At SINA we believe that with dedication and passion any young person can achieve their dreams and create a social enterprise transforming their own past into a strength. No matter what their background is and what hardships they went through in life! In the last five weeks the international community has recognized SINA’s work and our scholars: Ruth lost her family due to AIDS, joined SINA in February 2015. Now, she is positively impacting African youth through emergency sex education via mobile. Andrew’s family lived in poverty due to his single mother being blind. He joined SINA in late 2014. He is now training blind women to detect breast cancer using their superior sense of touch and giving them employment.
This is the timeline of the last five weeks in SINA:
28th October 2016: the Social Innovation Academy (SINA) won the Good100 Award at the GoodFestival in Lausanne, Switzerland and is among the top projects promoting sustainable innovation in the world.
November 1st 2016: SINA welcomes its 6th generation of scholars. Most of them are from marginalized backgrounds. Many had been orphans, some are refugees and others have gone through very difficult times in their young lives. SINA will unleash their potentials, support them to develop themselves and nurture ideas into social enterprises, tackling root causes of social and environmental problems.
14th November 2016: SINA startup Ask Without Shame was the only Ugandan representative in the Africa-wide appsafrica Innovation Awards in Cape Town, South Africa and only one of two nominees being nominated in two categories: “Women in Tech” and “Social Impact”. Ask Without Shame won the Social Impact Award because of its emergency sex education mobile platform having helped over 25,000 users when they faced challenges. Google took notice of Ask Without Shame and invited the team for the Google Launchpad in Nairobi.
30th November 2016: Ask Without Shame was chosen to be a Queen’s Young Leader and will be given the Queen’s Young Leaders Award in early 2017 by Her Majesty The Queen Elizabeth II. in person in the Buckingham Palace in London.
1st December 2016: SINA scholar and Founder of the Gifted Hands Network, Mukose Andrew, pitched in front of the Presidential Jury in Morocco at the Finals of the African Entrepreneurship Award. 37 finalists from 22 countries came together in Marrakesh. Everyone was above 40 years apart from Andrew who was the youngest with 24 years of age. He impressed the jury and the investors, who offered him 100,000 USD investment.