From Refugees to Social Entrepreneurs

Uganda is home to diverse wildlife and spectacular national parks. On the shore of a lake, where once hippos and giraffes used to drink from, sits now a refugee camp, home to 70,000 people. Nakivale is now a dusty environment with high poverty. Because of instabilities, frequent coups overthrowing governments in the region of Eastern Africa, victims and perpetrators often live side by side in Nakivale and create immense tension.

Patrick Muvunga and his younger brother Raphael Muvunga are from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and have been living in the camp five years. Life is a constant struggle and food rations from the United Nations are continuously being cut down to force the refugees to find ways of sustaining themselves. Without permission the refugees are not allowed to leave the camp and without reason no one is allowed to enter it.

Through a researcher from Estonia, staying in the camp for a few weeks, the Muvunga brothers learned about the Social Innovation Academy (SINA) in Uganda. A place, where marginalized youth from diverse but disadvantaged backgrounds use waste as a resource to create livelihoods and social businesses. Patrick was fascinated by how SINA is using plastic bottles to construct houses and decided to build a house himself. He gathered plastic bottles, which are easily found everywhere in the camp and with his brother they built a community space.

The researcher was so impressed with the brothers’ commitment to positively impact the living conditions of the refugees in the camp that she sponsored their transport fare to visit SINA. From here onwards the life of many refugees has never been the same. Patrick and Raphael joined SINA as scholars, leaving the refugee camp and living together in peace on the edge of a small town near Uganda’s capital city Kampala. For the first time since many years the brothers are able to focus on developing their dreams and making action steps towards achieve them.

Through life-coaching with Etienne Salborn, the founder of SINA, Patrick was able to shift his mindset from seeing himself as a victim towards understanding his difficult past as a driving force to create lasting change in the world. He wants to improve the living conditions of his fellow refugees in the camp and change also their mindset to actively shape a positive future instead of passively waiting for a resettlement to Europe or America or a miracle.

The Muvunga brothers were young emerging artists in their home town of Goma, at the shores of Lake Kivu when corruption led to the death of their oldest brother and Patrick and Raphael to be murdered also. From one day to the other they had to flee and after a long journey ended up in Nakivale.

Five years later in SINA, the brothers are inspired by other youth in SINA. Many had similar tragic stories but were using their difficult past as their motivation to create change in the world. They want to fight the root causes of their own tragedies. A girl named Majo, born by 14 year old teenagers and abandoned as a child, created a women’s union empowering local women and taking care of girls to bring them back to school. Another girl named Josephine became an orphan before even being born because her mother died while giving birth to her. The now 20 year old daughter Josephine is creating a solution for increasing maternal health.

Patrick no longer wants to see himself as a passive victim but to actively shape a new future for him and his brother. Through art he found a way of inspiring children in the refugee camp and started NakivArt with his brothers and a few friends. With a newly gained positive attitude in life, things developed quickly for the brothers: Raphael was invited to participate at the UNHCR Humanitarian Jam in Kampala and a few weeks later Patrick became an exhibitor at the Art Biennale, organized as a collaboration between African and German Universities to portray contemporary art in migration. Patrick is invited to present his work also in Bremen, Germany in September 2016 and showcase that refugees are much more than just a “problem”. With support of SINA, NakivArt is flourishing into a social enterprise, where youth in the refugee camp produce crafts and art, which is sold locally and internationally for sustaining therapeutic art trainings for children which NakivArt is offering for free in the camp.

Other refugees and other scholars of the Social Innovation Academy (SINA) now draw inspiration from Patrick and Raphael on how to transform challenges into opportunities to create social change