Unlearning in Uganda

Last week, I took a little trip to Uganda. Being separated across the shores of Lake Victoria, Uganda is just a stone’s throw from Tanzania in relative terms, and fairly easy to get to. Having been in contact with an innovative education project called SINA (nestled up in the mountains of Mpigi, a few hours’ drive from the capital Kampala) I decided to pay them a visit whilst still living out here in East Africa.

SINA (Social Innovation Academy) is a unique learning environment empowering youth to become job creators by nurturing innovative project ideas into social enterprises. The Social Innovation Academy (SINA) is turning around life stories of suffering into positive catalysts of social change.

The goal of SINA is to bring Ugandan youth from marginalised backgrounds to the point where they can be self-sustainable by starting and leading their own projects in the form of social businesses (with positive impact on the environment and positive impact on society).

Education is given through coaching, mentoring and training, with students learning to take responsibility, unlearning limiting beliefs and receiving assistance with start-up businesses and social entrepreneurship. The education project is transcending the country’s rigid educational model through a unique “free-sponsible” educational approach: there is no governance in the school, no rules and ultimately no restrictions.

Where did the need for SINA come from?

Watch this video to learn more about the thinking behind the school: 

Free-sponsible Education

One of the first things that struck me upon arrival at SINA was the lack of hierarchy and management. There are no rules, there are no people “in charge” as it were; instead the academy is run through a series of learning groups. each group taking responsibility for a different area of the school. The academy consists of scholars and facilitators (the equivalent of students and teachers) however the scholars run the academy together with the facilitators in autonomous task and responsibility groups. They can make independent decisions in their areas, a concept which empowers the scholars from the beginning to take on responsibilities and grow with them constantly. The goal is that a scholar will successfully lead a social enterprise when they leave the academy, and for that to happen, he or she needs to be able to make important decisions, structure time and set priorities. SINA lets the scholars run its academy to allow empowerment to be learned from within. 

The five learning groups are:

1.  Sustainability

2. A-Team

3. Communications

4. Foundation

5. Community Learning

Group meetings to discuss some of the week's issues.

Each group meets twice a week to discuss some of the core matters arising (e.g. budget for the week’s food, accommodation issues, waste problems, social unrest etc.) and they try to end each meeting with a resolution of what they can do. If they are unable to solve these problems alone, they are then carried over to the weekly “Hub” meeting, wherein a representative from each of the five groups meets together with a facilitator to try to make plans to tackle any unresolved issues. I sat in on several of these meetings during my visit and was interested to observe a range of approaches to running a meeting and to conflict resolution.

An introduction to unlearning and innovation

Students are encouraged to “unlearn” the methodologies of rote and reaction from their formal schooling, unleashing their full potential through intrinsic motivation rather than punishments and rewards. They work through a series of learning stages, choosing themselves when they are ready to graduate to the next stage. 

The seven learning stages that all scholars move through are:

1. Orientation
2. Confusion
3. Skill Development
4. Imagine
5. Concentration
6. Linking
7. Graduation

The model of learning has been crafted using a range of educational ideas, including NVC (Non-Violent Communication),  Self-Organisation, Active Listening, Design Thinking, Ideation Workshops, Conflict Transformation and Team Building (learn more here). After the introduction stage, students spend time in “confusion”. 

Scholar Julie wearing one of her designs.

I talked with one of the scholars, Julie (co-founder of fashion start-up Smart-Up), about this stage and she explained, “It is a period where you spend time trying to forget the habits from school, trying to understand that you can be the master of your own fate and you don’t have to follow everybody else”. 

Speaking with the scholars during my stay, it seems that “Confusion” is the most challenging stage for most of the community. It is a time wherein they have to get used to being in a school with no rules, structure, discipline or order and have to learn that they are the boss of themselves. As Julie said “if I want to spend all day every day sleeping, I can do. But I soon realised that it was only me that was going to make my life a success, and so I soon learned to motivate myself and find my inner ambitions.”

 During stage 3 (Skill Development), students are introduced to a range of skilled projects happening within the community. SINA focuses on community, empowerment and sustainability, modelling the concept of upcycling within the village itself. All of the learning spaces are built out of old plastic bottles filled with soil and turned into “bottle-bricks”.

The bottle huts - with a selection of sustainable roof options.

The constructions of the classrooms form part of the project-based learning approach and training curriculum, with facilitators and scholars working together in the academy to create their learning spaces. Through this, a sense of ownership and motivation is created and scholars are empowered to think beyond the conventional and to come up with their own creative solutions to some of Uganda’s challenges.

It took just one month to build this - using 18,000 waste plastic bottles!

Bottles are carefully placed into the walls to create unique designs.

Watch this short video to find out more about the building, design and development process: 

The bottle construction runs as a social business for some of the scholars (as does the interlocking brick business – an innovative design using a third of the resources and manual labour as it cuts out the need for cement and burning of bricks). 

Clever use of interlocking bricks to cut
 down on labour, materials and time.

Another social business that has become a success is Sengozi - an innovative Ugandan company founded in November 2014 producing the world’s first Terrazzo and Epoxy Floorings out of plastic bags 

A beautiful floor - made of eggs and plastic bags!

and egg shells. The organisation uses plastic waste from the local area and the wasted egg shells from a nearby poultry factory to turn into durable and long-lasting flooring and tiles for houses.

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The SINA cockerel - a survivor with ambition!

One of the scholars introduced the rather feisty resident cockerel to me, a refugee of another sort as he was found inside one of the waste shells one day, and was thus raised and nurtured by the SINA community to become the strong, wise cockerel he is today!

As well as the three core business models, there are a range of income generating skills that the students can choose to learn during their stay. These include:

1. Craft making

2. Book making

3. Agriculture

4. Sweater knitting

5. Chakula Bora (a canteen)

6. SINA Village (an accommodation area for tourists and visitors)

A stay in SINA Village

Traditional mud-huts in SINA village

During my visit to SINA I stayed up at the academy, sleeping in SINA village. This is a short walk from the main learning area and has been constructed as a traditional East African village, with five basic mud huts containing a bed and mosquito net... and that's about it. 

My room!

The accommodation has been deliberately built to be basic, to give visiting tourists or friends a chance to experience living in an old-style traditional East African village made from natural materials available on the surrounding mountainside.

Simple sleeping - all you need!

Sleeping in the hut was a beautiful, peaceful experience and a really interesting return to simplicity. The bio-gas 

All materials for the hut construction 
are found on the hillside.

toilet and bucket shower also allow tourists to explore sustainability within the village itself, whilst the nearby smallholding grows much of the food served at the academy and enhances the sense of sustainable living within the village and wider community.

The Scholars

Part of the focus of SINA is to offer marginalised youth an opportunity to support their own futures. As such, many of the scholars have been recruited from one of the largest refugee camps in Uganda, Kyangwali refugee settlement located in Hoima District South West Uganda and home to over 20,000 refugees.

During my time at SINA, four new scholars arrived from the camp (coming from Sudan, Congo and Burundi) and I spent time with Beatrice, a Congolese refugee and aspiring artist.

Beatrice left her home five years ago and had been living in the camp with her surviving family. During that time she harnessed her passion for art, working on a series of political cartoons to start putting together a portfolio. With a clear talent for drawing combined with a strong voice advocating for change, Beatrice told me how she hopes one day to use her work to inspire movements across the world.

Smart-up fashion (plus a view of the bottle hut wall on the inside)

I also met with Julie and Derrick, founders of Smart-Up, a clothing and accessories business and Edgar, a phenomenally talented painter whose business idea is to turn treasured photographs of memories into pieces of art. His business is called Walyendo Edgar and he has reached the Graduation stage of the SINA learning process and is already selling his artwork across the region and in Europe:

Edgar the artist finishing one of his pieces

SINA start-ups

Having now run for almost two years, SINA has seen several of its scholars graduate and start up their own businesses. One of the biggest success stories is Ruth Nabembezi, the founder of 'Ask Without Shame', a mobile app providing emergency sex education and advice. 

Ruth's App Start-up

Speaking about sex in Uganda is considered a taboo, and many youth have little or no access to vital information they need about their own sexual health. Ruth grew up in an orphanage because both of her parents died of HIV. Her sister also contracted the illness but when she fell sick, she was taken to a witch doctor because the neighbours in the village thought she was being possessed, rather than sick. Sadly she also passed away. Ruth knew that if she had been diagnosed and treated by medical experts, she could still be alive. As a reaction to her own tragedies, she founded the startup Ask Without Shame to provide a much needed free and confidential service to her fellow Ugandans. 

Ask Without Shame - a video introduction from Ruth

Finding inspiration from personal history, tragedy and experience is part of what drives many of the scholars within their start-up ideas and I was fortunate to meet with an incredible number of inspired and inspiring youth who are working to promote positive change in their communities.

Reflections

I had been interested in SINA for a while and was keen to visit to be able to learn more about their unique educational model. The concept of unlearning and finding knowledge from within is a core focus for ThoughtBox and I was keen to link up with the SINA community to share ideas and to learn more. There were many positive things happening within the community, but there were also many challenges which an organic learning community such as this is perhaps bound to have.

Because no-one is in charge, there were times when certain elements which could have been addressed were not being thought about - such as providing visitors with information about where to wash, eat, find water and how to find their way in the dark to the village...information that would have been rather useful to myself but were discovered in the end - much active learning was had (and a fair few tumbles in the dark!)

I also felt that the learning groups, although positive in their self-sustained model, were sometimes passing the problem from one group to another, with no-one perhaps taking charge and choosing to face the issue. Another element that really struck me about the place was a lack of communal space for all of the scholars and facilitators to come together - students ate in their rooms or scattered around the mountainside, and apart from a morning meeting which many didn't come to, there were no occasions (or opportunities) for the community to come together which I felt was a shame in such an isolated area. However, as is the nature of organic learning models, these are all elements that over time will be explored and adapted and learned from within.

And finally

My trip home was one of the highlights of my East African travel thus far. On the way up to the village, it took six hours of public transport as the main road had been closed because of a presidential visit (not a highlight!) so it was back roads on the matatu (the local mini-bus) for a long, dusty and bumpy journey:

Beautiful red-dirt roads of the Kampala countryside

Coming back I decided to take the "short cut" which would be a two hour journey as oppose to six - a much better idea. It was a little more adventurous but a great deal more fun. It began with an hour long piki piki ride (motorbike taxi) along some incredible red-earth roads, passing through lush jungle and beautiful countryside. The video gives a little snapshot, though apologies for the rather poor one-handed back-of-a-motorbike video skills!

I then took a rather random ferry (with a somewhat perilous amount of trucks filled with sand piled onto the deck) across the lake: 

How many cars can you put on a little ferry 
shuttle and still stay afloat...?

..quite a lot it seems!

and then another matatu, another piki piki and a lovely serene walk along the shores of Lake Victoria before heading back to Arusha.

All in all, it was a random, remarkable and inspiring visit and I look forward to following the progress of the scholars as they move through their learning journeys.

For more information on SINA visit their website: www.socialinnovationacademy.org

Learning to Help: The importance of education in supporting ethical volunteering

This post was originally published on www.globalsl.org as part of a month-long spread of articles aimed at raising awareness around the issues of orphanage volunteering

Once upon a time there was a volunteer. They were full of good will, a zest for life and a desire to travel, and wanted more than anything to be able to do something meaningful in their gap-year: to give something back. One day, they went to an assembly held at their school and soon were inundated with options: volunteering in an orphanage in Thailand; teaching English to students in Cambodia; working with street children in Tanzania. What would they gain? A challenging month helping a local community that would look great on the CV/Resume. Qualifications needed? “Good will, a zest for life and a desire to travel.” Bingo! They’re off!

And so the story goes. The global boom in volunteering over the past ten years has impacted young people across the world; with corporations selling volunteer-travel packages directly into schools. Throughout the western world, organizations are working closely with schools, delivering lectures, workshops and promotions to advertise the myriad ways that students can channel their “good will” with their desire to travel – and it is fast becoming the norm to have a program partnership offering international voluntourism packages within a school, college, or university. However, although companies are going into schools to educate about the “good bits” of volunteering, they often do not support student learning about the bad, nor help them to make ethical, critically assessed choices.

How are we teaching Global Citizenship?

In schools, colleges, and universities across the world, we are educating our young minds to become global citizens, encouraging good will, a zest for life and a desire to travel and to grow in the world. We are actively encouraging voluntary service – it is fast becoming an expectation on a CV or resume. However, we are not yet (for some reason) teaching our students how to carefully choose their voluntary service; nor about the importance of choosing ethically, sustainably and critically.

Voluntourism is not always a good thing; in fact it is fairly often a very bad thing for communities impacted (most significantly for vulnerable children in orphanages). However with the industry primarily set up as profit first, people second, local communities last, it is not surprising that the most damage is happening within the communities receiving the volunteers. We are not educating our young people to make the right volunteer choices, but are instead simply blaming them when they make the wrong ones.

What needs to change?

We need to educate our young people to make the right choices for everyone, not just for themselves. There are certain red flags to look out for, and asking crucial questions before entering into a placement can help to avoid pitfalls. Some of these questions might be:

• What will I be doing in my placement?
• Am I actually qualified to do this? If not, should I then be doing this?
• Will I receive training? If not, why not?
• Is my organization working with a partner organization on the ground? If so, are they actually in need of my help?
• If I am paying, where is this money going and what am I paying for? Am I encouraging profiteering from poverty?
• Is the organization ethical? Are they supporting local community employment and local needs first? Is this a bottom-up project, asked for by the community?

One of the most crucial educational tools that we need to encourage in young people is the importance of critical thinking. Asking questions allows the volunteer to understand just what, why and how the project is working and whether they really are going to be doing something good for the community they are entering into, rather than just for themselves.

Thinking beyond the self is a vital tool encouraging empathy building. Although the very notion of volunteering is the act of caring for and giving to others, it can also fast become a self-serving venture if we are not trying to understand the impact onto those we serve. Encouraging young people to put themselves into the shoes of the local community and think about the impact from that angle is a vital tool to teach. For example, it may seem that working in an orphanage is a wholly positive experience on the surface, yet by drawing back the curtain and learning about the impact of the volunteer experience upon the vulnerable children within these care homes, it soon becomes apparent just how emotionally damaging this sort of volunteering can be.

Unlearning assumptions and stereotypes is also crucial to ensure an ethical, positive volunteering role. The criticism of the “white saviour” complex, or profiting from poverty is often justified in many cases of overseas volunteering, primarily because of the stereotypes and assumptions about development aid that are being taken with the volunteers. Understanding that aid can be both positive and negative is a hard but vital lesson to learn; as is the understanding that aid can so often patronize, reduce or disempower; thus unlearning is a vital tool for students to practice.

How are educators starting to support this?

There are a growing number of education projects on the ground working with schools to support positive, ethical volunteering. Research by Globalsl.org has been collated in a database of Top 50 Global Learning Education Resource List, all supporting ethical global citizenship and positive global learning.

This is a growing community, with more organizations coming on board to support these core educational needs every day. Here is a partial list:

• ThoughtBox is an online education curriculum for schools encouraging critical thinking, empathy and unlearning. Covering the topic of Voluntourism within a bespoke curriculum, ThoughtBox also works with teachers and students within a range of other global issues; allowing the core skills of “think, feel, and unlearn” to be practiced by students to support positive, ethical global citizenship.
• Bright Green Enterprise offers workshops to UK schools supporting an understanding of ethical volunteering and grass-roots development; learning about some of the negatives that come with international aid and supporting positive choice and ethical, sustainable practice.
• Individuals such as Chloe Sanguinetti andDaniela Pappi who have learned first-hand the potential for negative impact in volunteering are working in schools to offer lectures and seminars, sharing their experience and supporting a re-thinking culture when it comes to Voluntourism.
• At the university level, a growing network of higher education institutions and nongovernmental organizations hosts theInternational Service-Learning Summit every 18 months. The next summit will take place October 23 – 25, and will critically consider ethical partnerships for global learning and cooperative development.

Good intentions are no longer good enough when it comes to volunteering and we owe our young people a rounded and critical education in learning the whole story: the good, the bad, and the ugly – of what it means to be a volunteer.

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Orphanage Tourism:  What can you do to help?  

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This post was originally published on www.globalsl.org as part of a month-long spread of articles aimed at raising awareness around the issues of orphanage volunteering #StopOrphanTrips. The campaign ended on June 1st, International Children’s Day, with a call to volunteer travel organizations to remove orphanage trips from their product offerings. Get involved by:

• Signing the Avaaz petition calling for travel operators to remove orphanage volunteering placements from their websites
• Sharing this post on the hashtag #StopOrphanTrips.
• Visiting the Better Volunteering Better Care Network
• If you are an educator, exploring the resources mentioned and educating your students in the whole story of volunteering.

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Rachel Musson is Founding Director of ThoughtBox education: an online learning resource for schools to encourage critical thinking, empathy, and unlearning.