SINA (Social Innovation Academy)

Together we will elevate the future of an entire generation on the African continent, one community at a time. Replication of the SINA Model is already happening in the countries and areas where conflicts displace thousands of people. SINA contributes to peace and the creation of opportunities, and the Elevate Prize will leverage our mission even faster.

Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds can actively create solutions to build a dignified future for themselves. This is happening through self-organization and in a cost-effective way through SINA. With less than 1.000 USD per month, a SINA Community puts the power of education in the learner's hands. If we let people create their own solutions and support them, remarkable things will happen. Over the past 14 years, I have witnessed SINA scholars go as far as being recognized by the Queen of England, Obama, or Ban Ki-moon as changemakers and social entrepreneurs.

With the African population expected to have doubled by 2050, radical solutions are needed on all levels, which can only come from African changemakers to be successful. Funding will allow further marginalized youth to create new SINAs on the African continent to create their own resilient solutions.

In 2006 at the age of 19, I started a sponsorship program for Ugandan orphans while volunteering for one year in the "Kankobe Children's Home." I later founded an NGO (Jangu e.V.) to manage the yearly growing number of sponsorships. When the first generation of youth could not find jobs after graduation in 2013, we brainstormed solutions and established a space where the youth would create their own jobs. This became the first SINA Community in rural Mpigi near Uganda’s capital Kampala. In collaboration and trial and error, we proved that marginalized youth can solve local challenges and employ themselves through social entrepreneurship.

A group of refugees joined us in 2016 and nine months later wanted to bring the model, which had transformed their own lives, to the Nakivale refugee camp where they had lived for five years. We realized that our freeesponsible and self-organized approach can be replicated by the youth themselves and started to engage other youth from refugee communities and failed states in East Africa. Today, we are having eight SINAs and are creating a global movement for collective systemic change and a different way to live, learn and work together—purpose first.

Sub-Saharan Africa hosts a large percentage of the world's refugees and displaced. Over 18 million people are of concern to the UNHCR, and the majority are children or youth who lack opportunity and prospects. The situation fuels instability in a vicious circle perpetuating poverty. Many refugees are passive recipients of assistance and are often seen as a burden to struggling local economies with high youth unemployment. 

SINA elicits the untapped potentials of marginalized youth and refugees to create solutions and pursue purpose in the world through social entrepreneurship. Youth learn how to be in charge of themselves and their future within self-organized and freesponsible communities ("SINAs.") By taking on responsibilities and roles, youth gain relevant skills and create social enterprises. The existing strengths of the local communities are leveraged, and challenges become opportunities.

The creation of new SINAs is enabled through replication of the model into new communities by the beneficiaries. Also, emerging social enterprises from all SINAs are accelerated to attain their fullest social and environmental impact. Lastly, SINA fosters collaborative learning in a "community of communities" to collectively unfold the evolutionary purpose of the SINA model to enable Africa's next generation to create a sustainable future.

The SINA model is unique through self-organization and freesponsibility (see here). SINA puts the power of education into the learner's hands. SINA members experience a profound transformation through three phases:

(1) "Confusion Stage" —an onboarding and "un-learning" training to overcome limiting beliefs, set goals, and discover individual purpose

(2) "Competencies Stage" —SINA members take responsibility for themselves; handle community tasks such as accounting, logistics, outreach, and everything needed to run a SINA; and work with each other through life-coaching, mentorship, and self-organization. Everyone takes up dynamic roles to continuously grow in their abilities. Within this dynamic system of purpose-driven work, decision-making goes beyond hierarchies or consensus, and power is distributed. Role holders do not ask for permission but hold each other accountable. Everyone is a leader and a follower at the same time, depending on the circumstance. Learning is acquired by meeting daily needs, motivated intrinsically, and applied directly.

(3) "Enterprise Stage" —follows the 'lean startup' model to birth new social enterprises, solving local and global challenges.

We are creating a global movement of 1,000 SINAs and 100,000 social enterprises by 2035, whereby marginalized communities actualize their potential and create solutions for a world that works for everyone. SINA is not a property to be managed but rather a living system with a collective purpose unfolding. This is why we scale our impact and not our organization, through our beneficiaries. 

A deep transformation unleashes the potentials within our youth. Coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, they are often like caterpillars: not knowing that one day they can fly. In the SINA environment, they become butterflies pollinating their community and possess the power to change the entire cosmos with the flutter of their wings.

We created hundreds of jobs and innovative solutions are improving the lives of many. Social enterprises which emerged from SINA range from organic mosquito repellant soap (its founder Joan Nalubega has been supported by me since 2006, as she went through the sponsorship program and after joined SINA) to upcycling construction or a platform for victims of sexual abuse. Solutions have also been featured on CNN, BBC, DW, Aljazeera, inspiring millions to take purpose-aligned action and create change in their communities.