This is the record of what Ubuntu Village has done — year by year, country by country, family by family — since we began in 2016. It is not a comprehensive account of every conversation, every relationship, or every act of care that has happened in the spaces between these entries. It is the outline of a commitment that began small and has only deepened. We keep this here because accountability matters. And because the ancestors who came before us kept records too — in story, in song, in the names they passed down. This is ours.
2016 — Uganda
Ubuntu Village’s very first contact with Uganda came in 2016, through Badru — communicating virtually, partnering on remedies for food shortages in his community. It was virtual, but it was real: the first thread of a relationship that would grow into everything that followed in Rakai District.
2017 — Uganda
In 2017, that relationship deepened into something on the ground. Badru assisted his community in Rakai village heroically — supporting elders and community members living with disabilities through hardship. That same year, Ubuntu Village’s relationship with Owen began: the start of the ongoing support — school fees, and later medical care — that would come to define what showing up across an ocean actually means.
2018 — Uganda
Michele returned to Uganda in 2018, continuing relationships built the year before — including time with Grace, one of the community members whose friendship shaped what Ubuntu Village came to understand about partnership.
2019 — Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria
In 2019, Ubuntu Village’s reach widened. Michele met Issa Mbogo, opening the outreach in Kenya that would grow into the Nakuru partnership. Programs in Uganda continued, and the earliest connections in Nigeria began to take shape. In Zimbabwe, Ubuntu Village’s involvement remained editorial — writing and storytelling partnership rather than programs on the ground.
2020 — Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe
2020 was a year of virtual partnership with Kenya, building on the connection with Issa Mbogo while travel remained out of reach. Programs in Uganda continued. Zimbabwe support stayed editorial.
2021 — Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria
By 2021, partnerships across Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria had deepened, with continued editorial support in Zimbabwe.
2022 — Kenya, Uganda, Zimbabwe
2022 was a turning point in Kenya. In January, Ubuntu Village and Mbogo’s Quality Farm Products found a group of orphaned and unaccompanied children sleeping in culverts in Nakuru — and found that Mr. Mbogo had already been feeding them porridge every morning before any organization arrived. In March, Michele traveled to Nakuru, met community leaders David, Sally, Issa, and Lillian, and worked alongside eleven community members to formally register Heart Cares as a Community-Based Organization — now running education support, counseling, vocational training, and food programs across Nakuru. She also visited the Malaika Initiative for People with Disability. Zimbabwe support remained editorial.
2023–2024 — Kenya, Uganda
Support for students in Uganda continued through 2023 and 2024 — tuition, medical care, the ordinary acts of showing up that keep a child in school. In Kenya, Heart Cares kept expanding its reach in Nakuru.
2025 — Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria
Ubuntu Village delivered food baskets — rice, beans, maize flour, wheat flour, sugar, cooking oil, salt — to families in Kiambu County, Kenya, including Rose, a mother raising two young children alone, and Brenda, a widow selling sweets in traffic to keep her child fed. In December, Ubuntu Village launched the Light Forward Initiative, committing to solar power systems for 50 families, and expanded the Ubuntu Scholars Fund to support five students facing financial hardship with school fees, supplies, transport, and mentorship.
2026 — Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria
That commitment became real: Ubuntu Village partnered with BrightLife to deliver solar home systems across Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria, reaching eight families by the end of June with seven more scheduled for July. Among them is James, living with epilepsy and a history of stroke, whose family can now respond safely to his medical needs at night because the lights no longer go dark.
From Uganda to Kenya to Nigeria — showing up since 2016.
Not as a charity. As a partner. Every contribution you make extends that partnership to one more family, one more child, one more community that knows someone across the ocean has not forgotten them.
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This is the record, kept as our ancestors kept records — in story, in song, in the names passed down. 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.
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