My life’s purpose, to which I am wholly committed, is to unleash the potentials of people to become the change they want to see.
I was born and raised in Berlin, Germany and from a young age, I was fascinated to explore the world. At 17, I lived abroad in the USA as a high school exchange student for one year. At 19, I went to Uganda in 2006 to volunteer at the Kankobe Children’s Home for a year instead of joining the obligatory military basic training. Seeing that the orphans I was living with could not continue schooling after finishing their primary school, I started a sponsorship program. Since new kids would join the program every year, I founded the NGO Jangu e.V. in 2009 to manage the program professionally. While doing my Master’s Degree in “Peace, Development, Security and International Conflict Transformation”, the first generation of sponsored orphans graduated from High School in Uganda but could not find jobs or go to university. I dedicated my Master’s Thesis to understanding this challenge. In an open-space dialogue with the first generations of sponsored youth, we co-created the ideas behind SINA in 2013 and started implementing them.
You can reach me at etienne@socialinnovationacademy.org