SISTERS BLENDED VALUE PROJECT (SBVP)
The Association of Consecrated Women in Eastern and Central Africa, (ACWEC) is on the path to transforming Religious Sisters’ social ministries in to social enterprises.
Through the the project dubbed the Sisters Blended Value Project, (SBVP), ACWECA presents to Women Religious Institutes an opportunity of learning social entrepreneurship that will transform sisters’ current social ministries that charity driven into social enterprises.
The Regional body (ACWECA) in collaboration with the Miller Centre for Social Entrepreneurship developed the approach of this project and shared it with congregations that were ready to accelerate successful and promising social enterprises within their ministry. The project links the objectives of ACWECA to that of congregations striving to enhance the sustainability of their charism, ministry and wellbeing.
The project was initiated after learning from the current realities which revealed that most of the sisters’ ministries in the region rely on donor funding. This is despite the fact that donor funding is shrinking day by day, thus leaving the question of sustainability unaddressed.
In view of this, ACWECA developed a pilot project in collaboration with the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University in the USA, and launched a major initiative to expand its global reach and impact. The SBVP of ACWECA will anchor the social enterprise movement in the Region and more broadly across Africa.
The initiative is aimed at strengthening collaboration and networking with likeminded institutions within the Region and beyond to support Catholic Sisters to build up their vision, ministry, infrastructure and committed personnel. This will help to enhance their ability in social entrepreneurship while strengthening their organizational sustainability and profile among the people they serve.
Through this Project, sisters will improve their technical capacity in social entrepreneurship that will lead to increased institutional ministry stability and enhanced capital investment. Participating congregations will work as a team with the support and guidance of ACWECA and Miller Centre at all levels.
In this way, participating congregations shall share their knowledge, skills and resources in line with the Mission of ACWECA: “to promote the spirit of collaboration and sharing of spiritual, human and economic resources among member conferences to enhance religious formation, strengthen leadership capacity for deeper evangelization.”
In this collaboration too, ACWECA is focused on developing the capacity of the sisters and support their social enterprises to positively impact hundreds of thousands of lives within the Region. This will be done through adapting and translating Miller Center’s methodologies to address the unique challenges faced by sisters in the Region.
The SBVP’s core mission is to “catalyze sustainable and scalable solutions that alleviate poverty across the ACWECA Region.” The Project will help to distinguish between charity and social entrepreneurship, and significantly expand the influence and global reach with methodologies that will enable sisters to grow their businesses and positively impact many more lives in the Region.
The project was formally launched in January, 2019, after ACWECA entered a partnership with Miller Centre in August 2018. At the launch, the sisters from Kenya and Uganda through learning visits were exposed to social enterprises within their countries. This was to help them draw from the practical examples of these enterprises so as to build their own social enterprises.
needs of the Sisters. The workshop was designed to help the Sisters grow in their understanding of social entrepreneurship, distinguish social enterprise from charity approach, and learn how to develop their own entrepreneurial initiatives.
The workshop addressed topics such as theories of change, social value creation, value chains, and partnership strategies, among others.
Through this project, the sisters will seek to align their initiatives – i.e. their ministries into UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, (SDGs) to bring the change and transformation the world is looking for.
But whatever enterprise the sisters wish to venture into, ACWECA strives to ensure that it must be in line with their charism, vision and mission, as “Social enterprises are always mission driven”.