UBUNTU

loveLife Generation was founded after a team from Newham visited South Africa and were completely blown away with the way loveLife worked with young people - there was nothing else but to share this with those back home in the UK.
And South Africa keeps on giving. Most recently we teamed up with the Tutu Foundation UK using the great South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu's work on peace building to ensure that Africa's gift of Ubuntu is delivered.


Ubuntu captures the essence of being human. 
"Ubuntu [is] the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.”

Ubuntu captures what loveLife Generation is about in 'being the change' we want to see because we know we are a force for good.
We have strong links with the Foundation as Rukiyah who is a ground breaker also works for them and after being trained as Ubuntu community facilitators we ran 3 seperate Ubuntu 'Conversations For Change' bringing together very diverse people together. 
The first set brought together young people from different schools and colleges, the second brought together people from different faith and no faith backgrounds and the last one brought together different service providers together.

The young people hooked onto the ubuntu so much so they now call themselves the UBUNTU TEAM (U-Team) and as a form of ubuntu action went on to complete their peer coaching qualification and have created a project to spread ubuntu onto primary school children. They will run ubuntu activities with primary schools in July and also put on an ubunutu outdoor event.

The interfaith group also took on their own action which was to learn and provide people with information on the new changes in benefits.

The 3 different ubuntu groups were brought together for a final celebration where the CEO of the Tutu Foundation presented them with their certificates as well as sharing each others ideas.
We were also blessed to have been invited to watch Archbishop Desmond Tutu receive his Templeton Award at the Guildhall. We were estatic to see this great man in action as well as to meet his daughter REvd. Mpho Tutu who was as inspirational as the great man himself. 

The return of the Maldives

Having worked with young people from the Maldives last year, we ran a workshop with another group from the Maldives who wanted to turn their visit in the UK into social action when they got back to their communities in the Maldives. 

They got their teeth straight into the loveLife way - taking part in our fun activities where we looked at some of the issues they faced which included high level of drug issues amongst young people, youth unemployment and  intergenerational conflict. A far cry from the sandy beaches we see advertised for hooney mooning couples. 

We did key elements of our 'Take Back the Future' programme and the young Maldivians gave us a glimpse of what their community would look like if they could erase the negatives like environmental degradation and protect things like respect!
We also looked at the causes of conflict and what the young Maldivians could do individually do avoid conflict before each of us shared an action we would be taking away and making a change.


RK