The Butterfly Project, Uganda

Social Enterprise Africa CIC (SEA) is working towards
creating a sustainable program to nurture and develop young social
entrepreneurs in Africa. In 2008 the
Butterfly project was launched to identify promising students from rural areas
and the Kampala slums. Currently SEA is
is working in conjunction with two other organisations to implement this plan
in Uganda – Chrysalis Limited and the Chrysalis Foundation (due to open in
January 2012). Chrysalis Limited
oversees the Butterfly project based at the Chrysalis Center (space currently
rented from Life in Africa) and the Chrysalis School (currently housed adjacent
to the Creamland Primary School adjacent to and serving the Acholi Quarter and
a short walk to the Chrysalis center where the children recruited from Northern
Uganda reside). The Chrysalis Foundation
will be responsible for overseeing financial resources. We are investigating
expansion of these programs into Zambia in 2013 at which time we will be
establishing partnerships with further organisations.

Toward the goal of financial sustainability, in 2010 a trial
farming project was launched. Using land
owned by the families of the students recruited from northern Uganda, several
types of melons were planted by the students and their families. This test project confirmed the suitability
of the land and provided critical information on the steps that will be
required to make to project viable. The
goal is to develop a significant melon-farming business this year, utilising
land owned by the families of the Butterfly Project. We anticipate sixty sites where we will be
able to plant 500,000 seeds. The plans
include employing expert agriculturalists to ensure good productivity this year
and also change the method of sowing and harvesting.

Plans also underway this year to extend the Butterfly North
project to new areas and recruit twelve new students into the project who will
attend Senior 1 at the Chrysalis School, the existing students will move up to
Senior 2. As part of the expansion, we
will also need to acquire land to relocate the Chrysalis School and register it
with the Ministry of Education. We will
also add other students into both years, to a make a full complement of 40
students in both classes. With larger
numbers, we will need to expand the Chrysalis Centre, which functions as a
dormitory and also provides activity space for members of the project and also
for children living in the local community.
The Chrysalis Centre has been extremely successful. Working to stimulate and
inspire young people from the most disadvantaged part of Kampala the
programming reached over 200 children this year in its very confined
space. New equipment will need to be
sourced or procured for both the School and Centre, such as beds and bedding,
desks for school, tables and chairs. We
may also have to invest in computing equipment, if this cannot be found
elsewhere.

The project has had limited success in sourcing funding this
year. A plan has been developed to offer a limited “share” issue, to raise the
necessary capital for the building and planting programmes. The share issue, which is combined investment
for both profit and social impact, is a unique proposition. A wide-ranging
marketing strategy has been devised to utilise social media to publicise the
program. The marketing strategy will evolve during the year to raise the
profile of the project internationally, but also to prime supporters for a
second and larger share issue in 2012-13, which will allow the formation of a
second Chrysalis School and Centre in Lusaka, Zambia and a Chrysalis Centre in
Kisenyi. A third share issue in
2013-2014 will enable the building of two new Chrysalis Centres in Lyantonde
and Kitgum in northern Uganda.

Shareholders will pay £1 to plant 5 seeds, but will also receive
a significant proportion of the profits from selling the melons. If the forecast is achieved, investors will
receive a 20% return on their investment.
The market for melons in Uganda is medium. There is no market saturation, but poverty
has left some towns with only minimal ability to pay for premium products. However, markets are available in Kampala;
Kisumu, Kenya; Kigali, Rwanda; and Juba, Sudan.
We plan to invest in vehicles to ensure the melons are transported to
market cost effectively and also to pay our own farming operatives to look over
the land and ensure that the crops are nurtured. SEA is looking to acquire its own
agricultural land, to underpin the project and plant our own melon seeds to
shore up the sales.

During 2012, we will be working on the development of a
Chrysalis School franchise model, which which will generate income for us for
training and facilitate the roll-out of the project into new areas faster than
we can achieve it ourselves. Franchises
in Uganda will also provide work for our new logistics business, as the vans
that we purchase to handle the melon harvest, can also be generating income for
the whole business from passengers or from
freight.

In 2013, we will launch a village technology business, which
will sell in products from IDE, an international organisation that sells water
purification and irrigation equipment for the poorest people on earth. In this way we are offering a way to enhance
the lives of people living in the villages, through their children attending
our school.

This coming year, through the project we will support the
development of sixty young social entrepreneurs in Uganda and each of these
young people will be operating a distinct project of their own, tailored to
their own knowledge or ability – from art to music and biogas to football! Each year we will recruit more of these
children, who quickly become role models to their friends and by the end of
2014 we will have young people linked to the length and breadth of Uganda, who
have the drive, knowledge and enthusiasm to be architects of change in their
communities.

The business will continue over these three years to perfect
its melon-growing while other crops will also become part of the strategy,
particularly those tailored to the local community needs. We will perhaps
provide a more disease-resistant, tastier, or productive seed of current
crops. We will also help improve local
economies by helping each area develop its own village action plan, which might
include fish-farming, forestry, shea butter production or other ways to
capitalise on local assets.

As a social enterprise, SEA will look to be profitable,
though also to ensure that profit takes second place to social impact. We are interested in enabling the Chrysalis
Foundation to devise its own strategies independent of Social Enterprise
Africa, as the main long-term vehicle for moving the project sustainably into
the future.