If you are coming to the Skoll Forum, here are two sessions I would love to see you at.  If you can't make it this year, I promise to blog about the sessions to you can learn from them and discuss them online, too!

Acumen Fund Fellows Present:  Innovations Sparked by Voices of the Poor
When:  Wed, March 28^th from 8am - 9:30am 
Location:  Rhodes Lecture Hall, Said Business School, Oxford University

I will be on a panel with my colleagues from Acumen Fund to discuss our work in health, housing and water social enterprises in India, Kenya, Pakistan, Tanzania, and the U.S. We hope to share what we are learning about how to effectively deliver products and services to the poor. We will discuss challenges Acumen investees face related to distribution, pricing, and scaling.

Introductions by Brian Telstad, Chief Investment Officer, Acumen Fund
Moderated by David Lehr, Fellow, Drishtee, India
Panelists:
Ayeleen Ajanee, Kashf Foundation, Pakistan
Eric Berkowitz, Broadreach, U.S. and China
Adrien Couton, IDEI, India
Keely Stevenson, A to Z, Tanzania
Nadaa Taiyab, Medicine Shoppe, India
Jocelyn Wyatt, Advanced Bio-Extracts, Kenya

If you are registered for the conference, please join us!

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Interactive Workshop: Working at the Grassroots Level: Shared Challenges and Lessons Learned
When: Wed, March 28 from 10am-noon
Location:   Edmond Safra Lecture Theater, Said Business School, Oxford University

Before joining the Acumen Fund, I was the Interim Director of an amazing start-up organization called Social-Impact (www.social-impact .org).  Social-Impact’s goal is to accelerate growth and increase impact of social entrepreneurs’ programmes through mentoring, training, technical assistance, networking opportunities and access to finance.

Likely to be one of the best sessions on the programme (except for my own, of course) will be presented by two of the co-founders of Social-Impact, Peter Wheeler and Eric Archambeau.  They believe that organisations and infrastructure are for the most part undersized to tackle the scope of problems social entrepreneurs need to address. In this interactive workshop, delegates will be encouraged to share the challenges they face and the lessons they have learned to address obstacles and to create effective strategies for organisational growth and impact.