After receiving the ZeroDX Award in 2024 and 2025, SINA has again been nominated for the 2026 edition. This alone is an honour. What excites us even more is that ten social enterprises from across the SINA ecosystem have also been nominated this year. Together, the eleven nominations offer a glimpse of what can happen when self-organization does not remain inside one organization, but travels with people into the enterprises and teams they create.
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.