CINA: Enabling youth with disabilities to become social entrepreneurs

Problem

There are more than 9m people with disabilities living in the DRC. Support systems are currently limited and not sufficient. In the DRC people with disabilities lack access to basic services as well as full societal participation. It is estimated that 93% are jobless and 96% live in poverty.

Solution

CINA’s purpose is to support people with physical and albinism disabilities to unleash their potentials and create their own job opportunities as well as tackling challenges in their communities. CINA focusses on social entrepreneurship and self-organisation as tools for empowerment and job creation. Their specific target group are people, especially women, with physical and albinism disabilities, aged 18-35, that can at least read, speak French and are jobless. Their training programme consist of four stages. The objective is for their scholars to graduate from the programme and set up their own social ventures. The central theme is empowerment and each stage has a different focus. They cover practical skills (budgeting, marketing, design thinking) as well as methods that focus on mindsets and self-esteem and allow their scholars to discover their talents and passions. Scholars (often working in teams) that graduate, receive a loan of 150-200$, that they reimburse without interest after a 3-months period. CINA also aims to build a community among their scholars, alumni and collaboration partners.

CINA is a young organisation with a lean budget that is keen to track its impact. It is still in the process of developing its internal impact monitoring system. This includes economic dimensions (income, jobs created) as well as the personal development of their scholars (confidence, satisfaction).

The grant is facilitated via SINA gUG