Theseus Mauruki Shambare-Features Writer
AT one point, Esline Sibanda had to sell vegetables.
At another, she took her one-year-old and three-year-old children to work because she could not afford domestic help.
She raised five biological children and one extended-family child while trying to establish an educational institution.
Motherhood, business and the demands of building a school were not separate parts of her life. They happened at the same time.
“I was a mother, provider, businesswoman and founder all at once,” she said.
It was during this period that Sibanda began shaping what would eventually become Innovate Institute, an educational institution with campuses in Goromonzi, Bulawayo and Harare.
A change in her personal circumstances pushed her into education entrepreneurship, requiring her to take greater responsibility for her children and her future.
Education had always been important to her.
Her academic journey, she said, taught her discipline and perseverance, while her passion for helping others eventually extended beyond the classroom.
But one of the most significant turning points in her professional journey came during the Covid-19 pandemic.
With learners unable to attend conventional classes, Sibanda began teaching through her phone. She taught herself how to use technology and the internet so she could continue supporting learners.
The experience made her think differently about both access to education and what a school could offer.
“I realised that there was a great need for accessible, quality education and for an approach that goes beyond simply preparing learners to pass examinations,” she said.
From that experience emerged the idea for the Innovate Institute.
Her interest was not simply in creating another school, but in developing an environment where learners could connect classroom knowledge with the world around them.
For Sibanda, examinations remain important, but they are only one measure of education.
A learner can achieve good marks and still struggle to communicate, work with others, solve a practical problem or create an opportunity.
“Life does not always give us examination questions with four possible answers. It gives us problems that require creativity, confidence, teamwork and initiative,” she said.
That thinking has shaped the institution’s emphasis on practical projects, experiments, technology, entrepreneurship, agriculture and problem-solving.
The question she wants learners to ask is straightforward: What can I do with what I have learnt?
It is an approach that also reflects her own experience.
When money was limited, she found another source of income by selling vegetables. When childcare was unaffordable, her young children sometimes came to work with her. When the pandemic disrupted traditional teaching, she turned to technology.
Rather than presenting these experiences as isolated obstacles, Sibanda sees them as moments that forced her to find practical answers.
Her experience has also influenced how she understands women in leadership.
She says she has sometimes had to work harder to demonstrate her capability and earn credibility.
Access to resources, making major business decisions, and balancing leadership with family responsibilities have been among the challenges she encountered. For women building businesses, the demands of family life can remain present even as professional responsibilities grow.
Sibanda’s own experience is particularly a vivid example.
There were no domestic arrangements that allowed her to completely separate her children from the work-place. Instead, she adapted her working life around the realities of raising them.
That experience has informed the message she now wants to send to young women. She believes women who reach leadership positions should create space for others to follow.
She wants girls to see leadership and entrepreneurship as possibilities available to them.
“Do not allow your circumstances to determine the size of your dreams,” she said.
Part of the infrastructure at Innovate Institute, which has campuses in Goromonzi, Bulawayo and Harare. The institution was established by Esline Sibanda, whose journey from selling vegetables to building an education enterprise is at the centre of her story of perseverance, motherhood and entrepreneurship.
Her idea of empowerment, however, is closely tied to education.
She believes schools should prepare young people not only to look for employment, but also to create solutions and opportunities. Zimbabwe’s changing technological and economic environment, she argues, makes adaptability increasingly important.
Learners need to be able to learn, unlearn and relearn as technology changes the nature of work.
For that reason, she places emphasis on technology, creativity, communication, entrepreneurship and independent thinking. But the education she describes is not only about preparing young people for the labour market.
As a Christian at Seventh-day Adventist, Sibanda said values such as integrity, honesty, discipline, responsibility, compassion, service and hard work are central to her educational philosophy.
At Innovate Institute, that philosophy is also expressed through activities beyond the conventional classroom.
Last year, Sibanda watched learners launch their first gospel music album, “Nditungamire”, an initiative that brought together education, creativity and faith.
More recently, the school hosted a “Girls Talk” session, creating a platform for female learners to discuss issues affecting them and to build confidence.
For Sibanda, such activities are part of the wider education experience she wants to create — one that allows learners to discover their talents, develop character and find their voices alongside their academic studies.
She believes education should develop character alongside academic ability.
Success, in her view, should also be measured by how a person uses their abilities to benefit others. That belief connects with her involvement in philanthropy and humanitarian work, which has been recognised through her honorary doctorate.
For Sibanda, education and service therefore intersect.
She wants learners to leave school not only with knowledge, but with the confidence and character to apply it.
“If a learner leaves us with excellent examination results but lacks character, confidence and the ability to apply their knowledge, then I would feel that we have not completed our work,” she said.
Her vision also extends to what she believes Zimbabwe’s education system could become.
She advocates for greater integration of practical education, entrepreneurship, innovation and problem-solving into the mainstream curriculum from an early stage.
The objective, she says, should be to assess not only what learners can remember, but also what they can understand, create, apply and solve.
Her own journey gives that argument a personal dimension.
Before there was an institution, there was a mother trying to provide for six children.
Before there was an established education enterprise, there were vegetables being sold at a market.
Before online teaching became part of her professional experience, there was a phone being used to keep learners connected to education during the pandemic.
And through all of those stages, Sibanda was learning the same lesson she now wants to pass to young people: that lack of resources does not necessarily mean lack of possibilities.
Her hope is that girls watching women in leadership will see more than a finished product.
They will see the work behind it. They will see that motherhood and ambition can exist in the same life, even when the balance is difficult.
And they will understand that leadership can begin long before someone is given a title.
For Sibanda, it began with finding ways to teach, provide, build, and keep moving forward with whatever was available.
Today, she wants young women to do the same — not by waiting for perfect circumstances, but recognising what they already have and asking what they can build with it.
