This is one of our earliest posts — written in November 2021, when Ubuntu Village was still finding its voice. We are keeping it here because our beginnings belong to the record. What I wrote then is still true. The vision has only grown.
My name is Michele Mitchell. I am the founder, president, and CEO of Ubuntu Village Inc. — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit rooted in East Harlem, with programs in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. But before any of that, I am a woman who believed that community was the answer before I had the language to explain why. This post is an introduction. It is also a record of where this work began.
Where This Work Comes From
I did not come to this work from a foundation or a graduate program. I came to it from a life lived at the intersection of African diasporic identity, public health, and the persistent question of what it actually means to take care of each other. I grew up understanding that the structures built around us were not built for us — and that the communities most harmed by those structures were also the communities most skilled at building something better from the inside out.
Ubuntu Village grew from that understanding. The name comes from the Nguni Bantu philosophy that says: Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu — a person is a person through other people. I am because we are. It is a statement about ontology, about how human beings actually come into being and stay in being. Not alone. Not through individual achievement. Through the web of relationship, care, and mutual accountability that we call community.
What I Was Building
When I started Ubuntu Village, I described it as an organic, newly-forming, self-sustainable community. What I meant was: I was not interested in building another nonprofit that delivered services to people. I was interested in building a village — a real, living, accountable community of people who understood that their wellbeing was tied to each other’s, and who were willing to act on that understanding in practical ways.
That vision has taken many forms over the years: programming in East Harlem around ancestral wellness and public health, partnership with communities in Kenya and Uganda that began with a single child and grew into lasting relationship, writing and research that brings together African wisdom traditions and contemporary science in service of communities that have been told those two things cannot coexist. What has not changed is the center of it. The center has always been: community is the medicine. Not as a slogan. As a practice.
What I Believe
I believe in the intelligence of people who have been told they are not intelligent. I believe in the knowledge held in communities that have been told their knowledge does not count. I believe that the ancestors were paying attention — that the practices, ceremonies, and ways of organizing life that African and diasporic communities developed over millennia were not superstition or backwardness, but accumulated wisdom about what human beings need to survive, heal, and thrive.
I believe that justice is not a distant ideal but a daily practice — in how we show up for each other, how we distribute resources, how we make decisions, and whose voice is centered when we do. I believe that the same communities that have been most harmed by systems of extraction and exclusion are the communities most capable of imagining and building something better — if they are given the resources, the platform, and the partnership they deserve.
And I believe that I am highly capable and equally passionate — not in spite of where I come from, but because of it. This work is personal. It always has been.
If you’d like to understand how that commitment translates into programs, policy, and practice — how we work, where resources go, and how to get involved — our Ubuntu Village FAQ is the place to start.
Community is not a program. It is a promise.
If this vision resonates with you — if you believe that the village is the answer and you want to help us build it — we would be honored to have you alongside us.
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This is where Ubuntu Village began. It is also where it has always been going.
I Am Because We Are. And Together, We Heal.
Michele Mitchell is the Founder, President & CEO of Ubuntu Village Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit rooted in East Harlem, New York, with programs in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. A writer, advocate, and community strategist working at the intersection of ancestral wisdom, public health, and community power, Michele leads Ubuntu Village’s work to center communities as the protagonists of their own healing. She writes from the conviction that science and spirit are complementary, that healing is relational, and that community is the medicine. Read more about Michele, or connect with her on LinkedIn.
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