{Dominique UwaseAlonga is a young social entrepreneur and founder of Imagine We – a social enterprise that aims to build a reading culture among young Rwandans and inspire them to become writers themselves. Dominique’s company equips libraries in schools and community centres, hosts reading and writing competitions, and trains potential authors.}
Alonga says that approximately 85% of books written about Rwanda are written by foreigners.
On a mission to change that, Imagine We publishes Rwandan stories, written by Rwandans themselves – an initiative that helps Imagine We gain revenues to support their other activities.
We sat down with Alonga who talked about her journey as a social entrepreneur and how her organization is building a Rwandan-led reading culture in the country.
{{Q: You identify as a social entrepreneur – can you please explain what that means?}}
{{Alonga: }} For me, this means that I have a business that makes a bit of money, but the biggest aim is not to make profit, but to increase the good that you do in your community, to help people, and to create social impact.
{{Q: Why did you choose social entrepreneurship as a model as opposed to founding a charitable organization?}}
Alonga: When Imagine We first started, we were more of an NGO. I chose to change to a social enterprise because we were looking for ways we could become less dependent on fundraising and to actually start to support ourselves.
Also, when we were using the NGO model, we started realizing that people who fund you tend to tweak your vision a little, and for us to keep our creativity and authenticity as an organization, we thought that we needed to be more independent to preserve our founding vision. We want to be able to choose what will influence Imagine We, and not to make changes just out of the fear of losing money from donors. Of course, you will always need partners, but I think that the less dependent you are on external people for funding, the more you can stay true to your initial vision.
{{Qn: So you started with different funding partners and now you’re transforming Imagine We into a self-sustaining organization.}}
{{Alonga:}} Yes, that’s the goal. Of course, great partnerships will always be a core part of what we do. We wouldn’t be where we are today without the initial grant we received from Tigo, when I won the Tigo Digital Changemakers Competition in 2014. What I always say about Tigo is that they made the dream materialize – that was the biggest safety net we ever had. They also provided us with access to the Reach for Change incubator where we received training and visibility, which makes you feel stable, and they pushed us to put a sustainability plan in place.
I think having investment and development partners is something that social entrepreneurs need in their journey – it accelerates your development. I know some social entrepreneurs who work two jobs to sustain their enterprise, so it can survive. But the accelerating factor of bigger help is always important. It helps you do what you would have done maybe in five years, but you do it in one or two.
{{Qn:}} {{There are a lot of ambitious young people with ideas to make Rwanda a better place. If they are considering social entrepreneurship, what would you tell them?}}
{{Alonga:}} You need to take risks. That’s the biggest thing. And being able to diversify, basically don’t have the fear of starting something new. At first, our goal was just to get Rwandan children to read and to get them to love reading. Over the years we’ve been tweaking that vision – we are now moving from books coming from other countries and now we are starting to produce books from Rwandan authors. We’re still geared towards impacting children and getting them to read, but we’ve broadened the way that we’re doing it.
Also, learn to collaborate with the right people. There is always this fear that the only way people will help you, but that’s not true. Getting over that thinking is really important. Many of our non-financial partnerships just helped us to gain a better reputation in the community. Although there was no money, we have a certain weight now, and a certain influence. Many of the people we collaborate with helped us to gain notoriety, which in turn helps potential investors to come to us.
Finally, having a really strong team around you. My team is really hardworking and believe in our vision – they have ownership of our vision, and they are not afraid to tell me that I’m wrong. It’s so important to have team members who love the vision as much as you do, who have a stake in the success of your social enterprise. My team is very sacrificial about what they are doing – maybe that comes with the rewards of seeing the impact their work has on children – they are very hardworking, young and creative.
{{Qn: What does 2017 look like for Imagine We?}}
{{Alonga: }} The future looks bright. This year, we’re creating our very first library in a hospital – that’s super exciting to be able to impact kids who are sick with beautiful, colourful books! We are also going to publish 2 novels – that’s where I wanted to be when we first founded the publishing side to our business and it feels really great to be achieving that milestone.
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