changemakers.com as one of the strongest ideas for catalyzing women’s advancement through technology. The winners will also be invited to participate in collaboration workshops hosted later this year by Ashoka’s Changemakers and ExxonMobil. The workshops will include discussions on how to broaden the reach of proven concepts, connect innovators with potential partners and funding opportunities and include site visits to promising projects.

Direction and focus for the Challenge was provided by a research study entitled, "Bridging the Gender Divide in Technology,” which was conducted by ICRW and funded by the ExxonMobil Foundation. The paper highlights what needs to be done to improve the way technologies are developed and deployed so they benefit women, enabling them to be more successful in their local economy, stronger leaders and greater contributors to their families.

“These innovations meet women where they live. They are practical, and they will be catalytic in addressing the demands women have in their home life, in their work life and in their community life,” said Anju Malhotra, vice president of research, impact and innovation at the International Center for Research on Women. “We’re excited to see how these creative ideas will trigger generations of change for women and economies. This is a teachable moment for the world.”
 

NEW DELHI - A groundbreaking law that would allow a third of India’s 545-seat lower house and 248-seat upper house to be reserved for women was passed March 9 in the upper house. In response to this historic vote, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) issued the following statement from Priya Nanda, group director of social and economic development, in ICRW’s New Delhi office:

“The Women’s Reservation Bill is a crucial first step in breaking down the barriers women face when it comes to political participation. It is an exciting moment for women in India to know that the long fight to gain access to positions of power may soon lead to eventual victory if the bill is signed into law,” Nanda said.

“The fact is that women’s empowerment requires breaking the mold. Quotas help bring about the necessary cycle of change and a shift in attitudes about what women can achieve. Our findings show that when innovations in social norms at the national level — such as gender quotas — are combined with support for greater political participation, they have a quicker, more powerful impact on transforming women’s lives. However, if there isn’t a deliberate effort to ensure that women are truly integrated into the political decision-making process, the law is danger of becoming nothing more than a symbolic gesture,” Nanda added.
###

Notes to editors:

1. Our research findings on the connection between innovation and women’s empowerment can be found in our “Innovation for Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality” paper. The paper attempts to answer the question: how and when do innovations create long-term, positive shifts in gender relations.