Ugandan Social Leader Researches Nonprofit IPO

One of the world’s foremost young social entrepreneurs stopped for a recent visit at the Next Key Center to research ideas for a nonprofit IPO based on Homeward Bound's success. 

Charles Batte, a 25-year-old Ugandan medical student, is the winner of World Merit’s Your Big Year contest, which drew more than 60,000 contestants from around the globe to propose ideas for changing the world through socially minded business.

He arrived in Novato to hear more about the first nonprofit IPO, our “Immediate Public Opportunity” that enabled the community to buy fundraising “shares” to help build the Next Key Center. Charles hopes to mount a similar campaign in Uganda.

“I certainly want to try it out, especially for my Youth Empowerment Project I am developing at the moment. I think it is something that will take Ugandans by surprise and thus work to our advantage,” Charles says.

Youth empowerment is just one of the arenas important to Charles, who grew up in the capital of Kampala as one of eight children. His project organizes young people to grow trees that can be sold to corporations for planting to reduce their carbon footprint and boost their green credentials in Uganda.

Interested in helping his community from a young age, Charles went to work after high school at an auto repair shop. When he was 20, he had saved enough money to buy an acre of land to grow beans and corn, with proceeds spent on social projects.

His work has grown to 20 acres with 50 seasonal employees; proceeds fund not only the youth project but also a pilot project for a rural family health center that serves 500 people per month in Mpigi, about 80 miles from Kampala.

This year, he says, “I’m doing a lot of speeches.”

That started with the contest, which involved a final phase of 16 contestants that occurred and was televised in the United Kingdom, where Charles was chosen to receive a year of global travel to research social entrepreneurship around the globe. When we lunched with him at New Beginnings Center, he was preparing to leave for a speech in Brazil this week and had already visited countries across Africa, Asia and Europe.

“I want to show young people they can be inspired to take up projects that give back to their community,” he says. “They can succeed with this.”

To read more about Charles, please see a recent article in ChicaMod or follow him on Facebook.