Sustainable Access Foundation

10/02/2026

The highlight of September was a week of real work between SAF and Tubman University’s students.

In Maryland County, Liberia, SAF’s Community Enterprise Leader, Denis Tibenkana, spent the week at William V.S. Tubman University, leading students through hands on sessions on entrepreneurship and how to build a venture from research to reality.

The week closed with the formal launch of the SAF University Model club at Tubman, giving students a standing space to keep building together long after Denis’s visit ended.

Together, SAF and Tubman University are building something students can actually own, a model where the learning happens in the work itself, not in a lecture about it.

This is early groundwork for what’s ahead, and it’s already shaping how these students think about building something that lasts.

09/17/2026

We are grateful for this partnership with Tubman University and the EIIC team. We are honored to be trusted as a guide in the entrepreneurship journey of the students.

TU, SAF Launch New Drive to Build Student Entrepreneurs
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‎HARPER, MARYLAND COUNTY — September 17, 2026: William V.S. Tubman University (TU), through its Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Incubation Center (EIIC), in partnership with the Sustainable Access Foundation (SAF), is set to launch a Student Leadership and Entrepreneurship Club training on Monday, September 21.
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‎The initiative will bring together about 50 students from TU’s six colleges for practical training in entrepreneurship, customer relations, market research, and product development. Led by SAF expert Tibenkana Denis, the training will also challenge students to explore Maryland County’s market and identify business opportunities that can be developed into viable ventures.
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‎EIIC Director Ben K. Collins said the practical component of the training is intended to help students move beyond classroom learning and identify opportunities within their own communities. “The training will also include practical research of Maryland’s market to identify potential business ventures to be implemented by the SAF Student Club through a joint initiative with the organization,” Collins disclosed.
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‎The program will also feature the formal launch and handover of the SAF University Club, providing a platform for continued student mentorship, leadership development, innovation, and entrepreneurship support.
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‎The initiative follows an MoU signed between TU President/CEO Dr. Olu Q. Menjay and SAF Executive Director Danika Tynes. An initial student entrepreneurship workshop was held in May 2026 as part of efforts to begin implementing the partnership.
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‎Based in Atlanta, Georgia, SAF supports students and young change-makers through entrepreneurship, innovation, leadership development, mentorship, financial literacy, and programs designed to promote sustainable, locally driven solutions.
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09/14/2026

The Accelerator is back for another cohort.

Last year, ten changemakers arrived with an enterprise and an obstacle standing in its way, and left nine weeks later with a plan to move past it. This year, that number grows to twelve, and the process starts exactly where it always does: real customers, real figures, and a barrier spoken out loud in the very first week.

Nine weeks. No lecturing from the front. A small group that stays in your corner long after the program wraps.

Twelve seats. Applications close September 21st.

Apply to the Accelerator here: https://www.sustainableaccessfoundation.org/our-accelerator-program

09/10/2026

Applications are open for the 2026 SAF Africa Accelerator.

Nine weeks. Twelve changemakers. Everything built in the room, on your own numbers.

"You have to change yourself before you change your community." --(SAF Africa Accelerator Participant, 2025)

That is where we start, and it is why this works. You arrive with a business and a challenge. You leave with a roadmap built to be used the day the cohort ends, and a network of people who know your work well enough to keep helping.

Begins October 12. Applications close September 21.
Learn more about the Accelerator here: https://www.sustainableaccessfoundation.org/our-accelerator-program

09/02/2026

The SAF Africa Accelerator returns for 2026.

Are you a changemaker running a community enterprise in Africa?

Twelve seats are open for nine weeks of hands-on work on your enterprise, shoulder to shoulder with eleven other changemakers facing the same climb. No lecture halls, no borrowed case studies, no ready-made pitch deck. Just your enterprise, your numbers, and your obstacle, worked through with people who know exactly what that obstacle feels like.

By the end, you'll have a Barrier Removal Plan, a costed One Year Roadmap, and a pitch deck built entirely in your own voice. Every changemaker who finishes receives an implementation grant, paid out when you take your first real step, not as a graduation gift.

You don't need every answer today. You need something already running, even if it's modest, and the honesty to name what still isn't working.

Applications close September 21st. Twelve seats, and we're keeping it that way on purpose.

Know a changemaker building something worth backing? Pass this along. Once the cohort kicks off, follow their progress with us.

Apply now: https://www.sustainableaccessfoundation.org/our-accelerator-program

07/20/2026

Six months of grinding, building, and figuring things out and we didn’t just let it pass quietly. We came together, looked each other in the eye, and celebrated everything we’ve made happen.

Wins were shared. Lessons were unpacked. The goals we set back in January came full circle in a room full of people who showed up for each other.

That’s how you close a chapter, not just by working hard, but by pausing to recognize the work. And now, fired up and ready, we’re stepping into H2 together. 💪

Thank you to everyone who showed up and shared their journey and for MAXFY for hosting the session. This is what community looks like. 🙌

06/30/2026

Holding a long view when the pressure is short-term is not naive.

This one is for the people building systems inside institutions that were not designed for what they are trying to do.

The program manager who knows the procurement rules are producing the wrong outcomes but has to work inside them anyway.

The nonprofit leader whose board wants metrics that look good in the annual report but do not reflect what is actually happening in the community.

The consultant who sees the real problem clearly and cannot always say it out loud in the room.

The researcher whose findings challenge the framework the funder is already committed to.

We see you. We have been you. The work of building better systems inside broken ones requires something that never shows up in a job description.

The capacity to hold a long view when the pressure is short-term. To stay grounded when the environment is unstable. To keep asking the harder question even when the easier one would be more comfortable. To build toward something you may not personally get to see finished.

That is not naive idealism. That is the most sophisticated thing a systems builder can do.

Keep building.

06/23/2026

That feeling of spinning is information.

The organizations that call us are not failing.

They are usually doing meaningful work, led by people who care deeply, with a real strategy somewhere on paper and real results they can point to.

What they need is someone who can walk in, see what is actually happening underneath the strategy, and help build the infrastructure that makes the work operational.

Not another framework document.
Not another offsite retreat.
Not another consultant who delivers a 90-slide deck and disappears.

The operating model. The governance structure. The decision rights. The delivery rhythm. The measurement system that tells you whether you are actually moving toward the thing you said mattered.

We have built this inside $200M government portfolios, early-stage medical device startups, territory-wide healthcare transformation programs, and community enterprise networks operating across six countries.

The problems look different from the outside.

Underneath, they usually share the same two or three failure modes.

If your organization is doing important work and still feels like it is spinning, we want you to know:

That feeling is information. And the thing it is usually pointing to is a solvable problem.

06/16/2026

The work begins within.

We cannnot meet this moment without becoming conscious, aware, self-regulated, and of service.

That is the frequency we work from.

We have sat in boardrooms managing $200M portfolios and in rural Uganda watching entrepreneurs build something from nothing with resources that would not cover a single line item on a government budget. We have been inside agencies resisting change and inside startups desperate for it. We have worked alongside systems that extract and systems that build.

What we have learned across all of it is this.
The people who actually change systems are not always the smartest or the most credentialed in the room.
They are the most grounded.

They are the ones who can be inside the chaos without becoming it. Who can hold a long view when everyone around them is reacting. Who can tell the hard truth without making it about themselves.
That groundedness is not soft. It is the hardest and most strategic thing available in any room.

Before we build any system alongside someone, we ask who is building it and from what place inside themselves they are building it.
That question changes the output every time.

06/11/2026

Systems work exactly as they are designed to work.

That is the sentence I bring into every room. It is not always a welcome one.

When a healthcare system consistently fails the same populations, that is not a malfunction. It is a function.

When a development program creates dependency year after year, that is not an unintended consequence. It is the output of the measurement system driving the work.

When a technology platform widens the equity gap it was meant to close, the question is not how it went wrong.

The question is what it was actually designed to do, and for whom.

Once you see that, you cannot unsee it.

And once you cannot unsee it, the only honest thing to do is build something different.

That is the work. That is always the work.