We Are One: how Ubuntu unites Us to drive Lasting Social Change
- Rui Martins
- Jun 29
- 20 min read
"Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu" – a person is a person through other people. Rooted in the spirit of togetherness, Ubuntu is an ancient African philosophy meaning “humanity to others.” It speaks to a profound truth: we become fully human only through our relationships with others. At its core, Ubuntu embodies essential virtues – compassion, empathy, solidarity, and shared humanity. It reminds us that “I am what I am because of who we all are.”
In the world of NGOs, civil society, and grassroots movements, this isn’t just an ideal – it’s living strategy for change. Whether it's advancing health equity, human rights, or inclusive education, the most impactful transformations happen when diverse stakeholders join forces. Because in the Ubuntu worldview, progress is not a solo act – it’s a collective journey.
A Zulu proverb
This timeless Zulu proverb captures the spirit of Ubuntu, a philosophy of togetherness and mutual care. It reminds us that none of us can truly thrive alone; our humanity and success are intertwined with those around us. In the world of nonprofits and civil society, this principle couldn’t be more relevant. From expanding health care access in remote villages to championing human rights on the global stage, meaningful change happens only when diverse stakeholders unite behind a common purpose.
If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it’s that no single sector or organization has all the answers – we rise and fall together. In the spirit of Ubuntu, NGOs, governments, businesses, communities, academia, and media are joining forces like never before. They recognize that “we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others and caring for those around us”.
This collaborative approach – built on empathy, shared humanity, and a collective will – is driving social impact across health, education, equality, and more. In this article, we’ll explore how “I am because we are” becomes “We can, because we all are”, and why multi-stakeholder partnerships are the key to solving society’s toughest challenges.
Understanding Ubuntu: I Am Because We Are
Ubuntu is essentially about togetherness – the idea that our actions impact others and society as a whole. It’s a philosophy popularized by leaders like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu to express a profound truth: none of us is an island. As President Obama explained in a tribute to Mandela, “we are all bound together in ways that can be invisible to the eye… we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others and caring for those around us.” In other words, “a person is a person through other persons.”
In practice, living Ubuntu means recognizing that your well-being is tied to the well-being of your community. This mindset is the beating heart of every effective NGO and grassroots movement. Social change is not a solo endeavor; it’s a team sport. A community health worker can distribute medicine, but without local volunteers to spread the word, government clinics to supply the vaccines, and donors to fund the effort, her impact would be limited. Likewise, an advocacy group can draft a brilliant policy reform, but it takes coalitions of allies – journalists to amplify the message, sympathetic officials to champion it, citizens to demand it – to turn that idea into law.
Ubuntu in Action
During the pandemic, we saw countless examples of Ubuntu in action. Neighbors shopped for each other, companies retooled factories to produce masks, governments and NGOs coordinated to deliver aid.
As one NGO leader put it, we must “remember the Ubuntu spirit ‘I am because we are’” – balancing urgent deadlines and impact metrics with empathy, respect, patience, and mentorship in our partnerships. This principle of shared humanity guided many COVID-19 responses and remains critical as we tackle other global crises.
In essence, Ubuntu urges us to collaborate and uplift one another. For NGOs and civil society organizations (CSOs), this philosophy isn’t just a moral ideal – it’s a practical strategy. Working together is not optional; it’s unavoidable for lasting change.
No single organization, no matter how innovative or well-funded, can solve systemic problems like poverty, inequality, or climate change alone. But united by Ubuntu, “we are all connected, and one can only grow and progress through the growth and progression of others”. This worldview sets the stage for the multi-stakeholder partnerships we explore next.
The Power of Partnerships in Social Change
In development circles, there’s a growing refrain: “Partnerships are the new leadership.” The idea is simple – cross-sector collaboration is crucial for tackling challenges that no single entity can solve alone. Why? Because complex social issues – whether it’s ensuring health care for all, educating every child, or achieving gender equality – have many dimensions. Solving them requires diverse perspectives, skills, and resources that no one actor possesses in full.
Multi-stakeholder partnerships harness this diversity of expertise, funding, and reach to create innovative solutions. When NGOs, governments, businesses, and communities pool their strengths, the result is often greater than the sum of its parts.
As the World Economic Forum observes, bringing different viewpoints and assets together leads to more creative problem-solving and greater impact. A variety of stakeholders can contribute funding, technology, on-the-ground knowledge, data, or policy support, making initiatives far more scalable and sustainable than isolated efforts.
Importantly, partnerships also build legitimacy and public trust. When people see NGOs collaborating with local community leaders, or businesses aligning with public goals, it sends a message that everyone has skin in the game. Broad coalitions signal that an initiative isn’t just one group’s agenda, but a shared mission, which inspires even more people to get involved.
The United Nations recognized this by making Global Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals a cornerstone of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG 17 explicitly calls for “revitalised and enhanced global partnership” that brings together governments, civil society, the private sector, the UN system and others, mobilizing all available resources. The UN declares outright that the Global Goals can only be met if we work together. From financing and technology transfer to policy coordination, Goal 17 stresses that every sector must play a part in achieving sustainable development.
What makes a partnership successful?
Experience shows a few critical ingredients: a common purpose with a clear shared vision, aligned goals, and an environment of open communication, transparency and mutual accountability. In a true partnership, no one dominates – each partner respects the others’ strengths. Flexibility is key too; collaborations must adapt as realities change or roadblocks emerge. Whether it’s a formal public-private partnership (PPP), a global alliance, or a grassroots coalition, these principles hold.
For example, the Global Vaccine Alliance (Gavi) unites UN agencies, governments, vaccine manufacturers, philanthropies, and NGOs in a massive partnership that has immunized hundreds of millions of children worldwide. Such an effort is only possible through aligned goals (save lives through vaccination), shared resources (funding from donors, technical know-how from agencies, delivery by NGOs and local health workers), and mutual accountability to report results and adapt strategies. The payoff: millions of lives saved and diseases like polio nearly eradicated – achievements no single actor could claim alone.
Public-private partnerships and multilateral collaborations are powerful forces furthering sustainable development. Embracing a common vision, diverse stakeholders can tackle challenges from climate change to healthcare access in ways none could achieve alone.
It’s not just the big global alliances that matter.
On the community level, partnerships are often even more personal and immediate in impact. Think of a rural health clinic built by a charity: its success might depend on the local government donating land, an international NGO training the nurses, a tech company equipping it with solar panels, and the village elders conducting outreach to get patients in the door. Each stakeholder has a piece of the puzzle. Remove one, and the whole solution weakens.
This multi-stakeholder approach isn’t always easy – different cultures, agendas, or power dynamics can pose challenges. But around the world, the Ubuntu spirit is proving that when we truly collaborate, we all win. Next, we’ll look at who these stakeholders are and how their collaboration is transforming key areas like health, education, and human rights.
Diverse Stakeholders, One Goal: Who Makes Change Happen?
To “leave no one behind” (as the SDG motto goes), we need everyone at the table. Here are some of the key players in civil society partnerships, and what each brings to the fight for a better world:
Local Communities & Grassroots Leaders:
The heart and soul of social change. Community members best understand their own needs and cultural context. They contribute local knowledge, leadership, and volunteer time.
When empowered to drive projects (rather than just receive aid), communities ensure solutions are appropriate and sustainable. Example: In Latin America, the NGO TECHO believes the solution to poverty lies in partnering youth volunteers with slum residents. Volunteers and residents work together to identify community needs and build solutions together.
This grassroots approach has enabled TECHO to expand to 19 countries and mobilize over 80,000 community volunteers each year to construct homes and infrastructure in nearly 700 informal settlements – a scale only possible by honoring the leadership of the communities themselves.
Civil Society Organizations (NGOs & CBOs):
These range from large international NGOs to small community-based organizations (CBOs). NGOs often act as connectors and innovators. They pilot new approaches, deliver services to hard-to-reach populations, and amplify community voices.
They also serve as bridges, linking grassroots efforts with resources and influence from elsewhere. NGOs operate with agility and on-the-ground presence, building trust in communities that government agencies or businesses might struggle to reach.
Government & Public Sector:
Government involvement is crucial for scale and policy change. Governments provide an enabling environment – through supportive policies, funding, or integration into public services – that can take a successful local project to a nationwide program.
They also have the mandate to uphold rights and equity. Example: In Kenya, the Ministry of Health partnered with Amref Health Africa (an NGO) to roll out a mobile health education platform for community health workers. Amref and the government co-created a digitized training curriculum on a mobile app, training 1,000+ volunteer health workers to provide cancer screenings and referrals.
The government’s buy-in meant the project aligned with national health goals and could reach communities at scale, blending NGO innovation with public infrastructure.
International Organizations (UN, Multilaterals):
Bodies like the UN, World Bank, or regional organizations can convene stakeholders and channel large-scale resources. They often set global agendas (like the SDGs or human rights conventions) that guide local action.
They also facilitate knowledge-sharing across countries. For instance, after seeing success in one country, a UN agency might help replicate that model elsewhere by bringing governments and NGOs together. International orgs bring clout and coordination, ensuring that global commitments turn into local action.
Private Sector & Businesses:
Companies are increasingly essential partners, contributing more than just CSR funds. They offer technology, efficiency, and innovation that can turbocharge social projects. Businesses also have supply chains and distribution networks that can reach millions. In the best cases, they work with NGOs to design market-based solutions that are sustainable long-term.
Example: To improve farmers’ livelihoods, the Food Action Alliance (a multi-stakeholder coalition) engaged over 40 partners, including corporations and NGOs. In Vietnam, this alliance helped upskill 2.2 million farmers with sustainable agricultural practices.
Corporations provided technical expertise and market access while NGOs handled farmer training – together improving productivity and incomes for millions of smallholders. This kind of public-private-NGO partnership illustrates how aligning business incentives with social good can create win-win outcomes.
Academic & Research Institutions:
Universities and researchers support social change by providing data, evaluation, and innovation. They help identify what works (and what doesn’t), ensuring that interventions are evidence-based. Academia often partners with NGOs to pilot new approaches (e.g. novel health treatments or education methods) and measure impact rigorously.
They also build local capacity through training programs. For example, an academic institution might collaborate with an NGO to train mental health counselors in communities or evaluate the outcomes of a new financial literacy curriculum. These partnerships add credibility and continuous learning to social programs, helping successful models get refined and replicated.
Media & Influencers:
The media – from traditional journalists to social media influencers – play a powerful role as both watchdogs and amplifiers. Investigative journalism can expose injustices (like corruption or human rights abuses), often drawing on research and evidence provided by NGOs. This spurs public outrage and pressure for policy change.
Likewise, media campaigns can amplify the impact of grassroots advocacy by telling human stories that touch hearts and shift public opinion. Example: In Europe, the plight of refugees gained widespread attention through coordinated NGO-media efforts.
Journalists reporting on refugee stories, together with NGO advocacy campaigns, helped generate public empathy and push governments toward more humane policies. On a local scale, community radio programs often partner with health NGOs to broadcast vital information (say, COVID-19 prevention tips or vaccine facts) in local languages, combating misinformation and encouraging healthy behavior.
The media’s ability to shape narratives makes them key allies in building the public will for change.
Each of these stakeholders has a unique role – no one can do it alone, but together, they form an ecosystem of change. When NGO leaders, government officials, community volunteers, business executives, scholars, and journalists find common cause,“we are all bound together… there is a oneness to humanity” in those efforts. And nowhere is this oneness more needed than in the critical social challenges we face. Let’s see how collaborative action, rooted in Ubuntu, is making a difference in health, education, and inclusion around the world.
Health and Well-Being: Partnerships for Access & Equity
Health is a universal concern – and a prime example of why it takes a village to deliver care. Around the world, multi-sector alliances are closing gaps in healthcare access and ensuring no one is left behind.
Take the fight for health equity. In many low-income regions, NGOs have pioneered community-based healthcare, then partnered with governments to scale it up. In Bangladesh, for instance, the NGO BRAC trained an army of community health workers (mostly local women) who went door-to-door teaching mothers how to make oral rehydration solution to save babies from diarrhea.
This simple, community-driven approach, supported by health authorities, helped cut child deaths from diarrhea by over 90% nationwide. BRAC’s collaboration with Bangladesh’s government was crucial: together they reached every household in the country, educating 14 million mothers and virtually eliminating a major killer of children. Neither could have achieved that alone – it required NGO innovation plus government commitment to reach scale.
Frontline health partnerships often blend global support with local leadership.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is one example: it pools billions from international donors, but funds local NGOs and government programs to deliver services on the ground. In Rwanda, such partnerships between the health ministry and NGOs have transformed HIV from a death sentence to a manageable condition, with community health workers ensuring patients take their medicines and international agencies supplying the latest treatments.
Mental health is another area where Ubuntu-style collaboration shines. Picture a quiet park in Zimbabwe, where an elderly grandmother sits on a wooden bench, holding the hand of a younger woman who is pouring out her troubles. This is the Friendship Bench project – an innovative community mental health program.
Local grandmothers are trained by mental health professionals (with support from academic researchers and NGOs) to provide evidence-based talk therapy to others in their community. The approach creatively fills the mental health provider gap by empowering community members as counselors, with oversight from the health system.
And it works.
The Friendship Bench has now trained over 3,000 community health workers across 70 communities, reaching more than 700,000 people and reducing depression and suicidal thoughts by 78% among participants.
This success grew from a partnership of academia (which developed the therapy method), local NGOs (which implemented training), the government health ministry (which integrated the program), and community leaders (who helped destigmatize seeking help). By connecting scientific knowledge with cultural empathy, Zimbabwe found a collaborative way to heal minds – illustrating that mental well-being, just like physical health, flourishes when cared for by the community.
Around the world, there are countless more examples. In rural India, NGOs partner with tech companies to equip community clinics with telemedicine tools, while state governments recruit and pay community health nurses – together bringing quality healthcare to remote villages.
In West Africa, during the Ebola epidemic, local youth groups, international NGOs, and national governments formed joint task forces to do everything from contact tracing to public education, finally containing a deadly disease. Collaboration literally saves lives.
One health partnership that encapsulates Ubuntu is Amref Health Africa’s model.
Amref, Africa’s largest health NGO, explicitly embraces the proverb “I am, because we are” as a guiding ethos. Working across 35 countries, Amref links communities, health ministries, and global partners to strengthen health systems. In a single year, Amref’s programs (ranging from training midwives to improving water and sanitation) directly reached 16.6 million people.
They achieve this by working together with local stakeholders – training over 100,000 community health volunteers and coordinating with government clinics. The result is “community-driven impact” at massive scale, proving that when empathy and solidarity guide our health interventions, we can build healthier, more resilient communities on a foundation of trust.
Education and Opportunity: Building Capacity Together
Education is often called the great equalizer – but only if everyone can access it. Here too, partnerships are unlocking doors of opportunity that used to be closed for many. NGOs, governments and others are teaming up to bring quality education and training to those who need it most, from remote villages to urban slums.
A shining example comes from Bangladesh. In the 1980s, millions of Bangladeshi children – especially girls, the very poor, and those in rural areas – were not in school. The government alone struggled to reach them. Enter BRAC, the NGO we met earlier. BRAC started opening one-room community schools in villages, hiring local women as teachers and tailoring schedules to the needs of working children. It was a humble start, but BRAC worked in tandem with communities and later with the government to scale up what became a parallel education system for the underserved.
The results are staggering over the past few decades.
BRAC schools have graduated 14 million children who might otherwise have never gotten an education. These low-cost, scalable schools prioritized girls, children with disabilities, and those in hard-to-reach areas. Today, Bangladesh’s education ministry and BRAC continue to collaborate, with BRAC running tens of thousands of non-formal schools while influencing national education policy.
The government even adopted many of BRAC’s practices (like flexible class times and condensed curricula) to better serve marginalized students. This partnership essentially created a “second chance” schooling system – demonstrating how NGO innovation plus government adoption can dramatically broaden educational access.
In Latin America, the earlier example of TECHO also doubles as an education story. While TECHO’s primary mission is improving housing, it implicitly educates and empowers youth volunteers and community members. Young people learn leadership and construction skills; families learn how to advocate for their needs.
These informal learning outcomes strengthen communities long after a house is built.
Moreover, TECHO often connects communities to other services like job training or formal education programs through its network. It’s a reminder that education isn’t only in classrooms – any partnership that shares knowledge, skills, or capacity is investing in human development.
Formal education initiatives likewise benefit from cross-sector teamwork. Consider a program in Indonesia where a nonprofit and a telecom company worked with the Ministry of Education to bring digital learning to rural schools. The company provided tablets and internet connectivity, the NGO trained teachers to use new e-learning curricula, and the government facilitated integration into public schools’ lesson plans.
The outcome: students in remote Eastern Indonesian islands suddenly had access to quality learning materials and could even connect with volunteer tutors in cities via e-learning – a leapfrog that none of the three partners could have managed alone.
Capacity building goes beyond school-age education. Adult education, vocational training, and financial literacy programs are proliferating through partnerships. In West Africa, NGOs have joined with banks to run financial literacy workshops for women in rural communities, teaching basics of saving, credit, and entrepreneurship.
The NGOs recruit and organize the women’s groups, local microfinance institutions provide expertise (and later, micro-loans for those ready to start businesses), and often government extension workers or community leaders offer venues and credibility for the training. Such collaborations empower participants with knowledge to improve their livelihoods – a critical step toward breaking the cycle of poverty.
Another powerful example is the Edison Alliance’s “1 Billion Lives Challenge” at the World Economic Forum.
This initiative aims to bring digital access to 1 billion people in health care, education, and financial services by 2025. It has a coalition ranging from tech giants to community organizations.
In India, for instance, Ericsson (a telecommunications firm) partnered with the Bharti Foundation (a philanthropic arm) to deploy a STEM education program to rural students. In its first phase, 300 students benefited, and the program is expanding to more schools.
Similarly, in Malaysia, Ericsson teamed up with a university and the national telecom company to teach students about 5G technology, reaching 1,200 students in year one.
These are small beginnings but illustrate how corporate technology and nonprofit reach can combine to equip young people with 21st-century skills.
As these pilots grow, governments often step in to help replicate them nationally – again showing the lifecycle of innovation: pilot, prove, partner, and scale.
Whether it’s basic literacy classes or advanced digital skills training, the common thread is Ubuntu in education: recognizing that my knowledge and opportunities expand when I help my neighbor learn. Every mentorship program, every community workshop embodies this, as those with skills volunteer to teach others. This spirit fuels collaborations like global university partnerships that offer scholarships to marginalized youth, or NGOs linking with local businesses to create apprenticeship programs for unemployed youth. The result is not just individual success stories, but more resilient, self-reliant communities prepared for the future.
Inclusion, Rights, and Equality: Leaving No One Behind
Ubuntu teaches that “none of us is truly free until all of us are truly free.” Social inclusion and human rights are areas where that ideal is put to the test.
Discrimination, marginalization, and injustice isolate individuals from the collective “we”. That’s why NGOs and civil society work tirelessly, often in alliance with unlikely partners, to re-integrate and empower the most vulnerable among us – be it by gender, race, disability, or circumstance.
One moving story of inclusion comes from the realm of prisoner reintegration. The stigma of a prison record can be a life sentence of exclusion, unless society intentionally offers a bridge back. In many countries, NGOs have partnered with both government correctional services and local businesses to create “second chance” programs.
For example, in Italy, a social cooperative called Made in Carcere (“Made in Prison”) works with female inmates to produce handbags and textiles.
They teamed up with the prison authorities (to allow workshops inside prisons), fashion designers (to provide skills training and design input), and ethical retail companies (to market the products).
The women not only earn income and skills while incarcerated, but upon release they have work experience and sometimes job offers waiting – drastically reducing recidivism. Meanwhile, the public gets to support these women’s new start by purchasing the products. It’s a full-circle partnership: government, nonprofit, and businesses working together to turn former prisoners into productive community members.
Similar programs exist worldwide – from culinary training in UK prisons in partnership with celebrity chefs, to U.S. initiatives where tech companies teach coding to inmates. Each requires multi-stakeholder buy-in to succeed, aligning security policies, funding, training, and employment opportunities. And each success story represents a life reclaimed – an “outsider” brought back into the community.
Gender equality movements likewise harness broad alliances.
Consider the global campaign to end child marriage. Local women’s rights groups lead the charge in villages, negotiating with families and religious leaders. National NGOs provide safe shelters and education for girls, while pushing for legal reforms.
International organizations bring funding and spotlight the issue on world stages. Even men and boys are engaged through “HeForShe” style initiatives, sometimes led by male champions from the community or sports and entertainment figures.
The media has aired powerful documentaries amplifying survivors’ voices, shifting public attitudes. And crucially, many governments – influenced by this advocacy – have passed stricter laws or launched national action plans to curb child marriage. In countries like Malawi and India, these combined efforts (legal + grassroots education + alternative opportunities for girls) have started to bring down the rates of child marriage, proving that entrenched cultural practices can change when the whole society works in unison. The fight is far from over, but every percentage point decrease represents thousands of young girls now free to complete school and choose their future.
Another realm where “I am because we are” manifests is disability inclusion.
The motto in disability activism, “Nothing about us without us,” echoes Ubuntu’s call for shared humanity. We see multi-stakeholder collaborations forming to ensure people with disabilities have equal access to education, employment, and public life.
For instance, in Europe, some city governments work with disability rights NGOs and private employers to create internship pipelines for young adults with intellectual disabilities. The NGOs provide job coaching and support, the companies offer internships and a path to jobs, and city agencies might offer tax incentives or recognize businesses that commit to inclusive hiring.
Meanwhile, advocacy campaigns led by people with disabilities and the media have helped pass stronger accessibility laws. Each part reinforces the others – advocacy sets the stage, pilot programs demonstrate success, governments and businesses then adopt and expand the practice. The result: more people with disabilities visible in workplaces, schools, and media, changing public perceptions and affirming that everyone belongs.
Empowering the voiceless also means standing up for human rights in hostile environments.
Civil society often forms protective coalitions in such cases. For example, when journalists or activists face persecution for exposing abuses, NGOs team up with international bodies and media outlets to apply pressure for their release – a blend of legal aid, advocacy, and public awareness.
In some countries, human rights defenders’ networks include local NGOs, the national human rights commission (if independent), global organizations like Amnesty International, and sympathetic diplomats. By acting in concert, they can sometimes safeguard individuals at risk and push governments to honor their commitments.
It is dangerous, thankless work at times – but it underscores the Ubuntu belief that “your freedom and dignity are bound up with mine.” If one person is unjustly silenced, we are all a little less free; thus, an injury to one is an injury to all, prompting collective action.
Finally, the quest for stronger, more resilient communities ties all these threads together.
Resilience – whether to climate disasters, economic shocks, or social upheaval – comes from unity. When a cyclone strikes a Southeast Asian coast, the most effective response is often a coalition: community leaders guiding evacuations, government agencies providing emergency services, NGOs coordinating relief distribution, companies donating supplies and logistics, and media disseminating life-saving information.
We saw this during events like Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, where local volunteer networks, church groups, international NGOs, and the military (local and foreign) collaborated in an extraordinary relief effort. Those communities that had pre-existing partnerships – such as disaster preparedness committees trained by NGOs in concert with local authorities – bounced back faster. It’s a potent lesson that the time to build partnerships is before the crisis. By investing in social capital and coordination in normal times (drills, education, trust-building), communities can weather storms – literally and figuratively – much better together.
From health to education to human rights, these stories share a clear message: progress happens when we unite across our differences toward a common good. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “we are made for interdependence… what you do affects the whole world”. Each positive action ripples outward, inspiring others and strengthening the social fabric.
Joining Forces: How You Can Be Part of “We”
The evidence is overwhelming: I am because we are. When NGOs, civil society, and a diverse array of allies join forces, real change takes root – in policies, in communities, and in people’s lives. This understanding has huge implications for how we tackle the challenges ahead, from achieving universal health coverage to climate justice to economic equality.
For leaders in NGOs and advocacy groups, the takeaway is to embrace partnership as a strategy, not an afterthought. Seek out non-traditional allies – maybe a tech startup can help with data analysis, or a local farmers’ cooperative can help reach rural women, or a popular radio DJ can lend their voice to your campaign. As one development expert noted, cross-sector collaboration brings out the best in each contributor and leads to “greater impact… scalability and sustainability of initiatives over time.” Staying siloed is a recipe for limited reach; working in concert multiplies your power to do good.
For donors and government partners, it’s important to fund and champion collaborative approaches.
This can mean supporting coalition grants (not just single-organization projects), fostering public-private partnership platforms, or creating forums where grassroots representatives have a seat alongside officials and business leaders. By breaking down funding and policy silos, you enable holistic solutions that attack problems from multiple angles.
Even as individuals – as global citizens – we each have a role. Ubuntu calls on all of us to ask: “How am I uplifting others through my actions?” Perhaps you can volunteer with a community organization, or mentor a young person, or simply use your voice on social media to amplify a cause you care about. Remember that everyone in society needs to play a part, no matter how small it may seem. When you do well and contribute, “it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity”.
Ready to Make an Impact Together?
In a world that often celebrates individual heroes, the Ubuntu philosophy reminds us that our true strength lies in unity. The most inspiring successes – a village free of disease, a generation of girls educated, a marginalized group gaining rights – are shared victories. They happen when we come together, guided by compassion, mutual respect, and a vision of a better future for all.
Now is the time to put “I am because we are” into practice. Whether you’re an NGO leader forging the next cross-sector alliance, a business looking to invest in communities, a policymaker crafting inclusive policies, or a citizen passionate about change – step forward and reach out. Build that partnership. Listen to those on the frontlines. Lend your skills or resources where they complement others. By weaving our efforts together, we create an unbreakable fabric of change.
No one is left behind when everyone moves forward, hand in hand.
This is the promise of Ubuntu and the engine behind civil society’s greatest achievements.
Let’s continue to embrace it – uniting across sectors and borders – to tackle whatever challenges come our way. As we join forces for health, equity, education, human rights and more, we affirm the fundamental truth: I am what we are.
Together, we are unstoppable. Join us in turning Ubuntu into action – in our organizations, our communities, and our everyday lives – and be part of the change that empowers all of us.
Together, we rise. Together, we thrive.
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