Uganda success with social innovation. Etienne Salborn
Interview with Etienne Salborn, Founder Social Innovation Academy (SINA), Uganda
What is SINA and why is SINA?
The Social Innovation Academy (SINA) tackles failing education and resulting unemployment in Africa through creating self-organized and freesponsible communities. Youth aged 18 to 30 from disadvantaged backgrounds unleash their potential in a cost-effective and self-governed community approach. It provides a pathway, tools and the mindset to shape a vision for the future and to create new solutions in form of social enterprises benefiting society and the environment. The people’s own potentials to pursue purpose in the world are elicited, and community assets are used to build on strengths rather than deficiencies.
SINA lets young adults learn soft and professional skills by fully self-managing their communities, while unlearning limiting believes, getting rid of the fear of failing, expanding one's comfort zone, discovering oneself, and setting goals and action plans. The community is driving their own education and becomes an active driver for the generation of opportunities, jobs, and economic prosperity. Since the solutions become social enterprises, they are independent of donations and often tackle challenges at their roots.
Members in the communities take up roles and responsibilities, which allows for learning leadership skills hand-on, while actually leading a part of SINA. An individual for example is in charge of water. If no water is available in a community of 70 to 100 people the role holder will need to solve the problem, deal with many angry individuals coming to her and she needs to create new solutions, potentially plan better for the next month, budget, monitor, evaluate, etc. These are similar skills needed when running a social enterprise.
Opposite from Europe or the Americas, you seem to build the Future starting from no or little resources. What is the main lesson you carry with you from this?
Yes, with the slogan of “Waste is only waste, if you waste it”, we have been building our SINA communities from a lot of waste materials. We have so far upcycled over one million plastic bottles, which are compacted with soil and used as bottle bricks for construction. We created roofs from old car tires, and also used up plastic water containers. A SINA member even invented a flooring solution made primarily from plastic bags and eggshells. Many recycling and upcycling social enterprises have emerged from SINA since.
There can be a lot of value in waste and with this awareness people produce less of it. However, most importantly we have successfully demonstrated that it is not necessarily money which is needed to start a business. What is needed are resources and many resources are around us for free if we think outside the box.
Uganda is 45 million people, one of the most corrupt and poor countries in the world. What can make an apparent ”bad” future, a “good” one?
Uganda has one of the fastest growing populations in the world and the population is expected to triple by 2050. Youth unemployment statistics are up to 61%. Most work in subsistence farming and only three percent of the Ugandans aged 15 to 24 are officially employed with a fixed monthly salary. Despite rapid economic growth of the country for decades, the employment rate in Uganda has not significantly increased and unemployment stands at the heart of hopelessness for many youth. There is a strong correlation with the likelihood of civil war and economic growth. Many of the neighbouring countries in the region, like the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan or Burundi, are facing violent conflicts over power and natural resources.
I believe the key factor for a prosperous future of Uganda is job creation and opportunity. Many things are currently not working well and could be improved, however, if the strengths within the challenges are identified and solutions build from them, I see a bright future. For example, having one of the youngest populations in the world, with 50% under the age of 15 is an incredible and unique opportunity within the next 15 to 20 years to positively transform the country if the youth are enabled to create their own solutions.
It appears that one of the roots of challenges in many African countries is corruption and power-based relations. Can SINA break that? If not, what can?
We are living an example of a different system, which most of our youth get inspired by and carry forward. Especially many of the refugees we work with have first-hand experience of the worst imaginable consequences of wars over power and money. After these experiences many long for a different way. Yet, the existing structures is what people know and have seen for generations.
The SINA model is based on self-management and self-reliance. Combined with processes, self-organization becomes a tool which goes beyond empowerment but makes everyone as powerful as possible and a leader and follower at the same time. It intrinsically motivates all members with full ownership.
We first developed our own structures and later adopted "Holacracy", a social technology for running, structuring and governing, an organization through self-organization with distributed authority. It replaces a top-down predict-and-control paradigm with a new way of dealing with complexity. It works similarly like nature deals with complexity through interlinked autonomous structures.
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 in smaller teams.
Share with us success stories from SINA participants. And some of your key takeaways from the refugee camps you work in.
We have seen that difficult backgrounds often become the driving force for the creation of social enterprises within SINA communities. Especially marginalized people often had challenging experiences, which can be transformed into a meaningful asset or skills to support others to not have to go through similar experiences. I believe for example that a school dropout and former street child is better in position to create a project for street children than a PhD from Europe with the best education could.
A specific example is Joan Nalubega, who is contributing towards eradicating malaria in Africa. More than two-thirds of malaria deaths are children below the age of five and Uganda is highly affected.
I met Joan Nalubega 14 years ago when I came for the first time to Uganda as a volunteer in an orphanage where Joan grew up from. She was missing school frequently due to malaria. I found her and other children sponsor families from Europe to be able to continue going to school. After high school graduation, Joan 2015 joined SINA and went through the SINA and unleashed her potentials. Deeply passionate about fighting Malaria, Joan started "Uganics".
A social enterprise producing organic mosquito repellent soap. It is sold in rural Uganda at the same price as ordinary soap through a social business model. Soap is an everyday product, even impoverished families in Africa use almost daily. It helps mothers with children prevent mosquito bites. Tourists in Uganda have high fears of malaria and like a natural way of preventing mosquitoes. The tourism sector has a higher purchasing power, and Uganics sells its products at a higher profit margin to mostly hotels, which allows subsidizing the sales in rural areas.
Another example is in the Nakivale Refugee Settlement. It is home to over 100,000 refugees from nine different African countries. Many refugees live in extreme poverty and struggle to meet their most basic needs. Opportunities to create a dignified and prosperous life are almost non-existent. Nakivale can seem like a hopeless place. The camp administration and UNHCR has been focusing on providing basic needs, such as food or primary healthcare, neglecting the psycho-social wellbeing of the refugees, whereby many underwent traumatic experiences in the past.
Starting with a mindset of using the strengths amidst all challenges within Nakivale, a group of refugees had joined SINA and found it so valuable to themselves, that they decided to replicate the model in the camp. The first replication of SINA is called "OPPORTUNIGEE" and since 2016 creates an enormous impact on revitalizing the refugee camp. Instead of passively waiting for the Ugandan government or the UNHCR to provide solutions, members of OPPORTUNIGEE started to create their own solutions. Many refugees also have a wide variety of skills, from engineers to doctors, teachers, or farmers. Most individuals have lost their previous academic papers and struggle to have professions accredited in Uganda. Nevertheless, the skills exist within the communities and can be tapped into.
OPPORTUNIGEE created an open-air amphitheatre where every week, thousands of people come together to showcase talents or hold events. A space for expressions means also a space to heal from trauma. It is also promoting a local art culture and offering meaningful entertainment. A community radio has been established as well, and a team of former filmmakers are creating edutainment short films around sensitive topics. The movies are then screened with a projector and generator in the different remote villages of Nakivale. Discussions around, e.g., substance abuse or sexual violence, happen afterward.
Since Nakivale is a relatively dry area but is having a lake, a team started using infertile land around the lake for agriculture through pumping water from the lake for irrigation. Twelve families in a cooperative are producing their own food and livelihoods. The construction of a basketball court, the installation of solar-powered streetlights, or the creation of a football academy are further completed solutions. All in all, within a three-year period, a drastic change can be felt in the camp and many new ideas are being prototyped daily. People have what it takes to build their own future if they are allowed and encouraged to do so.
It is January 2030. What makes you really excited about the world?
I am excited about the evolutionary power shift which took place, whereby many small self-organized communities around the world are creating their own solutions locally, while being connected globally. If we let people create their own solutions and distribute power into their own hands, the results are incredible.