The Corporate Rebels are on a mission to make work more fun by studying progressive organizations around the world. With their masterclasses and academy, they’re helping everyone from CEOs to entry-level employees shake off the shackles of traditional work practices. Imagine a workplace where you’re not just a cog in the machine, but a part of a vibrant, learning community. That’s the Corporate Rebels’ vision. The Rebels have been out there learning from over 150 pioneers who’ve reinvented work in their own unique ways and last week also interviewed Etienne Salborn and wrote into their newsletter:
Hi,
Last week, a member of our Academy posted the following question to the community: “Does anyone have any examples of self-managing or teal organizations in Africa?” It’s a question I get asked more often. And, until recently, I did not have a very good answer to it, as we didn’t know about many progressive workplaces from the African continent. With David College, Wasafiri, and SINA, we have only three African companies on our Bucket List.
But although we have only three African organizations on our list at the moment, I recently learned that among them, there is at least one true pioneer—a truly progressive organization. That organization is the Social Innovation Academy (SINA) from Uganda. We first met up with SINA’s founder, Etienne Salborn, a few months ago and were introduced to their fascinating story.
Etienne described SINA as ‘a self-governed community that provides a pathway, tools, and the mindset for marginalized youth and refugees (called ‘scholars’) to shape a vision for their future and create new solutions in the form of social enterprises with a benefit to society and the environment.’ From what I understood, SINA can be seen as some kind of ‘social enterprise incubator’ that picks up those who have dropped out of school and whom society has labeled as useless. SINA then turns their scholars into real social entrepreneurs through ‘their cost-effective and freesponsible community approach.’
SINA trains the scholars through an extensive training program and enables them to flourish by giving them responsibilities and a passion for entrepreneurship. They motivate the scholars to transform their personal tragedies into a social enterprise by disrupting the root causes of their social problems. As such, SINA scholars do not leave with a certificate or diploma but with their own employment. What once started with a single SINA community in Uganda is now rapidly scaling all over Africa, with more than 10 different SINA communities. Collectively, they have spun out more than 70 social enterprises so far.
Last week, we organized a virtual community event where we interviewed Etienne for about 1,5 hours to share his story with all Academy members (the recording is available on our Academy platform). It was a great session, with some very good questions coming from the audience. We will also (hopefully) be visiting SINA in Uganda soon, as there are many more inspiring things to learn about SINA and their model, which we will then share with you on our blog.
So, the next time someone asks me for an example of a highly progressive African organization, my answer is clear. My answer will be SINA.
Joost Minaar