The ZeroDX Awards recognize organizations working to reduce the distance between the people doing the work and the people they serve. In practice, this means that the people closest to a problem have the authority to respond. They do not need to push every decision through a long hierarchy or wait for instructions from the top. They can act, learn and adjust while remaining accountable for the result. It can sound rather technical. For us, it means something simple: the people who understand or live a problem should should have the freedom to act, take responsibility and create their own solutions. At SINA, we call this “Freesponsibility“.

This does not mean having no structure. It means building a different kind of structure with clear roles, access to information, shared purpose and the freedom to make decisions where the relevant knowledge sits.

The ten nominated enterprises work on very different challenges: from Malaria and maternal healthcare to safe water, regenerative agriculture, clean cooking and circular fashion. What connects them is that their solutions emerged close to the problems themselves and are being shaped by teams with real responsibility. Here they are, what they do and an example of Zero Distance from each:

• Babykit makes affordable infant warmers in the Bidibidi Refugee Settlement in Uganda; its production team can begin large orders without senior approval.
• EverGrow Organics supplies organic farm inputs; two Gulu agents overturned a leadership decision to close their hub, which is now profitable.
• FarmPlus Uganda converts waste into animal feed and fertilizer; a production lead turned insect-farming residue into a new fertilizer product.
• Gejja Women Foundation tackles menstrual poverty; its team rejected a lucrative disposable-pad order that conflicted with its environmental mission.
• Generous Designs Africa turns refugee-settlement waste into products; community members now help shape and run its recycling system.
• Green at Mind produces clean cookstoves in the Kakuma Refigee Settlement in Kenya; its current stove was developed by the field team and adopted without top-down approval.
• Infants’ Health Foundation brings healthcare to remote villages; local volunteers decide which communities and locations are hardest to reach.
• Kimuli Collections turns waste into fashion and jobs for people with disabilities; deaf tailors now lead product development.
• Tusafishe installs affordable water systems; a new plumber and local teacher redesigned the system now used across its projects.
• Uganics Repellents makes affordable malaria-prevention products; its production team retained responsibility after a costly mistake and developed a better solution.

Their work makes “Zero Distance” tangible. These are not identical organizational models, nor are any of them finished. Self-organization is an ongoing practice. It requires teams to keep learning how to distribute authority without losing accountability, and how to stay close to the communities and customers for whom they exist.

SINA was never designed to give young people business ideas or prepare them to follow somebody else’s plan. SINA Communities create the conditions for people to take on real roles, make consequential decisions and turn challenges they have experienced into social enterprises of their own.

The nominations suggest that the way of working developed within SINA Communities is travelling into new contexts. People are taking freedom, responsibility and closeness to users with them and adapting these principles to their own enterprises. That is the kind of scale we believe in: not one organization becoming ever larger, but impact spreading through people, enterprises and communities.

Congratulations to every nominated team. We are proud to be part of this movement with you!

We thank Corporate Rebels for researching the enterprises and submitting the nominations, and the Haier Model Institute, Business Ecosystem Alliance and Haier for recognizing organizations that are rethinking how work can be organized. The winners will be announced on 21st September 2026 in Qingdao, China and we have a good feeling SINA can wit it for the 3rd time in a row and there will also be SINA social enterprises among the winners.

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She is 24 years old, a SINA alumna, and co-founder of FarmPlus. In the language many institutions still use to sort people, she is a high school dropout. Her formal education ended early. But the learning did not stop there. At SINA, she overcame the label and limiting believes and learned by building. At SINA, Jesca did not learn entrepreneurship as a chapter in a course. She learned it while building FarmPlus. Finding out what farmers actually needed. Testing whether her livestock feed idea could work. Explaining it to people who had no reason to believe her yet. Adjusting when something was unclear, too expensive, or not useful enough. That kind of learning gives someone a different authority in the room.

This is why Kampala International University (KIU) invited her. In August 2026, Jesca and Charles Busuulwa, another SINA alumnus and social enterprise co-founder of She Deserves, facilitated core sessions at the three-day Training of Trainers with KIU lecturers. The training asked a question that many universities are now facing with increasing urgency: How do we move from teaching entrepreneurship to helping students actually become entrepreneurs?

For SINA, this is our daily work. We work with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who have often been pushed out of formal education, employment, and the places where decisions are made. Some have been told directly or indirectly that they are behind, unqualified, difficult, or a burden. In many aid systems, they are expected to receive. In many education systems, they are expected to first prove themselves on paper before they are trusted with responsibility.

SINA works from another starting point. We give responsibility early. Scholars run their SINA Communities. They manage food, money, trainings, logistics, marketing, conflicts, and the small pieces of daily life that become very real when a community depends on them. A missed budget line can mean there is not enough for lunch for everyone. This is not clean learning and SINA scholars set their own curriculum based on the roles they choose which help them get to where they want to be in the future and gain the skills and experiences needed to build a social enterprise later.

Often scholars arrive with fear, habits of survival, and wounds that do not disappear because a program begins. Some ideas fail after weeks of effort. Some teams form and fall apart. And still, this is where leadership starts. In SINA, young people do not wait until someone declares them ready. They take roles, make decisions, face consequences, and learn how to repair when things go wrong. Over time, the same person who once sat quietly in a session may facilitate the next cohort. The one who was afraid to speak may become the person holding a team through a difficult decision. The scholar becomes a trainer. The trainer becomes a founder. The founder becomes someone others can learn from.

Jesca brought that reality into KIU. During the training, she shared the journey of FarmPlus and the practical steps of moving from a problem to a tested solution. One participant reflected that her presentation on livestock feed helped him see how his own ideas could become possible. He had been carrying them in his mind, but did not know how to bring them out. After seeing the early stages, the confusion, and the practical steps, the distance between idea and action became smaller. This is what practice can do inside education.

Professor Regina, Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research, Innovation, Consultancy and Extension at Kampala International University, connected the training to Uganda’s wider shift away from rote learning and towards competency-based education. Her reflection was clear: people can learn, but they also need to practice. Entrepreneurship does not begin with titles. It begins with identifying a problem and making a serious effort to solve it.

That is why this moment matters beyond one workshop. In June 2026, SINA and Kampala International University signed a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate on research, documentation, experiential learning, competency-based education, mentorship, internships, and social innovation. The agreement also opens space for SINA practitioners to contribute as guest facilitators, visiting lecturers, and co-supervisors for student projects. The Training of Trainers was one of the first visible steps.

More will come from this partnership. We are exploring how the SINA Framework can support KIU and other institutions to make entrepreneurship education more practical, more connected to real problems, and more honest about what it takes to build. We are also open to further engagements with universities, training institutions, NGOs, government bodies, and partners who want to experience or adapt parts of the SINA Framework. This can happen online or in person through guest sessions, Training of Trainers programs, immersion visits to SINA Communities, research collaboration, or deeper institutional partnerships.

Reach out at info@socialinnovationacademy.org to talk further or subscribe to our newsletter to get quarterly updates.

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Then, while going through the SINA Framework at Jangu International, something shifted. Instead of seeing this only as something painful that had happened to her, Jackline was challenged to ask a different question: Could the problem itself become an opportunity? That question eventually became She Deserves Uganda.

The first idea was a warming belt. It was too expensive for the girls they wanted to reach. So they dropped it. Jackline and her team went back to the girls and asked what they actually needed. Something affordable. Non-invasive. Something that could work quickly. They experimented again and developed a natural cramp-relief oil. Then around 100 products from the first batch sold in a single day. There was demand and there was still much more to figure out.

She Deserves has since continued working on menstrual pain, menstrual health information and the stigma surrounding periods. Jackline also deliberately brings boys into the conversation. They are brothers, classmates and future fathers. Menstruation should not remain something they know nothing about.

In 2024, Jackline was selected as an Anzisha Fellow, joining some of Africa’s youngest entrepreneurs in a two-year journey of growing themselves and their ventures. She has now reached the end of that fellowship, and Anzisha returned to Uganda to capture her story in this documentary.

Jackline is far from the only SINA entrepreneur to have gone through Anzisha. Over the years, 12 young social entrepreneurs emerging from SINA Communities have been selected as Anzisha Fellows. Four joined the fellowship in 2026 alone.

That relationship has grown over time. After repeatedly encountering young entrepreneurs coming out of SINA, Anzisha started looking more closely at what was happening behind them. In 2024, they published a case study on the SINA approach, invited SINA to present at the African Leadership Festival and today SINA is an important referral partner for young social entrepreneurs entering the Anzisha ecosystem.

For us, that matters. The aim is not to produce people who become good at applying for fellowships. It is to create an environment where young people who have often been denied opportunities can discover what they are capable of, take responsibility and turn the problems around them into social enterprises. Recognition can come later.

Jackline puts the more important part simply in the video: “I believe in what I’m doing and I believe my project is addressing the actual problem that people are facing in the community.”

Her story starts at 7:06 in the Anzisha documentary A Stigma of Presence:

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They are taking roles in the community, sitting in meetings where decisions have consequences, and learning what it means when the budget does not fit, when a responsibility is unclear, when trust has to be rebuilt, or when nobody can wait for someone “above” to fix it. This is how Changemaker-Makers are formed.

A new SINA Community starts with people who are willing to carry responsibility before everything is clear. People who experience self-organization in their own bodies first, with the pressure, mistakes, and growth that come with it.

SINA does not grow by opening branches from a central office. We grow when people carry the SINA Framework into their own realities and adapt it with their communities. This is slower. It asks more from everyone involved. But it is also stronger, because the new communities are not owned from the outside. They are built by the people who live in them.

The teams from Eswatini, Cape Town, Kyotera, and Berlin are preparing to create spaces where young people will turn difficult experiences into strength and build social enterprises from the problems they know closely. New SINA Communities are in the making for 2027. And before they become visible as places, they are being built here, through the people learning to carry the responsibility.

Interested to work together with us to bring SINA into your community? Find out all details: https://socialinnovationacademy.org/replicating-sina/

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Gladys Amuge of Absolute Clean, Mackline Kobusingye of Vital Care Connect, Barbra Nantongo Jane of Smart Kitchen Solutions, David Monday of Pendeza Shelters and Albert Rwakimari Ayiga of NUNU Fund.

We know all five of them well. All of the enterprises were born in SINA at the main and first SINA Community “Jangu International” and we saw the moments when an idea did not work as expected. The customers who were not convinced. The business model that looked good on paper but failed in practice. The many hours of mentorship, testing, changing and starting again. That is why this recognition feels so special.

It also comes only a few weeks after four out of the 40 entrepreneurs selected as 2026 Anzisha Fellows came from SINA. Four out of 40 at Anzisha. Five out of 12 at Builders of Africa’s Future. These are different programmes, selecting founders at different stages. Still, nine SINA social entrepreneurs appearing in two continental cohorts within a few weeks is more than a pleasant coincidence. It is a pattern we need to understand.

What are people noticing?

We are told surprisingly often that something feels different when people work with SINA scholars and alumni. One person who has worked with several entrepreneurship support organisations told us:

“I have worked with several ESOs and have really come to appreciate the SINA approach. The level of entrepreneurs from your program is significantly different than other programs.”

We have heard similar comments from mentors, visitors and partners over the years. It is difficult to point to one particular session or tool that creates this difference. There is no secret workshop.

Perhaps it begins with the weekly food budget. Many of us arrive at SINA after years of being treated as recipients or beneficiaries. Suddenly, we are trusted to make decisions that affect an entire community. If we calculate wrongly and the food runs out before the end of the week, nobody arrives from outside to quietly fix it. We face the consequences together, work out what happened and do it differently the next time.

Perhaps it happens during the difficult meetings. Self-governance sounds inspiring until there is a real conflict, someone is not doing their work or a decision affects people differently. Then we have to speak honestly, listen when it is uncomfortable and confront the patterns we carry with us.

Obedience is deeply rooted in society. So is the expectation that someone with a title will eventually step in and decide for everyone. At SINA, that usually does not happen. It can be frustrating, but it is also where responsibility stops being a word on a training slide.

Many of us enter SINA after years of being told, directly or indirectly, that we are not capable. We may carry experiences of displacement, poverty, violence or rejection. Confidence does not return because someone tells us to “believe in yourself.” It grows slowly when we are trusted with work that matters and discover that our decisions carry weight.

Sometimes we get it wrong. Everyone does. Then we try again. The fact that SINA has no fixed programme duration or graduation date also matters. We do not all grow according to the same timetable. For one person, the journey may take nine months. For another, it may take four years. During that time, we do not remain passive participants waiting to complete a course. We take on roles needed to run the community. We may facilitate sessions, manage finances, coordinate meals, welcome new scholars, work through conflicts or mentor others. This keeps SINA Communities affordable while allowing us to build our abilities through real responsibility.

The community benefits from the work we contribute today, while we become more capable of creating the futures we want tomorrow. Perhaps this combination of time, trust and responsibility is one reason SINA entrepreneurs stand out.

This is not how most systems work

Most education systems reward young people for reproducing the correct answer. Power remains with the teacher. Much of the aid sector also keeps power somewhere else. Young people are called beneficiaries. Their needs are assessed, programmes are designed for them and somebody from outside decides what success should look like. The result is often another training, another certificate and another group of young people waiting for jobs that do not exist.

SINA was created as a refusal of that logic. We do not believe that young people from marginalised communities are problems to be solved. We believe they are capable of building solutions, especially because they understand many of the problems from the inside. That does not mean placing someone in front of an entrepreneurship curriculum and expecting a social enterprise to emerge.

It means living responsibility every day. It means facilitating a session when you are nervous. Managing money when you have never had a bank account. Giving feedback to a friend who is not fulfilling a role. Sitting with a customer who does not care how passionate you are and simply does not want the product. It can be exhausting. It is often messy. It is also real. The five social enterprises selected for Builders of Africa’s Future grew from problems their founders knew closely.

Mackline almost lost her life during childbirth. Vital Care Connect now works to prevent other women and newborns from facing the same danger. David grew up with flooding in Kasese and lost his brother during a flood. Pendeza Shelters is turning plastic waste into affordable building materials and safer homes.

Barbra experienced a time when rising cooking-fuel prices meant her family had to reduce the number of meals they prepared. Smart Kitchen Solutions now creates cleaner and more affordable cooking fuel from materials others throw away.

Albert grew up in a farming family and saw how low prices and unstable income could push children out of school. NUNU Fund is helping rural families earn more fairly and save towards education.

Gladys is building Absolute Clean around work that society depends on but often undervalues. The social enterprise is professionalising cleaning and laundry services while creating more dignified opportunities, especially for women and young people.

None of these social enterprises was born fully formed. They had to move from a personal experience to a product. From a product to a customer. From a few customers to a functioning organisation. There were questions far more urgent than how to write a winning fellowship application. Why are customers not returning? Can we pay the team? Is the price too high for the people we want to serve? What happens when a co-founder stops showing up? Do we keep pushing the original idea or admit that it needs to change? These are the conversations behind the announcement.

Recognition matters, but it is not the work

Builders of Africa’s Future will give the selected entrepreneurs access to enterprise development, mentorship, networks and international exposure. They will present their social enterprises at the programme’s Pitch Day on 26 August 2026. You can read the official announcement and meet the full Builders of Africa’s Future 2026 cohort here.

This recognition can open doors for Gladys, Mackline, Barbra, David and Albert. We hope it does. For SINA, it also asks us to look more closely at what we have built together. Why do people who work with our scholars and alumni keep noticing a difference? Which parts of the SINA experience create it? How can we protect those parts as SINA grows across more countries and very different contexts?

We will listen to our entrepreneurs, ask external partners what they see and examine the evidence honestly. Not every SINA social enterprise succeeds. Some stop, many stay small and some teams break apart. Some founders take what they have learned in a different direction. But when independent organisations repeatedly select SINA social entrepreneurs from large cohorts across Africa, we should not be shy about saying that something important is happening.

Four out of 40. Five out of 12.

Congratulations Gladys, Mackline, Barbra, David and Albert. This moment belongs to you, your teams and everyone who kept showing up when the work was difficult. We are very proud. Now we go back to work.

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Then the storm came. Heavy winds destroyed the production site. The larvae were lost and production stopped. Everything the team had produced was gone. FarmPlus still had customers to serve and bills to meet. Jesca and Vicky had to rebuild the space and soon after they found investment. A stronger production site became possible.

FarmPlus now has better conditions for the larvae and more room to produce. But the move also means carrying the full pressure of an independent enterprise. FarmPlus has to earn enough to keep it running. This is the moment Anzisha speaks about in the video below. What it means when a social enterprise created through the SINA Framework is ready to leave the community and stand on its own.

Graduation at SINA does not come with a certificate. It comes when a social enterprise is financially self-sustainable, the founders have created their own work and the space they used inside SINA can be handed to someone else who is still trying to begin. FarmPlus has reached that point. The connection to SINA remains. The dependence does not.

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Out of the 40 young entrepreneurs selected as 2026 Anzisha Fellows from across the African continent, four are SINA (specifically 3 from Jangu International, the first SINA Community in Mpigi, Uganda and one from Kiira Innovation Academy in Nyenga, Uganda).

Congratulations to:

Patrick Ndungutse Musisi of Maripat Food Solutions, which works to reduce fruit waste and stabilize farmer incomes through food value chain solutions.

Malole Shaluwa of Nimiro Innovations Ltd, which develops affordable, eco-friendly crop pest solutions to protect smallholder farmers without harming soil or health.

Sebagala Richard of Ayila Insect Repellents Co. Limited, which addresses preventable insect-borne diseases through locally relevant insect repellent products, turning a personal loss into a public health response.

Sharifah Kakwezi of Rein Fresh Roots, which is turning post-harvest fruit losses into valuable food products.

Anzisha supports Africa’s youngest entrepreneurs, aged 15 to 22, through a two-year venture-building fellowship with coaching, learning, networks, stipends, and prize support. The 2026 cohort brings together founders from 15 countries working on food systems, health, circular economy, education, renewable energy, technology, and other urgent challenges.

This recognition says something about what happens when young people are trusted with real responsibility. At SINA, scholars do not only learn entrepreneurship in theory. They run parts of their own community. They learn by doing the accounting, outreach, facilitation, logistics, customer discovery, budgeting, conflict resolution, and the hard daily work of turning an idea into something people can use and benefit from.

The SINA Framework does not graduate scholars with a certificate and a hope that someone will employ them. Young people create their own social enterprises from the problems they know closely.

Congratulations also to Jangu International for consistently enabling young social entrepreneurs to address some of Africa’s pressing challenges through business approaches. Patrick, Shaluwa, and Richard now join eight previous Anzisha Fellows from Jangu International, bringing the total to 11. The previous fellows include Joan Rukundo Nalubega, Birungi Saudah, Nabuuma Grace, Nassolo Suzan, Jackline Birungi, Jesca Nayebare, Nakibuule Sarah, and Asaph Ankunda.

This growing track record is one reason Anzisha has invited SINA and Jangu International to Johannesburg this August to share our experience at the African Leadership Festival, bringing together Anzisha, Africa Careers Network, and the African Leadership Academy from 4 to 6 August. SINA will contribute a session on what we are learning from youth-led social entrepreneurship, self-organization, and the SINA Framework.

We are proud of the ecosystem around them: the trainers, coaches, mentors, peers, difficult feedback, failed attempts, late evenings, and the daily practice of responsibility that keeps giving young people the space to become active drivers of their own future.

Read more at: https://magazine.thenextafrica.com/anzisha-prize-names-40-fellows-aged-15-to-22-from-across-the-continent/

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Anyone who has built a social enterprise knows that the public moment is only a small piece. Behind it are years of trying things that did not work. Finding customers. Losing customers. Changing the product. Figuring out suppliers. Paying people. Carrying pressure that does not appear in a short announcement. Uganics grew from that kind of work.

The enterprise was born in SINA out of a problem close to people’s lives: malaria, and the difficulty many families face in accessing protection that is affordable and usable. Joan and her team turned that reality into a social business serving communities, while creating work and proving that solutions can come from the people who know the problem from the inside.

For SINA, this is why the SINA Framework exists. Scholars do not come to SINA to be rescued or trained into obedience. They come into a community where they take real responsibility, run parts of the space, face themselves, test ideas, and build social enterprises from lived experience and local problems.

Congratulations Joan, the Uganics team! We are happy this important and live-saving work is being seen.

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Today, the Social Innovation Academy is a growing ecosystem of SINA Communities, young changemakers, refugee-led and youth-led social enterprises, and local solutions emerging from lived experience.

Many people have asked how they can stay updated in a world where social media gets flooded these days by AI generated content and it is harder and harder to be seen. So we have started the SINA Newsletter. It will go out quarterly and share:

– stories from SINA scholars and founders
– updates from new SINA Communities
– milestones from across the ecosystem
– opportunities to engage, partner, mentor, or support

The first edition is now open for subscription. If you would like to follow the journey more closely, you can subscribe here

Thank you to everyone who has been part of SINA’s journey in different ways over the years. This newsletter is also a way to keep the wider community connected to what is emerging.

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Behind these numbers are people who refused to stay stuck in systems that had no place for them. The report follows what happened across the movement, when the people closest to the problems are becoming the change they wish to see, from refugee settlements to urban communities, and shows how the SINA Framework keeps turning local challenges into livelihoods, enterprises, and new possibilities.

Have a look at the full report and see what communities can build when they lead the change themselves. A big thank you to all our partners, supporters, SINA Communities, SINA Social Enterprises and scholars!

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