About

Corporate Overview

aibia is an alternative educational and development organization with locations in Italy, Sierra Leone, and New York.  

In Sierra Leone, where we started, the organization works as a social business and development incubator for multiple not-for-profit, educational, and cooperative styled endeavors aimed at producing a network of self-sustaining local communities and businesses, that localize empowerment, educational endeavors, and foster community development based on locally expressed needs. The core of the company is designed to run under the auspices of a for-profit company, maximizing the efficiencies of a modern revenue generating company (though ethically). However, any excess revenues will be used to fund local community and/or overall socio-economic capacity in the area targeted.  This will be done by reinvesting proceeds directly back into creating more job opportunities, improving localized conditions (such as roads, schools, civic works, etc), education, and expansion to other local or regional projects. The main institutionalized goal of the company is not be to maximize financial profits, but to maximize local community and socio-economic impact in the areas that we work, and to incorporate local decision making and learning on a level playing field with external actors and knowledge.

Aibia is registered in Makeni, Sierra Leone, in New York, and recently in Molise, Italy. The Sierra Leone company is mandated to source and implement responsible revenue generating business opportunities that generate opportunities, create jobs, and impart marketable skills in local communities and to local individuals. The New York location works primarily on supporting and researching projects, and providing start-up capital for delivery projects. While the Italy location is starting a new alternative community and educational project.

It is the intent of the organization to structure operations of all locations in a manor that would allow equal representation for all interested parties: the local community, the work force, and external interests. The board of directors (for conceptional purposes only) may be more of an advisory committee that would devise strategic pathways and appoint management as any company would, but the decision making would be more locally inclusive and cooperatively driven. The emphasis for aibia is on finding a balance among global, local, and worker, and to emphasize small local community operations where aibia is working – small inclusive cooperative development pockets.

It is aibia’s goal to be as locally focused as possible – local materials, local labor, local consumers – in an effort to strengthen and stabilize the local economy without the need of external entities. All of the funding that is donated or earned in the local sites will be used locally throughout the production and consumption process. There will be no profits heading abroad. However, once the business develops, is in a sound financial position and the local community is provided for, the company may look to exporting products to generate additional revenue streams to then be returned for local implementation in Sierra Leone, but it is not the focus and would only be done if it is the absolute best way to maximize local socio-economic impact. We aim to create a sustainable local economy and social apparatus that can then look further afield if it so chooses.

This organization, and business venture, has arisen from years of academic and business work and carries a different focus than other endeavors at socio-economic development and implementation in less developed areas of the world. It is seen as being fluid, expandable, horizontal, and open source. It is aibia’s goal to implement this strategic plan as a “pilot project” in the Bombali district of Sierra Leone. If we continue to develop as we have been, this project could make Bombali, and Sierra Leone, recognizable for an alternative development model using cooperative and horizontal decision making structures to both empower and develop local institutions and communities in a locally sustainable manner.