In 2013, we launched a “Post-Graduate Certificate in Social Innovation Management” in Nairobi, Kenya. The six-month alternative Masters program we administer today—with two months online and four months in-person in either Kenya, Brazil, or India—is open to anyone with an undergraduate degree, regardless of professional background or nationality, and consists of 10 cutting-edge professional skill-building courses (taught by real-world practitioners), a social innovation project, an apprenticeship featuring an “intrapreneurship challenge,” and a much-beloved and highly personalized curriculum around self-development. Although the program is otherwise run independently of formal higher education, Amani graduates are eligible to transfer credits towards an MBA from Lynn University or a Diploma in Social Innovation from the UN-mandated University for Peace.

Since innovation and impact remain cornerstones of our mission, the program has undergone structural tweaks and changes in emphasis over the years, but the core model remains constant: six intertwined elements that combine adult-education best practices with our own innovations. Some of these elements are offered by other institutions, but we venture that nobody else provides a world-class master’s-equivalent program as affordable and personalized and experiential as this one (and in the global south no less).

  1.  A Flipped Global Approach
  2. A “Medical School” for Changemaking
  3. Skills for the 21st Century
  4. The Inner Journey of the Changemaker
  5. Affordability for Inclusion and Diversity
  6.  A Global Community of Changemakers

Read the full article about social change in the medical field by Ilaina Rabbat & Roshan Paul at Stanford Social Innovation Review.