Social Innovation Academy
Improving the Lives of Displaced Persons, Refugees and Asylum Seekers
Fast Facts
Uganda, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Cape Verde, Nepal, Nigeria, Rwanda
Ann McStay and Kermit Eck
2022-23, 2025
Education
How Social Innovation Academy (SINA) Is Making a Difference
SINA supports the personal and professional development of youth from impoverished rural, urban and refugee settlements via a network of independently registered Communities that follow the SINA model. SINA currently works in eight African countries and in Nepal.
The SINA model is a five-step process to develop youth by incorporating interactive learning sessions where students take on roles and responsibilities and gain practical experience which allows them to run their own enterprises.
SINA’s goal is to help each Community create dignified livelihoods, nurture social innovation, and empower underserved youth to build brighter futures for themselves and their society.
What SINA Does
- Utilizes a proven framework that empowers marginalized youth to become social entrepreneurs.
- Provides underserved and refugee youth with education, job training, and leadership development to gain skills and launch self-sustaining enterprises or secure employment.
- Guides new enterprises to address local challenges like food insecurity and to generate employment.
- Utilizes a proven, innovative product-development and marketing model — “Business in the Box” — to help new SINA Communities create environmentally beneficial enterprises and jobs, such as the collection and transformation of waste plastic into useful everyday and made-to-order products.
- Develops partnerships with successful established businesses — such as innovative, reuse-oriented plastic waste recyclers — to train and provide guidance to SINA entrepreneurs in design, manufacturing, and finishing processes.
Initiatives Supported by Project Redwood
2022-23: $20,000 to support the “Business in the Box” proof-of-concept implementation by funding internships, a project coordinator, and equipment purchases.
2025: $24,000 to launch an education, job training, and leadership development program for refugee participants served by a new SINA Community in the Palabek refugee camp in Uganda.