Ep. 94 Etienne Salborn and Tonny Wamboga on SINA, self-organisation and ‘freesponsibility’

SINA (Social Innovation Academy) is a network of social enterprise incubators in Uganda and neighbouring countries with a mission of supporting marginalised young people to create their own solutions to social problems in their communities.There are currently more than 10 SINA communities which have catalysed 70+ social enterprises and more than 500 jobs. The goal is to create a global movement of 1,000 SINAs and 100,000 social enterprises by 2035.

Etienne Salborn, founder, and Tonny Wamboga, Operations Lead, talk to me about SINA’s model in which self-organisation plays a central role. How do scholars take on key roles? What is the ‘confusion stage’? What are common misconceptions of self-organisation? What are the specific cultural challenges of learning self-organisation in Uganda? We talk about these questions and more in our conversation.

Resources:

• SINA’s website: https://www.socialinnovationacademy.org/

• More about the SINA framework

• A case study about SINA (non-academic)

• An academic master thesis on the agency aspect of scholars in SINA

• Masters of Social Change, a SINA documentary about refugee activists and social entrepreneurs

• Etienne on the Out of the Clouds podcast talking about the SINA founding story and the model