SINA (Social Innovation Academy)

As disadvantaged and refugee youth, we transcend our challenging experiences through SINA’s freesponsible and self-organized five-step empowerment process. We develop personal and professional skills and uncover our life purposes, refusing to let our pasts define our futures. With the power of education in our hands, we acquire skills and experiences necessary to become social entrepreneurs.
SINA scholars become changemakers and shift from being passive recipients of aid to active drivers of their own future, one person and one community at a time within self-organized and freesponsible “SINAs.”
Unemployment stands at the heart of hopelessness among youth in Africa. With the youth population expected to double by 2050, young people lack opportunities and prospects, which fuels instability and perpetuates poverty. In response, SINA transforms these challenges into pathways for empowerment and entrepreneurship.
“I’m living my dream instead of dreaming my life!” Joseph Bwinika, SINA alumni from the Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda
SINA enables disadvantaged and refugee communities to transform challenges into opportunities and become the change they wish to see across 23 African communities and refugee camps. Each SINA learning environment unites 50 to 100 youths to locally own and locally self-organize through the freesponsible SINA Framework and transform their challenges into opportunities. Each SINA is for the community, by the community. All SINAs collaborate with each other to achieve a greater outcome than what could be achieved alone.
By taking on responsibilities and roles to run SINA, the youth create their own curriculum and gain the skills and experience necessary to develop social enterprises. Unlike in formal educational institutions, we do not graduate with a certificate and drown in unemployment. Graduation happens when a social enterprise is financially self-sustainable and jobs have been created.