Rob and Nikki Wilson, Founders of On the Up & Read International

Rob and Nikki Wilson are best known as Founders of Read International, a social enterprise that collects used textbooks to for distribution into Africa. Their latest project, with initial funding provided by Winston Churchill Memorial Trust (www.wcmt.org.uk), is to uncover Africa’s most inspiring entrepreneurs. You can find them online at www.ontheup.org.uk. In this interview we learn more about their work and what motivates the remarkable husband and wife team.

Question: You have a really unique new social enterprise. Can you tell us more about it? What does it do? Who does it benefit? How is it run?

We are a husband/wife team. We are embarking on a journey from Cape Town to Cairo to uncover Africa’s most inspiring social entrepreneurs. As we transcend the east coast of this giant continent, we are searching each country for real changemakers; people who are bringing entrepreneurial solutions to much debated development issues. Through our networks and research, we have identified a suite of changemakers we will be visiting. We’ve tried to capture a real breadth of causes and we’re looking for people and projects who are truly exceptional. Between May and August 2011, we will be spending time with these social entrepreneurs and their projects so we can really delve into their stories, unpicking the ingredients for how passion has been converted into action. We want to get to grips with the factors which contribute to social change success and more importantly, we want to know how we can inspire others to help. Just as we were inspired when we were students, we want to galvanise others to become changemakers too.

We will be blogging as we travel, but on our return we will be amalgamating the best stories into a book. This will cover a cover a frank and honest critique of the social entrepreneur including photos, their story, inspiring quotes, words of advice, and information for the reader about how he/she can get involved in their work. We will intersperse these stories with interesting themes of social change success that unfolded throughout the journey. A share of the profits from the book will be donated back to the projects profiled.

Finally, we’re planning a UK-wide set of talks when we return back to the UK. The talk will cover a synopsis of our learning journey and a snapshot of some of the projects profiled in the book. Again, the real object behind these talks will be to inspire the audience to get involved with grass roots social change (and of course pick up a copy of the book at the same time!).

None of this would be possible without the generous support of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust (www.wcmt.org.uk) who have provided funding to get the project started – we owe them a huge debt of thanks.

Question: Is there anything people can do to help your social enterprise grow stronger? Do you need more volunteers? How can people contact you to offer you support, promotion or sponsorship?

Along our travels we are blogging about our discoveries through our website (www.ontheup.org.uk) and facebook (www.facebook.com/ontheupcapetocairo). The main thing people could do is follow these stories. ‘like’ our Facebook page and tell everyone you know to do the same. We will be writing short blog posts with our initial insights including suggestions for action for all of our followers. We want to grow an online community of people following these great stories and learning how to get involved.

Then of course, as soon as our book is on the shelves we want people to go out and buy it! Other books on social entrepreneurs suffer from being written by academics and there is a massive gap in the market for a book which uses rich and inspiring case studies to explore social entrepreneurship in action. But that will not be until early December (just in time for Christmas). In the mean time, just ‘like’ our Facebook page and follow the amazing stories. Each week a new story will inspire and is guaranteed to brighten up your day.

We also warmly welcome enquiries from any publishers interested in the concept of this book.

Question: Why did you choose to start a social enterprise instead of working in private enterprise. Your training would seem to have prepared you for a pair of financially rewarding careers?

‘On the Up’ is not the first social project we’ve set up. As students we chose to put aside the ‘rat race’ and set up a social venture of our own, READ International (www.readinternational.org.uk). It collects books from UK schools, sorts them and sends the most relevant, up-to-date, and high quality to schools in Tanzania and Uganda. Any books collected not appropriate to send are sold online or recycled to generate funding. READ now has close to 1,000 student volunteers involved across the UK. To date we’ve sent over one million books to East Africa, benefiting millions of school children. READ also delivers school workshops to tens of thousands of British school children about global citizenship and social entrepreneurship. Ever since its inception, READ’s success has shocked us both and brought with it incredible accolades including ‘Best New UK Charity in 2007’ and ‘Best International Aid and Development Charity in 2010’. After 7 years, we have both now stepped away from READ International. It has a great team of full time staff and thousands of volunteers in the UK and across East Africa. It remains close to our hearts but moving on has given us time to work on this next project, On the Up.

Rob is also the founder of NoPC (www.nopc.org.uk), an IT social enterprise aiming to provide affordable, low power and low maintenance computer technology to schools across the developing world. For his work with READ and NoPC, Rob has been recognised as Enterprising Young Brit 2010 and a Beacon Fellow 2010 for Young Philanthropist of the Year.

Nikki currently works in Fundraising Strategy at Cancer Research UK (www.cancerresearchuk.org.uk), the UK’s largest charity. Her volunteer commitments are her main passion outside of work which over the last few years have included working in a Drug Rehab Crisis Centre, campaigning for environmental charity Friends of the Earth and working as a volunteer mentor for young children with behavioural difficulties.

Question: Your website is just remarkable. You’ve been profiling entrepreneurs and NGO’s in Africa, have you not? Can you tell us something about the people you’ve come across that have really surprised or delighted you? It would be cool to hear about them.

I think what has immediately struck us both within minutes of meeting any of the incredible social entrepreneurs so far, has been their intense and unabated passion for the social cause they believe in. But what is also apparent is their fresh and innovative thinking. They are all always looking at new ways of addressing challenges. We’d love to say more – but we want people to see our thoughts in full at www.ontheup.org.uk!