I was standing in front of a blackboard in a classroom in Butembo, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and I was in the midst of a revelation. 

In that classroom were many young men who had just been taking part in a regular Saturday morning call-in program that operated via mobile phone. 

They were telling us about the various activities going on in their communities that had sprung up through what they called Radio Clubs.

All the varied activities they described – from helping people who were in prison, to building benches so people could sit during meetings, to small-scale literacy, microcredit, and environmental schemes – were being done without funding. They weren’t part of any organized program run by a donor. They were spontaneous, locally organized and supported in each small village.