Mueblea
Welcome Mueblea in Colombia to our South America Accelerator
Dominika Szaciłło, founder of the grassroots movement “Uwaga, śmieciarka jedzie” in Poland, is radically limiting the volume of trash accumulating in landfills by introducing a new role to the system: trash brokers. Through her participation in the third edition of the Dela programme, a systems change accelerator co-created by Ashoka and IKEA Social Entrepreneurship, Dominika shares her personal insights on how the accelerator helped the movement expand its impact – redefining trash and reducing landfill accumulation by demonstrating the value of unwanted items.
Nearly 650.000 people have joined the movement that began with the idea of redefining the status and redistribution of unwanted objects, which is now creating a new culture around consumption. Currently, Dominika and her team of 160 volunteers help people save their unwanted items from dumpsters by providing tools to connect them with people who will use those items.
To learn more about the impact of this cross-sector collaboration, we spoke with Dominika Szaciłło, who views success as a potential growth-blocking factor.
The unexpected success of the "Attention, garbage truck is driving" movement was a surprise to me and I was looking for the best paths for further development.
Dominika Szaciłło, founder of Uwaga, śmieciarka jedzie.
Dominika Szaciłło: I joined the Dela programme with a strong feeling that my initiative is like a very talented baby. The community I started has grown to almost 650.000 people who are happily giving away unwanted items for free. I had a feeling that, as a mother of a concept, I have the obligation to raise it in the best way possible. The unexpected success of Uwaga, śmieciarka jedzie surprised me, and I looked for the best possible ways to develop it further.
During the Dela programme, I went through a careful guidance so I could see our success from a wider perspective of system change. I went through difficult journey full of obstacles, explaining the core of our activity and its unique trash-saving mission. Although trash and unwanted items are taboo topics, experts from the social innovation field helped me with finding the best words and stories to explain the movement and the mission behind why people love to save trash.
Ashoka and IKEA Social Entrepreneurship have created a global accelerator to offer space to scale social initiatives. During the first two editions of the Dela Program, 204 selected experts from the global social and corporate innovation sector (including IKEA co-workers and associates from companies such as Microsoft) provided 24 leading social entrepreneurs with support in developing an impact scaling strategy, testing its elements in practice. In addition to the strategic work, the program enabled financial support, networking and offered other opportunities for participating social entrepreneurs selected from the Ashoka Network.