Emmanuel Wabwire is a budding social entrepreneur, who has been able to impart social entrepreneurship skills to many to enable them have some financial cushion through business startups.
WHAT DO YOU DO FOR A LIVING?
I am a social entrepreneur, philanthropist and a leader through advocacy, lobbying and management. In terms of leadership, I am a youth leader. I was a class monitor in kindergarten, a head boy in secondary, served as treasurer of the Red Cross youth council in my S.6 vacation and guild president of Uganda Christian University (UCU) and Uganda National Students Association (UNSA), among many other positions. I have worked with the former Prime Minister of Uganda, Rt. Hon. John Patrick Amama Mbabazi. In 2015, I put a small pause on partisan politics and focused on actual youth advocacy which is one of the things that I am really passionate about. I also joined UNESCO and I was elected as the national youth chairman, where I rallied for quality and free education for the youth, and currently serving my second and last term.
I have championed world heritage all over Uganda and in Africa, where I was nominated by the African world heritage fund to be an ambassador in the Anglophone region, covering 26 countries in Africa. In 2011, there was an International award for young Africans helping each other, a program that was pioneered by the late Prince Philip (R.I.P), the Duke of Edinburgh. I spearheaded a campaign with my team where we fundraised over Ugx 168m for needy students and some other non-cash donations.
The money was used to offer scholarships for students to study on the African continent and exchange programs abroad in various universities in the commonwealth member countries through the International development student’s society organization (IDSS).
WHAT IS THE FARAJA FOUNDATION ABOUT?
After losing the election for eastern youth MP in 2016, my team and I felt that young people are used and dumped. They are used to being given handouts to help in political campaigns and at the end, left alone in cold air. So, there was a lot of outcry among the young people like the challenges of unemployment, having ideas without financial resources, and lack of a suitable working environment for the youth among others, cutting across the continent. There was also the problem of the failure to relate with counterparts from the west, in that Africa had its own level of sufferings as compared to the developed countries. This gave birth to Faraja Africa, which means ‘comfort Africa’. Instead of crying, why not look for a solution.
It is for capacity building, economic empowerment, social engagement and working to strengthen the gaps that exist in the systems we have like the National Youth council, UNSA e.t.c To strengthen the foundation, we maintained the youth camps which were helping to generate income.
We also ventured into technology and communication through digital storytelling which helps the foundation to run its day to day activities. We initially started from Uganda but now we are in the East African region. We have also handled the national youth and regional youth parliament in partnership with the EAC member countries’ parliament for the past four years. We also do community youth dialogues in villages and town halls across the country.
HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN ECONOMICALLY EMPOWERED BY THE FOUNDATION?
Every year, we roll out 100 young entrepreneurs.
HOW HAS THE ONLINE RECEPTION OF YOUR TELEVISION BEEN?
Currently, we have about 43,000 impressions; that is the number of people who view our YouTube channel. We started from Facebook and it had had good traction compared to the subscription rate on YouTube but the lockdown in January affected us, so we have focused the broadcast on YouTube.
AS A YOUNG MAN UNDER 40 YEARS, WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR YOUR PEERS?
I urge the youth to embrace social enterprise model because it is one of the key things the government is advising the youth to engage in to generate income and create jobs for others, for instance, the production and service industry, and migrate from job seeking to job creators.
The youth should also embrace subsistence agriculture. I learned during the lockdown that it’s not about white-collar jobs but everything is hard work and needs time and commitment. If you have lost focus, you will fail but if you focus, whether, in good or bad circumstances , you will always get through. As a young person, I want to break the norm that we only have to rely on the internet to do what we are doing while we remain stuck in rentals and yet we can own land and be farmers and landlords. Your own money matters more when starting up because it attracts external monies in the long run.
ANY SUCCESS TIPS THAT YOU HAVE FOR A YOUNG ENTREPRENEUR OUT THERE?
Have life skills. Lack of life skills like; resilience, endurance, tenacity, time and resource management leads to doom. People think that having resources is having money but that is not true. Keeping healthy in both body and mind plus transforming information into skills is the cutting edge if the youth are to succeed in their enterprises.
By Moses Oketayot
