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!

The post Impact Report 2025 appeared first on SINA (Social Innovation Academy).

There is something strange about the way many systems deal with young people in crisis. Often, the people furthest from the challenges design the answers. The curriculum usually arrives from somewhere else. Funding follows its own logic, often written for people who have never set foot in a refugee settlement or sat with someone who has spent years being told they are useless. We went another way.

SINA grew from a much simpler and harder idea. The young people who know the pressure first-hand and have the lived experiences of challenges, trauma or conflict create their own solutions. That sounds obvious when written down. It is not how most institutions behave.

Inside a SINA Community, scholars take responsibility early. Sometimes earlier than they want. They facilitate sessions, handle logistics, keep track of money, coordinate outreach, test business ideas, deal with conflict, and learn how to work with others in a self-organized system that can be powerful and exhausting too. Freesponsibility is not soft. Some people love the freedom and then hit a wall when they realize the responsibility is real. Sometimes things fall apart a bit. A role is dropped. A proposal gets stuck. Someone leaves. Then people regroup and keep going. That is part of the learning as well.

Joan Nalubega is one of the clearest examples of why this matters. Her enterprise began with Malaria. She had suffered from it as an orphan, and later she started looking at why people were still getting sick even when they were sleeping under mosquito nets. That pushed her into conversations with scientists, health professionals, and people in the communities most affected. Eventually she developed mosquito-repellent soap through Uganics and is saving lives through prevention.

However, a good idea is not the same as a workable one. The soap risked costing too much for the families who needed it most. So Joan had to find another way, selling at regular price in the tourism industry and using that income to subsidize distribution in lower-income communities. Then supply problems hit. Raw materials were unreliable. She adjusted again and started building a local supply chain with women in agriculture, training them to grow and process the herbs and flowers needed for the oils. Before that, some of those women were earning barely $10 a month. Later they were earning $150 or more.

That story feels very familiar at SINA. Someone starts with lived experience, runs into reality, changes the model, runs into another wall, changes it again, and eventually something solid emerges and becomes a social enterprise. The process is messy, not linear.

Rebecca Aimee knew what it meant to be a refugee woman trying to survive through petty trade and still being locked out of even the smallest loan. Patapia came out of that. It started by backing refugee women to build small businesses, and later grew much further. Janet Aguti was raped as a child. Later, she built Totya Platform to support survivors of sexual violence with medical, legal, and psychological care.

Janet Aguti meeting the Pope in the Vatican as part of a survivor delegation advocating for a zero-tolerance policy regarding sexual violence in the church. Copyright by Vatican Media


What SINA trusts is not a category called “beneficiaries.” We trust people. Their read of a problem. Their instinct for what is missing. Their ability to build something from a place that outsiders usually misunderstand. The best person to create a solution for e.g. street children is someone who was a street child herself, not a PhD in psychology. There are skills and experiences one cannot learn in school or university.

That also shapes how SINA grows. SINA Communities are independently and locally registered, self-organized, and linked through the SINA Framework and a wider ecosystem that keeps learning, arguing, adapting, and replicating. The communities are for the local people, by the local people. New communities grow because people who have lived the model decide to carry it into another place and make it work there. Today there are 23 SINA Communities in 9 countries. Across the ecosystem, they have helped build more than 150 social enterprises and created around 2,000 jobs, while alumni earn around three times more than a comparable control group.

A young person who was dismissed as a dropout, a burden, a case to manage, or someone to pity starts running a training, negotiating with suppliers, guiding a meeting, testing prices, helping a team through conflict, mentoring the next scholar and becoming a social entrepreneur. That shift is where a lot of the real change sits. You can feel it in a room before you can measure it in a spreadsheet. And once you have seen that happen a few times, it becomes very hard to go back to systems that keep the keys so far from the people who need to use them.

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The month opened with our Social Enterprise Bootcamp in Mpigi, and it was intense in the best way. This was not entrepreneurship as theory. People joined real early-stage SINA social enterprise teams, worked directly with customers, questioned assumptions, adjusted their offers, and pushed toward problem-solution fit, prototypes, pricing, and first revenues. What made it even stronger was the mix of people in the room, with participants from many different SINA Communities and 12 countries across four continents.

For the first time, we also welcomed individual international participants from the UK, Germany, Italy, the USA, and South Africa. Each joined one social enterprise team for the week and became part of the real work behind testing ideas and shaping growth. Their reflections captured that well. Esra Kucukciftci called it “work worth doing” and praised the founders’ “unparalleled market wisdom.” Bex Hewett described the week as “life changing” and wrote that seeing SINA in practice “changed my perspective entirely.” We will have a similar bootcamp coming up in June.

Then Mpigi filled up again for Impact Week Uganda 2026 at Jangu International. From March 4 to 12, with the Train-the-Coach phase followed by the challenge week, Impact Week brought together participants from 16 countries. The programme set out to equip 24 local and international Junior Coaches and 75 young challenge participants with Design Thinking skills to work on real community challenges. This diversity brought high quality to the week. Different backgrounds, different instincts, different ways of asking questions, and suddenly the learning goes deeper because nobody is coming from exactly the same place.

Also in March, the SINA Global team, made up of 14 members from different SINA Communities and replicators and Nomads, met in Jinja for a retreat. Some of the most important work in a growing movement is quiet work, the kind that does not make for many photos but shapes everything that comes next. We used the time to reflect honestly on what SINA needs now: stronger shared systems, strong human connection between the 23 locations across 9 countries, better documentation, clearer learning loops across communities, and more financial resilience so the ecosystem can keep growing.

And then Zambia started. Our newest SINA Community in Lusaka began with its pioneer scholars on March 30th after an intensive replication journey, and it builds on the partnership with Circus Zambia.

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