Our Model

Freesponsibility

We believe in the balance of freedom and responsibility, a concept we call freesponsibility. Scholars have the autonomy to make decisions but are accountable for the outcomes. The more responsibility a scholar in SINA takes, the more freedom he or she gains and scholar build their own curricula based on the roles and responsibilities taken over.

Self-organized, Progressive and “Teal”

We embrace the Teal organizational model, where self-management replaces traditional hierarchies. Scholars take on roles within the community and lead their own projects, creating a dynamic and collaborative learning environment. This progressive approach encourages personal empowerment, innovation, and adaptability, allowing individuals to grow as leaders while pursuing their unique paths.

Regeneration

Our model is regenerative. It nurtures continual personal and community growth and improvements. Rather than being a static or one-time intervention, SINA communities evolve and adapt over time, revitalizing their surroundings and enabling a regenerative cycle of social impact.

A Community Ecosystem

SINA functions as a community ecosystem, where everything is connected and interacts with each other in an interdependent way, achieving a greater outcome than what could be achieved individually. This ecosystem fosters collaborative learning and collective growth, where the success of one is deeply tied to the success of the whole.

Scaling like Nature through Replication

Just as ecosystems expand organically, SINA’s model scales by replicating self-organized communities. Each SINA community operates independently but shares the same core principles, allowing for natural, sustainable growth. This method ensures that new communities can adapt to local needs while remaining aligned with the SINA framework, creating a regenerative cycle of impact that spreads across regions, much like nature’s ecosystems.

From Marginalization to Empowerment: Transforming Challenges into Social Enterprises

SINA scholars are between 16 and 27 years old and are refugees, orphans, street children, former child soldiers, former inmates, former prostitutes, or young people from other marginalized and poor backgrounds. They have dropped out of school and society has labeled them as useless. Many have started to believe this label. SINA has proven that they can flourish if given responsibilities and a space to unfold. Scholars transform their own personal tragedies into a social enterprise, disrupting the root causes of social problems. The youth does not leave with a certificate, but instead with their own employment.

SINA transforms marginalized youth into social entrepreneurs through a cost-effective and freesponsible community approach. We unleash and nurture the intrinsic drive of our “scholars.” Tailor-made empowerment stages and self-management processes support scholars to define their own path and put the power of education in their own hands. Enabled as changemakers, scholars often turn challenges into opportunities to make a sustainable living out of what they are passionate about.

Details can be accessed in our playbook.

Most scholars do not have prior work experience or degrees but come from vulnerable backgrounds. This is why the initial “Confusion Stage” constitutes an “un-learning” training to overcome limiting believes, unleash potentials and set goals. After, competencies are gained freesponsibly: everyone creates their own curriculum through the roles taken over. The skills and experiences relevant for designing their future lives are acquired, while everyone leads a part of the SINA Community.  An individual, for example, is in charge of water in a SINA Community. If no water is available, the role holder will need to solve the problem, create new solutions, potentially plan better for the next month, budget, monitor, evaluate and further her skills. She gains the practical experiences needed to run her own social enterprise in the future and grows on a personal and professional level. Life-Coaching breaks down the individually set goals into actionable steps. Regular training sessions transmit further supportive tools from established to new scholars.

While taking up roles, new ideas and teams form naturally. The difficult backgrounds of SINA members often become the driving force for the creation of social enterprises that tackle its root causes. SINA provides mentoring of the ideation process through Design Thinking, the lean startup approach and customer discovery. The teams take the idea through various iteration cycles in bootcamps until a social business model is validated and traction gained. Enterprises are then incorporated and enter the SINA Acceleration Phase, which supports their growth, the creation of further jobs and the scaling of the social and environmental impact.

The quality lies in the hands-on practical application of skills through self-management. Our five-step empowerment process nurtures personal and professional growth in the following way:

Awards received due to our organizational design and impact:

Case Studies: