It was January 2015 and our new GROW Leadership Academy intake started in Iringa, Tanzania. We had a group of young people who were passionate about being the change in their communities and they started the programme with lots of excitement. Amongst this intake was Paul and his fellow group members who identified immediately a problem that they wanted to solve in their town.
In their social innovation and entrepreneurship module they were encouraged to identify challenges that they are passionate about and that they would like to see changed in their communities. The groups addressed challenges such as energy, environment, education, street children and early childhood development. One of the groups who participated was Envibright who has a mission of addressing the litter and environmental frustrations in their community.
Envibright team cleaning up in their community
The group of 5 launched their social venture with the goal of transforming their communities into green environments. Few believed that this would be possible but their perseverance and guidance through RLabs Iringa would be invaluable as they grew their social venture. Their products and services included using plastic bottles to build water tanks (they learned to build this from a video on YouTube where someone used plastic bottles to build a swimming pool), recycling rubber tyres to build play parks in the surrounding villages and towns, turning waste land into green areas and started a waste collection service for local homes.
This incredible team of Envibright then got introduced via RLabs friends and champions Tana Paddock and Warren Nilsson to Mr. Tolulope of Zenntih Cleaning in Canada who invested in their business and proving additional business mentorship to the team. This young group of champions have been able to grow their customer base from 0 to 400 in a few months and after using manual carts to do the pick-up of waste service for the last few months they were able to acquire a motorized tricycle to simplify their business of cleaning Iringa.
They hosted a number of special guests at their launch of this new acquisition such as the Director of CRDB Bank Iringa celebrating this incredible journey of determination and showcasing the wonderful work of our team and the GROW Leadership Academy. Nobody ever imagined they would build such a company with great growth potential in such a short time.
From cart to Tricycle
Today the team have grown to 9 young people full-time and Envibright is building a green business and making HOPE contagious. Well done to our team and a BIG thank you to our partners TANZICT and Omidyar Network for supporting RLabs Iringa.
