Promise Hub

My name is Patrick Muvunga Trickpa, I’m the founder of Opportunigee and CEO of Promise Hub Nakivale.

I was displaced in 2010, fled the DRC, and reached Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda together with my brother that same year.

My background in mechanical engineering and passion for creative solutioning have led me to the conclusion that humans can be themselves and lead dignified lives wherever they may be.

In 2015 I joined the Social Innovation Academy, in Uganda to learn more about entrepreneurship, mentoring, and coaching. The following year I co-founded Opportunigee to help young refugees in Nakivale become entrepreneurs and job creators. Through training, mentoring, and co-creating we’ve succeeded in helping launch several community-oriented programs and businesses.

In 2018 I’ve joined Promise Hub Nakivale as CEO, to further expand Opportunigee’s work and impact and holistically support entrepreneurial ventures that create jobs, prosperity, and social good in Nakivale.

Nakivale Refugee Settlement’s 110,000 residents, while benefiting from the support of UNHCR, local and national authorities, face an unemployment rate of over 90%. This means that while many have the will to uplift themselves they lack the opportunities to do so. 

Promise Hub is a start-up incubator that migrates opportunities to empower social entrepreneurship among vulnerable communities around the globe. Our pilot Hub, Promise Hub Nakivale, expands upon the work we’ve done at Opportunigee, further uplifting the community through entrepreneurial education, digital literacy, financial and logistical tools, upskilling, face-to-face mentoring and support. These elements work to effectuate the creation of community-oriented initiatives, sustainable businesses, and well-paid jobs in Nakivale. Our holistic approach creates a unique infrastructure for entrepreneurial success.

When we expand, the poorest places on earth would have access to all the know-how, tools, skills, and support needed to launch successful businesses, create local jobs, and increase local incomes. 

Of the world’s total 79.5 million forcibly displaced individuals, 26% of them live in Sub-Saharan Africa. They have, almost entirely, been displaced, hold or seek refugee status due to war, poverty, persecution, and climate change and live on less than $1.90/day.  Last year (2019) was the biggest year for human migration in history around the world and although most tend to associate it with war or politics, that actually only accounts for around 15%. Mostly it’s a flight towards economic opportunity.

With a growing influx of economic refugees into the Nakivale settlement, far beyond its capacity to handle -  a scarcity of adequate healthcare, mental health services, sanitation, security, education infrastructure, combined with an unemployment rate of over 90% means that most Nakivale residents not only lack access to basic amenities but see little opportunity to build a better life for themselves or their families - many of whom they have had to leave behind.

Promise Hub is set up to be an ‘open learning environment’ to advance social entrepreneurship. To this end we make a holistic infrastructure of tools available to be used for free by aspiring entrepreneurs called “Game Changers”:

-a blended learning curriculum on Project & Business Management, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and E-commerce. The online components are hosted on the Funzi.fi platform and are further explored and disseminated by our Local Impact Team through group and individual workshops and assignments. 

-Our Local Impact Team- experts, change-makers, and leaders drawn from the local community. Trained in workshop facilitation and coaching, they provide guidance, support, and expertise towards the creation of successful businesses. They also organize upskilling events and lead workshops on trauma healing, the SDGs, personal development, and teamwork.

-Our Online Marketplace: a platform where they can showcase their

products and services

-Our Shipping Service: the first post office in Nakivale, our strategic partnership with MyMalls/DHL allows products to reach customers globally within 96 hours

-Our Digital Wallet: a financial tool that allows users to transfer and receive money directly from customers – access to financial inclusion for the unbanked.

Nakivale is a vibrant and diverse community, hosting refugees from Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, and South Sudan. Cultural, spiritual, and tribal differences exist, but groups often congregate around different activities and events. Here, the local government allocates plots of land for new arrivals to build houses, and the UNHCR distributes various food items twice per month. While this has proven enough for many people to live their entire lives in Africa’s oldest refugee settlements, it offers little in the form of education, jobs, or professional training to enable the community to stimulate economic growth and opportunity.

Promise Hub is staffed by mentors and leaders drawn from the local community itself. Trained in workshop facilitation, trauma healing, coaching, and a range of different fields they provide guidance and initial emotional and psychological support, followed by more specific mentorship skills-based training and expertise to help stimulate entrepreneurship. We provide digital,  technical, educational, logistical, and financial / transaction-based tools and training to enable our Game Changers to launch successful start-ups, impactful community projects, and sustainable nonprofits. 

Many of us here feel that we can’t achieve anything in Nakivale, that refugees can’t do anything without external help. I started Opportunigee to help as many people as possible to see that they can be themselves anywhere in the world. I was already amazed seeing the projects that came out of our scholars’ heads; from public solar-illumination to women’s empowerment agribusinesses. 

And then Promise Hub opened even more doors; we don’t just help people discover their passions, we have means for them to learn new skills, create businesses, connect with customers outside Nakivale, and lead dignified lives. 

It’s based on my own experience as a refugee. I went through all the challenges that refugees in Nakivale are now facing and so I understand how the community feels and what it’s like to be forgotten. Most of us have experienced deep trauma in our lives and then when you arrive at a place like Nakivale you can very quickly feel abandoned and so you resort to drugs and addiction. But I believe we can overcome it.

I have a personal connection with Nakivale. I came here as a teenager and throughout the past 10 years I've seen and I've been part of the development of this refugee community.

The spiritual beginning of this project was when I founded Opportunigee in 2016, with workshops centered around entrepreneurship, trauma healing, and self-discovery. And then in 2018 Promise Hub came to Nakivale, with very similar values to ours. I was asked to lead Promise Hub Nakivale and, through it, we have been able to expand all of the preexisting projects and businesses as well as launch new ones. 

I'm passionate about our work because it's solving the major problems that refugees are facing in their host countries. Unemployment, trauma, and adapting to a new environment takes a powerful toll on anyone. I don’t think finding a way to help refugees uplift themselves is something extraordinary, I think it’s something normal - helping them achieve a normal, decent life is something we are all working for every single day. 

I'm well-positioned to deliver this project because of the experience I have since I was living in DRC, my native country. As an artist, I used to work with a local NGO called Let's Protect Children (LPC) and my job was to communicate with teenagers who were former soldiers and to teach them art as therapy so that they could integrate into society. When I came to Uganda to stay in Nakivale Refugee Settlement I co-founded NakivART project using art to bring communities together and to help the youth and the kids from different backgrounds to live in harmony. Besides my current work at Promise Hub I'm a peacebuilder, an artist, an architect, and a life coach.

Besides myself, our Local Impact Team adapts and develops workshops, initiates local projects, manages day-to-day operations, mentors Game Changers, and curates insights. As a principle, they are exclusively drawn from local community members and change-makers. We leverage unique familiarity with the community’s needs and potential so we can maximize our impact. All have been trained in workshop design and facilitation, and each has a proven track record in various essential skills such as leadership, project management, team coordination, agri-businesses, empowerment, accounting, public health, and computer sciences. 

Besides our core activities, we have built up a good relationship with local residents thanks to our community-oriented initiatives such as an open-air community amphitheater, radio station, and recording studio that are all freely accessible.

When I first came to live in Nakivale there was a reluctance amongst the host community to accept any new ideas. They thought that we weren’t smart enough. It happened with our first project NakivART. We were struggling to be recognized and were interrupted many times by the authorities. I consider myself a risk-taker when it comes to fighting for a good cause and this has helped me to be the first refugee to initiate these kinds of projects in Nakivale. Here, in Nakivale, we’ve created the first comic book written by a refugee, our Hub is one of the largest plastic bottle facilities in Africa, we’ve built the first amphitheater in a refugee settlement, we’ve supported a range of projects many would think refugees are incapable of - and we did all this in a hostile environment.

We are working with many individuals who have been traumatized and who are also from different cultures and backgrounds. Being able to gather and galvanize a community of entrepreneurs from 8 different nationalities - many of whom considered themselves enemies (due to tribal, political, or religious conflicts) and getting them brainstorming and working together to create startups is my big achievement in leadership.  

We have co-created a holistic infrastructure of success to support aspiring entrepreneurs and changemakers in Nakivale. We do not import canned solutions and instruct - we co-create with local residents, employ and empower aspiring entrepreneurs (aka “Game Changers”) from within the community, and expand our activities and beneficiaries organically according to needs, interests, and potential.

Our model has made possible the best local understanding and insight to synergistically work with best-practices and digital tools. We offer::

-Personal development, Trauma Healing, and non-violent communication workshops 

-skills development opportunities through our blended-learning curriculum, digital literacy workshops,  face-to-face as well as online mentoring;

-Learning resources and tools appropriate for businesses ranging from artisan to digital products

-The means and know-how to access international markets as well as broaden local reach through Promise Hub’s tools. They include an online marketplace (currently in beta) to showcase products - promisehubcollective.com, Nakivale’s first shipping service/post office-promisehubexpress.com and a digital wallet to - a financial tool that allows users to transfer and receive money directly from customers since refugees often cannot have bank accounts

-Loans for promising start-ups and small grants for high-potential social projects 

We support game-changing success in communities where things such as the internet, banking, and infrastructure are perceived as luxuries by making them freely available. We implement a human-centric approach that co-creates sustainable businesses and impactful non-profits; we give rise to initiatives and well-paying jobs to uplift entire communities rather than a few ambitious individuals.

Activities

Aspiring Game Changers gain access to a stable internet, smart devices, e-learning resources along with encouragement and support from mentors. They gain insights on potential self-limiting behaviors and beliefs and are empowered to overcome them through

coaching and counseling. Face to face counseling and mentorship is combined with online learning and augmented with workshops (entrepreneurship, budgeting, project & team management, strategy, digital literacy), as well

as other relevant niche skills (handicrafts, art, programming).  Frequently recurring feedback sessions, individual mentoring, and access to tools, skills, or products are organized around flexible schedules.

Outputs

Aspiring Game Changers demonstrate acquired knowledge and skills by pitching projects, products, and business models to peers and mentors for feedback. Upon completing self-exploration & personal development workshops and Promise Hub’s core entrepreneurship curriculum they go on to either launch their start-up idea and turn it into a commercially viable business that can generate revenue and income that can then be re-distributed to help provide basic amenities and support the local community. Stimulating entrepreneurship has been a popular tool for poverty alleviation for quite some time and its effectiveness has been pointed out throughout numerous academic papers, such as Entrepreneurship training and education as strategic tools for poverty alleviation in Nigeria. 

Short-term Outcomes

These startups become self-sustaining, begin generating revenue, eliminating community overhead, and providing investment to incubate new projects within 6-24 months by growing exponentially. The Game Changers behind the startups demonstrate creativity, ingenuity and report increased levels of personal agency and emotional well-being which in turn encourages more pro-social behaviors that can inspire and support new community-oriented initiatives for the betterment of all. 

Research shows that employee engagement is important for a company’s success, and community buy-in is essential for fostering an entrepreneurial ecosystem, sourcing quality employees, and benefiting from community support in difficult periods.

Long-term Outcomes

As more and more start-ups transition into successful established businesses, capable of generating income and then redistributing it across the community,  the overall quality of life in that community increases thanks to new jobs, investment in public amenities, education and community culture. 

First of all, there is the number of Game Changers who have graduated or are attending the Promise Hub curriculum and are launching their businesses (workshops currently suspended due to Covid-19). On average there are 4.6 dependents who are supported through their activities as people who are significantly impacted by our solution:

 -June 2020: 62 Game Changers and 285 dependents

-June 2021: 132 Game Changers and 607 dependents

-June 2025: 852 Game Changers and 3919 dependents

Then there are the Opportunigee workshops (non-violent communication, trauma healing, self-discovery) which have been expanded by and are led by Promise Hub now:

-2020: 320 direct beneficiaries (since 2016)

-2021: 400 direct beneficiaries 

-2025: 1500 direct beneficiaries 

And finally, there are also 13 Game Changer-led projects which we support with funding, logistics, and ongoing mentoring. Projects range from women’s empowerment and recurring community entertainment events to art therapy and public illumination. The number of beneficiaries varies greatly between them (from 20 to 20000) as does depth and impact on individual beneficiaries.

I hope to tell you more about these different projects as I see them as amazing ideas that help demonstrate what we’re working towards.

This year many of our activities have suffered and have been suspended due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic so we have dedicated much of our time to produce masks and soap to distribute within the community -  we feared that our activities would suffer, but in reality, the pandemic has shown us the importance of adaptability and collaboration within the team. Throughout the remainder of 2020 and 2021, we will focus on optimizing our online marketplace and digital wallet, finding strategic partners that can help us further our vision, and, most importantly, continue to encourage our team and Game Changers growth-oriented mentality.    

We have several goals we plan to achieve throughout the next 5 years:

1.   Expand the diversity of tools, curriculum, workshop topics to give our Game Changers further options to uplift themselves and our community.   

2.   Achieve financial sustainability

3.   Expand reach and impact of current community-oriented initiatives

4.   Help ongoing Game Changers-led projects achieve sustainability

5.   Establish new Hubs where they would be needed most

Capacity

Large ranges of tech tools and programs can look intimidating to those who have never worked with computers.  We seek to accomplish our mission as effectively as possible and are open to attract as many co-creators and collaborators to maximize our impact and improve the motivation and morale of our Game Changers as they grow. 

Finances

We plan for Promise Hub to achieve financial self-sustainability within 5 years. Ensuring external funding until 2024 is something we actively seek to address.

Technical aspects

Nakivale experiences relatively frequent power outages. Our Hub is powered by electric cables and we also have diesel generators as an emergency backup. As diesel is a non-sustainable solution we want to seek to replace them with solar panels.

Culture

Cultural differences are inevitable in a settlement with people from 8 countries. While Local Impact Team members and Game Changers learn to see past differences and learn from each other regardless of gender, background, and belief - there are always a few members of the local community who view what we do with suspicion. A large part of my time is spent managing conflicts around women empowerment, digital literacy for youth, and other topics. 

Market

Much of our financial resilience relies on the success of the online marketplace as a source of funds. Reaching target audiences and converting sales will be essential for our success.

Capacity

We have made encouragement a large part of our mentoring activity and have partnered with several organizations to upskill our Game Changers. 

Finances

We aim for Promise Hub Collective sales to become our main source of funding in time, and so, we have dedicated much of our efforts towards optimizing it. We dedicate 40 total work hours per month towards grant applications and we also actively seek partners to fill this gap. 

Technical aspects

We are looking to implement solar panels in order to complement the underground high-voltage cables and generators we currently make use of.

Culture

We have dedicated workshops for peacebuilding and nonviolent communication. By the end of this year, we plan to seek further training for all staff members so that we can, hopefully, de-escalate conflicts better. This is also one of the reasons we want to further expand community-oriented projects as they help residents understand our mission.

Market

We have a partnership with Grounded World to work out our marketing strategy. This will be defined in Q4 2020.

The following organizations support our efforts:

-Funzi hosts our online curriculum and offers technical support in expanding it

-MyMalls and DHL power our worldwide shipping

-Blinkist supplies our team and Game Changers with an excellent online platform of summaries of nonfiction books 

-Mlove supports our team with strategy consulting

-Opportunigee helps us locally source mentors, Game Changers, and temporary project staff members. They also greatly aid in several projects’ implementation in Nakivale - Promise Hub helps with funding, logistical support, and expertise. Most Opportunigee projects are now collaboratively led by Promise Hub as well.

-Grounded World - Marketing Strategy

-MasterClass has granted us over 90 all-access passes to their courses in order to help upskill our team and Game Changers

As far as I’ve seen and felt from personal experience, refugees don’t want handouts, they want opportunities to uplift themselves with dignity. That is what I hoped for when I founded Opportunigee, and now, with Promise Hub, they have the chance to discover passions, develop skills, projects, and business and can make a decent living from them.

Through our curriculum, workshops, mentoring, and coaching activities local residents can heal their trauma, find their passion, learn a large range of new skills, and leverage them to achieve financial independence.

Through Promise Hub’s infrastructure, entrepreneurs can develop, showcase, sell, ship, and receive payment for products. The online marketplace, Promise Hub Collective, showcases products. When a purchase is made the product is shipped through Promise Hub Express (powered by MyMalls/DHL) and payment reaches the Game Changer through a Digital Wallet (refugees often do not qualify for bank accounts). They can thus sell their products, earn a living, grow their business, and bring capital and further opportunities into Nakivale Refugee Settlement. Promise Hub retains 22% of any online purchase to cover overhead and the respective Game Changer is left with 78%. Local/offline sales proceeds are retained 100% by Game Changers. 

We also provide a range of physical and digital tools for upskilling and prototyping for free. As well as loans for promising start-ups and small grants for social projects that have the potential to have a profound impact within the community.

We have, so far, designed several revenue streams in order to become self-sustaining:

-Corporate donations

-Small individual donations

-Grants & prizes

-Prototyping partnerships: We welcome partnerships with companies that have promising solutions to challenges outlined in the SDGs and require prototype field testing. Our strategic partners have successfully leveraged our local impact team, location, and position in the community to optimize their products for the African market. Our Local Impact Team is available to leverage their skills and learn new ones in order to install and maintain hardware, organize focus groups, run tests, and communicate findings to these partners. 

-Purchases on the online marketplace: we retain 22% of any purchase made on Promise Hub Collective in order to cover overhead - we estimate a gradual increase over time due to current Game Changers expanding their start-ups to include more and more employees, increase in demand thanks to marketing efforts and an increasing number of available products and services thanks to new Game Changers joining the Hub.

-Loans: We also provide loans for specific ideas in order to grow the local economy, we have done so for 11 Game Changers who have invested in local real estate. While the return (1,7%/year) is marginal for us, it helps support start-ups that would not otherwise exist.

-Corporate donations:

       -Rypl: 125,000 USD

       -Granity Media: 125,000 USD

-Small individual donations:

       -Total for local Covid-19 response effort: 1500 USD 

-Corporate donations: target of $20,000 in 2021; $250,000 over 5 years. 

-Small individual donations: target of $5,000 in 2021; $90,000 over 5 years

-Grants & prizes:  target of $50,000 in 2021; $250,000 over 5 years

-Prototyping partnerships: target of $50,000 in 2021; $300,000 over 5 years

-Purchases on online marketplace: target of $8,645 in 2021; $500,000 over 5 years 

-Facility/Maintenance: $1,200

-Tools/Hardware: $23,600

-Operational Costs/Internet/Fuel: $19,200

-Local Team Salaries: $73,460

-Expenses Fund Local Team: $4,800

-Contingencies: $10,800

-Covid-19 Response: $5,000

-Expenses Fund Global Team: $22,000

-Global Team Office/Salaries: $112,471

-Consultancy: 11,294.76

-Medical Expenses: 10,762

Total: 294,587.76

We believe in our mission and our methodology, and so, hope to attract partners to support our work through financial resources, physical tools, mentoring, and expertise in leveraging tech we lack access to. 

Capacity

We actively seek support and mentorship from the Elevate community to advance research, education, and innovation, which would, ultimately, new ideas, thought leadership, and new enterprises. We are confident Elevate’s professional development services and the network would be invaluable in helping us achieve this. 

Finances

Being selected would not only bring us closer to our sustainability projections; As the prize extends over 2 years and covers much of our core operational cost it would allow us to focus on our impact.

Cultural

We have known great progress in balancing imported methodologies and mindsets with learning and local insight thanks to our co-creation approach to workshops, projects, and initiatives. We would, of course, welcome insights from other multicultural teams and their experiences.

Market

As this aspect is key to our long-term sustainability, we would welcome any partnership that would further and augment our marketing strategy.

Funding and revenue model - Being selected would greatly aid our sustainability projections.

Mentorship and/or coaching - We welcome partners interested in sharing their insight and experience to further improve our impact as individuals and as a team.

Monitoring and evaluation - We would welcome support in structuring our impact tracking methodology and processes.

Marketing, media, and exposure - As visibility is closely linked with our self-sustainability target, any support in this is welcomed. We believe help with organic digital marketing, paid and re-targeted social media, shoppable posts, influencer marketing, and creating digital storefronts on existing marketplace platforms with high traffic would all greatly support  Promise Hub’s efforts.

-MIT Open Learning, particularly MIT ReACT - we would be interested in finding out more about their insights and experiences and seeing if we could implement some of their certifications to further interested Game Changers’ skills

-MIT-Africa - they’ve implemented quite a few upskilling and dissemination projects and we would be curious to share findings and best practices as well as collaborate on any projects we could align on

-Adriana Schulz - MIT Innovators under 35 2020 list - Nakivale residents are allocated plots of land to build a house on, we can see Adriana Schulz’s user-friendly design tools having potential applications to various start-ups, businesses, and residents

-Rebecca Saive - MIT Innovators under 35 2020 list - As we would like to switch to Solar power as soon as we can afford to, we would be interested in ensuring it operates as effectively as possible - insights from her start-up would be welcomed

-Tony Pan - MIT Innovators under 35 2020 list - Nakivale residents often lack access to electricity, while many hope to one day be able to afford solar panels, Tony Pan’s thermionic converter could cover essential electricity needs (i.e. charging cell phones, cooking) for the local community.