Ubun tuArmy
​Poverty is not a lack of resource, it is a lack of connection, a lack of community. With community we can solve the issues of food, water and shelter, but without it, we have only politics and charity left, and neither solve anything.
Ubuntu
​I am Ubuntu Army
You are Ubuntu Army
We are all Ubuntu Army
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We are Ubuntu Army.
For administrative purposes, we are classified as a non-profit organisation, but we do not prioritise your donation, or your subscription. We prioritise you. This website is presented with the sole ambition of helping you reimagine your capacity, as an individual, to create change in your country. It is a call to acknowledge your potential as an individual, to harness your power as an individual, and through your individual kind action, to unite with your neighbours, and to reclaim your community. To reclaim your country.
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We believe that it is possible, in fact inevitable, that individuals, acting together in community, will save our countries. This is where the real power lies. Amongst the people. The politicians, the corporations and the non-profit sector rely on us to support them, to validate them. Without us they do not exist. While it is simple and convenient to cast a vote, to pledge a donation, to support a brand, these actions create no change. The division and poverty continue to grow. The system is broken. This is the bottom line.
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While serving the poor and vulnerable through lockdowns, riots and flood in South Africa, Ubuntu Army discovered a path to change. A path to freedom. The path is more complex and less convenient than casting a vote or pledging a donation, but ultimately incredibly simple. And powerful. Ubuntu Army discovered that support offered by ordinary people, and received, by other ordinary people, unite all concerned, and builds trust and community between all those involved in the transaction. Compassion builds community. Community builds countries.
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When individuals personally address the poverty and inequality that surrounds them, division is destroyed. Rather than rely on government or institution for change, the ordinary men and women, the Ubuntu Army, step into the fight against poverty, and form, and hold, the thin red line of Ubuntu around the vulnerable. Through the bond of sharing, of Ubuntu, unity is created and true democracy, free of agenda and divisive politics is forged. Poverty and division in one breath. Ubuntu.
You, the ordinary, everyday, garden-variety people, the Ubuntu Army, hold the key to your salvation and to the salvation of your country. You join Ubuntu Army, by practicing independent, on-your-own-terms-acts-of-kindness. You leave your comfort zones to connect with those on the other side of the street, on the other side of the divide, on the other side of your fear. In so doing, you reclaim your power, your connection, your community, and ultimately your country.
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Ubuntu Army is a rallying cry for a Compassion Revolution.
Unite and Conquer.
At Ubuntu Army we are passionate about our individual and collective ability to do three things.
Connection is the opposite of division. Connection is the opposite of poverty. At Ubuntu Army, we are passionate about creating connections between ordinary, previously seperated people. Connections create community, and as communities, we can directly address the issues of poverty, hate and division. We know this from our work on the ground with the vulnerable during Covid lockdowns, riots and flood in South Africa over the past four years. Connection creates the change we all so badly want. Not politics or charity, but connection between previously separated people. This is what change looks like.
At Ubuntu Army we build connection by building Ubuntu Links. Building an Ubuntu Link is the single most important act of kindness we will take in our lives. It is an act of strategic empathy, of matching love and action. It is a simple, uncomplicated act. It is an act of compassion, an act of connection, an act of community. It is an act that destroys division, directly fights poverty, and heals pain. It is an act that will save us, our society, our country, our humanity, and ultimately, this creaking planet of ours. It is an act of revolution. It is an act that lies at the core of the Compassion Revolution.
Ubuntu Army evolved out of the response that a man and his truck offered to the newly vulnerable In Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa during three years of Covid lockdowns, widespread rioting and devastating floods. One man, with a tenuous grasp of social media, and his truck, managed, with the support of his local community and an evolving global online community, to provide, food, water and shelter, and perhaps most importantly connection, to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people. At Ubuntu Army, we believe that a single man or woman, with their own limited resource, can make real change in the lives of those suffering.
Our approach to crisis and disaster is simple. We believe in direct, on-the-ground connection and collaboration with the newly vulnerable. We believe that the newly vulnerable in a community must be connected with those in the community who are able to help. We believe in connecting and resourcing those who are able to help, in order to facilitate their individual and collective response to the disaster. The help offered by everyday members of a community, not only saves the lives of those affected by disaster, but creates connection within the community, a legacy that strengthens and unites the wider community as it rebuilds. Connection builds community.
So, how do you join Ubuntu Army?
Simple.
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At Ubuntu Army we believe that there is a workable, repeatable, scaleable solution to every aspect of the poverty that we have encountered while serving the vulnerable, on the ground, in South Africa. To uncover these solutions, a thorough understanding of the problem is required, as well as a dedication to the ethic that poverty can and must be defeated. The poverty is growing, and we believe that well directed, common sense research and implementation will go a long way to dismantling the experience of poverty. To find real solutions to poverty, we built the Poverty Lab.
The Poverty Lab is a think-action tank working on behalf of the vulnerable. A collaboration of designers, engineers, social scientists, artists, strategists, accountants, lawyers. A collaboration of everyday people, working together and alone, to identify the components of poverty, and to develop solutions to these components. The Poverty Lab employs a multi-disciplinary, inclusive approach to research, advocates for its findings, and invests in people, technology and projects that directly, and effectively, fight poverty, on the frontline. To date, the Ubuntu Farm has been our flagship project, with new research projects in the tank.
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Build an Ubuntu Link. This is the foundation of your membership. If we are to solve poverty, destroy division, and reclaim our humanity, then every human must build an Ubuntu Link. This is essential. There is no room for complaint, from any of us, regarding the poverty we live in, or the poverty that surrounds us, if this first step is not taken. By every single one of us. Building an Ubuntu Link is a personal act of revolution within a system that thrives on division and inequality. Building an Ubuntu Link, builds community, destroys poverty, and has the power to save our neighbourhoods, our communities, our countries, our humanity, It's that simple.
How else can you help?
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Register with Ubuntu Army to become a member of a global movement in connection and response. Our hope, is that your registration will allow us to link you to a member of your local community, who may be vulnerable and experiencing poverty. This connection is the basis of community, and the basis of your community's fight against poverty and division. Your registration is especially important during times of crisis and disaster, when the vulnerable are truly exposed, and a response needs to be mobilised rapidly.
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Join the Poverty Lab, and add your voice, your expertise, your passion to the projects that are in development. Or introduce your own project, perspective or field of interest. Through collaboration with other invested members, solutions to poverty can be researched and tested in an open source environment. As viable solutions are discovered, negotiated and substantiated, Ubuntu Army will do its best to provide resource to these projects and to support their implementation into affected communities around the world.
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Our success in reaching those who are suffering depends entirely on our ability to mobilise a community response around them. To create community, we must connect, we must share. To create a community of Ubuntu, an Ubuntu Army, we would like you to share your story of creating an Ubuntu Link, the good and the bad, and we would like you to encourage and motivate others to build an Ubuntu Link of their own. To encourage others to register with Ubuntu Army for future service. It is through weight of numbers that poverty and division will be destroyed, and our countries reclaimed.
What about donation?
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Ubuntu Army does not prioritise donation. For the most part, we would like you to keep your money to build, and sustain, you own Ubuntu Link, as the connection created in this transaction is everything..However, we do require financial contribution to respond to disaster as it unfolds, to advocate for establishing Ubuntu Link as a global ethic, to support our research and development into poverty, to distribute and plant Ubuntu Farms, and to pay our administrative costs.
In an ideal world, Ubuntu Army would not exist. Unfortunately, we are not living in an ideal world. Poverty and division are real. Ubuntu Army is here to end poverty and division. We are not looking to join the non-profit sector for revenue or career. We are here to end poverty, to eradicate division, and to dissolve once the job is done. We are transparent and lean. Our financial records are available to all members and contributors, at any point, and we do our best to convert 98% of your contribution directly into ending poverty, and supporting those in crisis.
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