ubuntu army
ubuntu link
​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.
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the magic button
The poverty that surrounds us is ours. The division that we subscribe to is ours. The differences that exist between us in our political, religious, racial and cultural spaces are ours. We choose them. We agree to them. The poverty and the division live and breathe in our communities. They are part of our neighbourhoods, of our daily lives. They are caused by the mechanics of the social and economic system in which we all participate. And by our decisions within this system. The poverty and the division are ours.
There is no magic button to push to solve this poverty or division. No political party or NGO has the ability to solve either, despite our votes and donations, and despite their promises and good intentions. In fact, most institutions thrive on our difference. They market to it. They exploit it. Our donations and our votes do nothing for the welfare of our communities, or our countries. They never have. There is no quick, convenient fix. No magic button. The poverty is growing. The division, , the difference, the tribalism, the hatred is growing, and the system for its solution, if there has ever really been one, has failed. It’s that simple.
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the thin red line
We may choose to leave our country., to leave our poverty, to leave our division, to leave our problems behind. If you choose to leave, Hamba kahle, travel safely. We choose to stay, to own our poverty, to own our division. If you choose to stay, the it’s time to fight. It is time to take our place in the thin red line of Ubuntu. The thin red line that wraps around the vulnerable. The thin red line that expels division. It is our responsibility, our personal responsibility, to represent and protect the vulnerable. It is our responsibility to reach across the division. If we choose to stay, then we choose to serve our community. To serve our country.
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So, how do we as individuals fight poverty and division? Simple. We must each connect with someone from whom we are separated by politics, race, religion, socio-economics or culture. This connection creates a personal relationship between us and "them". It creates a relationship in which we can address our poverty, address our suffering. It creates a relationship that abandons our difference. And. By reaching across the division, by connecting, we create a more integrated, more whole community. We create a community of understanding, of compassion, of caring. We create a community in which inequality is acknowledged. A community in which poverty isn't tolerated. If we stay we must each build an Ubuntu Link.
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a micro-community
An Ubuntu Link is an incredibly simple mechanism. It is a direct link between us and a vulnerable member of our community. It is a direct link to a member of our community from whom we are separated. In building an Ubuntu Link, we are building a micro-community between ourselves and a vulnerable individual, between ourselves and an "other". To build an Ubuntu Link, we need to leave our comfort zones, and introduce ourselves to the people living on the other side of the street, on the other side of the socio-economic, political, racial or religious divide. On the other side of our fear.
An Ubuntu Link is a relationship of equality, of vulnerability, of learning, of accountability, of sharing. We approach the connection with an open heart, free of judgement. We stretch ourselves. We expand out of our comfort zone. We move beyond the hierarchy of our employee-employer relationships, beyond the benevolence at our faith, beyond our self-assured politics, and meet the person from whom we are truly separated. Meet the person who will teach us the most. This is what connection looks like. This is what change looks like.
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Hi
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introduce yourself
The first step is to introduce yourself to someone from whom you are separated. This may feel uncomfortable at first, but the path to connection only improves once the ice is broken. Introduce yourself swap numbers, start chatting, perhaps online at first. Keep it simple. Once you're both comfortable, arrange to meet, perhaps in a neutral location. This may be less intimidating for both of you. Meet at a restaurant, a coffee shop, on the beach, at a park. Start the process of connecting. Meet. Chat.
As you get to know each other, the discomfort will subside, the differences will be less pronounced, and the opportunities for connection will grow. As your connection solidifies, it's can expand. It’s time to meet dinners, for walks, for birthdays in backyards. It's time to share stories and swap recipes. It’s time to invest in each other’s lives, invest in each other’s children, families, hopes, fears, victories and defeats. It’s time to ask for help, and to offer help. It's time to become friends. Perhaps over time, to become family.
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a personal basis
Creating an Ubuntu Link allows us to address the poverty experienced by the members in our Link on a personal basis. An Ubuntu Link offers simple, connected and unprecedented support for all those involved. It's a lifeline, a safety net, a support base, on every level. Creating an Ubuntu Link allows us to help and be helped. Creating an Ubuntu Link provides us with much needed personal support and that is much needed in the world we live in.
During times of crisis we step forward, and offer support to the vulnerable members in our Link, as it is during these times that the vulnerable truly suffer. During times of crisis we may need to step back and ask for help. During times of crisis and disaster, we give. Everyone involved in the link was the right, responsibility and privilege to give. And receive. Unreservedly. Whatever is needed. This is not charity, this is crisis management. During times of crisis, resource, time, emotional space, logistics will be needed. Don’t hold back. Give what you can. And take when you need.
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a two-way street
During more sedate, domestic times, we do not prioritise money and donation. Instead, we offer our time, our skills, our support, our love, our resource, ourselves to the people in our Link. Jump in. Get involved. Build your link, your relationships, your friendships. Get connected. Invest in the relationships that are developing. This applies to everyone involved as an Ubuntu Link is a two-way street. While resource may flow, more often, in one direction, we all have our own unique, interesting and valuable selves to offer. We all have time, skills, support, and love to offer.
In our Links we take responsibility for each other. On an emotional, physical, and material basis. We support each other. Unconditionally. Our financial capacity is irrelevant to our contribution. We give what we have, when needed. It is not the resource that matters, but rather the connection itself that destroys poverty and division, in that the we all feel supported, have the space to think, the opportunity to strategize and the privilege to dream. This is the end of poverty, as the Ubuntu Link ensures the survival of all involved, and delivers hope to all. Hope is the opposite of poverty.
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money
Financial support is essential in creating security during times of crisis. During more sedate times, financial support can also be incredibly powerful. If you have the available means, and wish to support the members of your Link financially, look for long term benefit and dividend. Invest in infrastructure, education, vocation, enterprise. This will allow the less resourced in your Link the opportunity to develop independence and dignity, and will ultimately protect and grow your relationships. As you get to know your Link, as you connect, you will be able to give strategically, to give effectively. Or not to give. Donation without connection is charity, and charity achieves nothing.
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With that said, financial contributions to the members of your Link are not a prerequisite for establishing a Link. The personal connections between you and your Link are far more important than contribution. Where charity often gives without due diligence, or proper management, your ability to detect dishonesty around financial support is much enhanced, as you have a personal relationship with the members of your Link. You know each other. The personal connections between you and the members of your Link will produce financial clarity and solutions to financial challenges, if they arise.
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UBUNTU ARMY FUND
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ubuntu army fund
The Ubuntu Army Fund is a long-range investment instrument that we are developing. We hope that the UAF will provide the members of an Ubuntu Link with the means by which to create long range, vocation, education and need specific financial support to those members of the link who lack resource.
The UAF will be an investment fund available to all Ubuntu Army members wishing to invest in the future of the members of their Link. Long range, micro- investment in empowerment, education, and entrepreneurship, within the safety of an Ubuntu Link, creates dignity and independence, both of which are important in creating equity in our communities. Investment over charity and donation.
Details will be released shortly.
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action
An Ubuntu Link prioritises action over criticism. Creation over criticism. Criticism is easy. Anyone can do it. Criticism dominates our political and social spaces. Politicians, keyboard warriors and marketeers are brilliant at it. Criticising is often confused with creating. They are very different. Criticism creates nothing, apart from division and tribalism. Criticism creates sides and keeps politicians in a job. Creation on the other hand, is more difficult. It involves doing rather than saying. Creation takes courage and action, and is far more rewarding.
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Creating an Ubuntu Link is action. Creating an Ubuntu Link creates relationship, dialogue and understanding. Creating an Ubuntu Link creates connection, between previously divided and separated people. Creating an Ubuntu Link destroys mistrust and division and breaks down the building blocks of toxic politics. Creating an Ubuntu Link allows for learning and sharing. Creating an Ubuntu Link creates unity and community. Creating an Ubuntu Link creates hope. Creating an Ubuntu Link will solve poverty. Creating an Ubuntu Link involves effort. It involves leaving our comfort zones. Creating an Ubuntu Link requires action.
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YOUR COUNT
NEEDS YOU
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a word of caution
Creating an Ubuntu Link is not a linear experience. In creating an Ubuntu Link, we are creating a relationship with others, and all relationships have their ups and downs.. At times, the relationship may be challenging, perhaps even frustrating, but this is the nature of learning and connecting. We cannot only accept the good in people. We accept them as they are, without judgement, in the same way we learn to accept ourselves. As we are. We are all flawed, and to love truly is to accept both the good and bad in ourselves and in others. It's challenging, but an essential part of living as a human being in community.
We have spent our lives separated from the people on the other side of the road. On the other side of the river. On the other side of the socio-economic, racial or religious divide. On the other side of our fear. It will take time, and a few bumps, to bridge that pain. Remaining open and vulnerable through this process is essential. Honesty, respect, authenticity and a sense of humour will allow for deep learning to occur. This is connection, and connection will solve poverty and unite our communities.
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healing ourselves
This may all seem daunting as you first read these words, but creating an Ubuntu Link will ultimately liberate you, as relationship and service to others is the greatest antidote to the stress, disconnection and depression that characterize our modern lives. As citizens of this disconnected world, we carry a great deal of subtle and mostly unacknowledged pain. This pain stems from a lack of wider community, from a lack of humanity. Creating an Ubuntu Link addresses this pain directly.
Many have discovered, that creating an Ubuntu Link, and serving others, heals them at a deep and profound level. Most often the person establishing the Ubuntu Link receives the greatest rewards from the relationship. In a society where wealth signifies importance, status, and self esteem, the connections created in an Ubuntu Link are profoundly powerful, live outside of the realm of the failed self esteem model, and unite previously separated people. Creating an Ubuntu Link allows us to love and appreciate ourselves, and others. This is what change looks like.
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SOLVE
POVERTY
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bold words
Ubuntu Army has spent 5 years in the dust and the rubble, through lockdowns, riots and flood, supporting, feeding, housing and advocating for the vulnerable. From this time on the frontline, It is clear that the poverty and frustration is growing. But. And it's a big, juicy BUT. If we all build an Ubuntu Link we will solve poverty. Bold words, but completely possible. Possible with collective action. Possible if we each take our position in the thin red line, and create an unbreakable red chain of Ubuntu around the vulnerable. Possible if we personally take action and encourage others, our friends and family to do the same.
This is what real change looks like. It is created on the ground, at the grassroots, by us, the ordinary people, connecting, and grows upwards, one Link at a time, until it is an unstoppable force of change. Until division is no longer expected or taught. Until dignity and independence are common place. Until equity outweighs suffering. Until we all have hope.
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no debate
Over the past 5 years, members of Ubuntu Army from around the world, have created thousands of Ubuntu Links. In areas where Ubuntu Links have been built, the structure of those communities has changed. Poverty has been reduced. Division has been reduced. Dignity and respect have been established. In poor areas where Ubuntu Links have been established, community's chant "Ubuntu"! In areas where Ubuntu Links have been established, there is hope. The poverty is being pushed back.
Creating an Ubuntu Link erodes the fabric of division, the fabric of poverty, the fabric of politics and opinion, and creates real, perceptible change. It is our responsibility, our right, and our privilege to create an Ubuntu Link in our life time. We all need to step forward and connect. Connection over politics, over charity, over brand. Connection creates community, and community solves poverty and destroys division. Ubuntu Links work. here is no debate.
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shared dreams
Perhaps the most important lesson we learnt during our 5 years in the mud and the rubble, is that, despite opinion and politics, people on both sides of the cultural, socio-economic, religious and political divides share the same concerns, the same hopes, and many of the same dreams. We are all the same, but different. So simple, and in many ways so logical, yet so lost in the disconnection, the social media, the marketing, the politics, the opinions and sides. So lost in the hustle and the bustle,
We’re all the same, at all the important human levels, but different in culture, tradition, belief, opinion, resource, geography. While we all move through the world in our own unique ways, we have discovered, while serving the vulnerable, that the things that really matter to the people on both sides of any divide, are shared. We all have an opportunity to celebrate our differences, to remain open to each other, and to build community. Poverty is not a lack of resource, it is a lack of connection, a lack of community.
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revolution
The differences between us are exploited by politicians and institutions. Be aware of this. Connect, despite the divisive speeches, the tribal social media, despite the threats. Connecting with the people on the other side of the road, on the other side of the river, on the other side of the socio-economic, political or religious divide, is the greatest act of revolution you, as an individual, can take. It is an act that you can personally take, without the permission or validation of a political party, peer group or society itself. Connection is real change, real revolution.
Connecting with the people on the other side of your fears, puts the politicians, the thugs, the bullies, and the crooks out of business. Connection builds community, and community destroys division. Community solves poverty. Community will reclaim our communities and our countries. Join the compassion revolution. Build an Ubuntu Link of your own. Be the change we all so badly want.
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rainbow nations
Through weight of numbers, by all stepping up, and by all building an Ubuntu Link of our own, we will meet the poverty head on. It requires us all to take a personal stand, and have faith in our hope that the other members of our community will do the same. We will build hope in our communities, one Ubuntu Link at a time.
In building an Ubuntu Link, we will taste the diversity of our country. We will learn and love the difference, the exotic, the other in our community. We will connect, and learn to accept our imperfect selves and our imperfect neighbours. We will heal ourselves and our community. We will regain our power from the divisive politicians and the corrupt thugs. We will reclaim our dignity and independence. We will build a strong united nation. A compassionate nation. We will reclaim our country. We will rebuild the rainbow that has always promised to shine.
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Connect.
Ubuntu.
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Establishing an Ubuntu Link is the single most important act of kindness, of revolution, a human can take in their lifetime.
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The challenge before us is to create authentic connection as a priority, within the fibre and operating systems of corporate, charity, religious, educational and political structures. This will support and deepen the work done by us, the everyday people, as it will add the weight of resource, structure, membership and facility to our push for connection.
We provide workshops, mentorship, advice and instruction to corporates, non-profits, schools and churches, on the integration of an Ubuntu ethic into their organizational structure. We are developing technical notes, guidelines and suggestions on how to build Ubuntu Links, on how to adopt an Ubuntu Link policy., and on how to build and implement a connection based framework with existing organizational structure. These guidelines will be published for public access, and will be constantly developed and updated, as we learn more about the intricacies of committing to organisational Ubuntu.
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