The Nakivale Refugee Settlement is one of the biggest refugee camps in the world and accommodates over 70,000 people. The majority are youth with very limited possibilities to go to school or take part in informal education. Nakivale is 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 tensions in the settlement. Life is a constant struggle and food rations from the United Nations are continuously being cut down. Many wait for resettlement to other countries but the chances are almost zero. However, some youth are using every available resource to create something that can improve their lives and are trying to defy the educational system because they are creating their own university in the refugee settlement!
Turning Challenges into Opportunities
The Social Innovation Academy (SINA) is turning around life stories of suffering into positive catalysts of social change. Six SINA scholars had lived in the Nakivale Settlement for many years before joining SINA. They had previously created “NakivArt”, a project using art for trauma healing and giving children and youth of the settlement a space to draw, play, exchange, learn together and express themselves.
The goal of the refugee scholars has been to take NakivArt to the next level. In SINA the NakivArt-team has experienced and impersonated the unique SINA culture of empowerment and collaboration, while also having gone through training and have learned how to conduct trainings. The NakivArt-team has gone through trainings for unlearning limiting believes and identifying opportunities with and for communities. They have experienced coaching for personal growth and unleashing potentials and has specialized in learning coaching techniques to be able to coach others and train others on the basics of coaching. They have further specialized in training and facilitation tools and are able to hold sessions empowering other youth and allow them to drive their own education.
An alternative University built from plastic bottles
The SINA University will have no professors and no students. Everyone will be their own boss and creating their own curriculum. The Social Innovation Academy (SINA) in Uganda and Project DEFY from India have successfully proven that this is possible and that the youth can create their own jobs and projects improving the lives of others. SINA has created an empowerment model which has shown remarkable success in allowing marginalized and disadvantaged youth to transform their lives and become social entrepreneurs. The SINA scholars are now taking this model into the refugee settlement and make it their own. Project DEFY has shown how children and youth can successfully create their own education and teach themselves and each other instead of being taught.
SINA University starts with the learning space built out of plastic bottles by the refugee community themselves. It is equipped with basic tools for building, programming, creating, learning and building. It has computers and Internet. The members of the space are the kids youth and adults from the settlement. The space will be open for everyone and constitutes a homogenous mix of cultures, needs and attitudes, which is important for the overall personal growth of everyone involved. The community runs and administers the entire space by themselves.
SINA and Project DEFY are partnering to spark the self-organized empowerment
The members of the space will be introduced to the internet and other precursors in the first few weeks of its inauguration on the 20th of October 2016 by Sinha Abhijit, the founder of project DEFY. Etienne Salborn, the founder of the Social Innovation Academy (SINA) will bring in his expertise and experience empowering youth to completely run the space by themselves and unleash their full potentials.
A culture will be built where everyone creates something every day. Each of these projects, big or small, will be documented by the participants themselves and opened up for feedback and reflection from internet audiences. The participants decide about which projects to take on, either individually or in groups, as they may wish, in whatever domain they like – with the only mandate of documentation. The participants will be able to touch upon multi-dimensions ranging from science and technology; cooking and farming; arts and music and any other field they find relevant without limits. Online tutorials constitute the basic for making projects, building things and coming up with project ideas, which can be tested. The youth is encouraged to learn by doing and can even attain certified university degrees though kiron in Germany, where SINA has contacts to.
Creating opportunities instead of fleeing
There is huge potential for social entrepreneurship in the refugee settlement because most basic needs, such as safe drinking water, are often not met. The goal is for the youth to create their own opportunities instead of passively waiting for help or being resettled. Creating a life in dignity and peace in Uganda means the refugees do not need to continue their journey towards Europe or South Africa but actively build their lives in Uganda. The Social Innovation Academy (SINA) is scaling its model to be applied in a self-organized manner in the settlement through the refugee scholars and commits itself to support projects emerging out of Nakivale to reach the level of self-sustaining social enterprises improving the living conditions in the camp and creating employment for the youth.