by Mark Wilkerson
images by Dagny Piasecki (SHDW Studios), Erin Outdoors, & Ubuntu Life
Ubuntu is Life
For hundreds of special-needs children and their families.
Ubuntu Life provides free, life-changing therapy to children with conditions like cerebral palsy, epilepsy, severe autism, and others. Ubuntu Life operates a special-needs center and quarterly medical camps that provide therapy and medical care to thousands of children in the Maai Mahiu area of Kenya. They have helped countless children learn to walk, to read, and to communicate effectively for the first time. Really cool, right? But there is more to the story. Much more.
“MUM” is the word.
Maai Mahiu, Kenya
It all started in a remote, impoverished village in Kenya with nine Maker Mums and a 15-foot by 15-foot rented room filled with manual Singer sewing machines. And it was the Mums’ idea.
These remarkable women, all mothers of special-needs children who, thanks to two extraordinary men, had finally gotten their children basic medical care, approached them with a humble “thank you,” and a proposition: “We need your help. Not charity; your help to help us work. We want to earn our own way. And we want to give back to the Ubuntu project that has empowered our children.”
Jeremiah Kuria and Zane Wilemon heard them and act-ed. “Our first products were simple and easy to master: shopping bags, coffee sleeves, bandanas, and coasters. We purchased 11 acres of land on the outskirts of Maai Mahiu, rehabilitated it with native trees, plants and landscaping, and built the Maker Mums Sewing Studio.”
The Mums earn above-market, living wages, and get much-needed health insurance. This is something for which all in the Ubuntu community take great pride.
Less than 19% of Kenyans have health insurance. And around half of the Mums now own their own land and house, in a country where less than 10% own either. The Mums exemplify effective, sustainable change.
They are breaking the cycle of poverty, one Mum at a time.
Today the Maker Mums number in the hundreds. They are producing more sophisticated products that generate more revenue and even higher wages.
Not only do the Maker Mums sustain themselves, but their efforts have helped make Ubuntu Life one of the few charitable organizations in the world to approach self-sustainability.
Ubuntu Mission
Ubuntu is a nonprofit business that uses the power of global commerce to create “inch wide, mile deep” social impact for children and mothers in Kenya.
Maker Mum Alice 
[Ubuntu Life] Red Afridrilles
Meaning of “Ubuntu”:
Ubuntu is an African philosophy that means “I am, because we are.” It describes the interconnectedness among all things. We all depend on every other being on this planet in ways large and small, and we feel those connections now more strongly than ever. To reach our full potential, both individually and as a society, we must help others reach theirs: I am because we are.
Jerimia Curia, Co-Founder Ubuntu
Continued donations are critical in these efforts. But thanks to the Nine, now forever known as the “Original Maker Mums”, pride has grown and now ripples through the Ubuntu Life Community and the surrounding villages.
MUM really is the word.
Connect with Ubuntu Life. Feel the impact. Contribute. Be part of the impact.
UBUNTU.LIFE