UDG Home Mission Statement: 

Ubuntu Home exists to solve architectural design and financial inclusion problems of low-income communities around the world. Our mission  is to empower inadequately sheltered families to overcome economic and social challenges and barriers, through innovation and collaboration in designing for the future vision of their home and community.  

Ubuntu Home Vision Statement:

Ubuntu Design Group exists to provide dignified, affordable sustainable and accessible communities beginning with work-live homes for formal and informal communities (shanty-towns) around the world.

Our Why. 

Ubuntu Design Group exists to solve design problems for formal and informal communities (shanty-towns) around the world. Ideally, we want to work ourselves out of a job! Please help us create a world where Ubuntu doesn’t have to exist.

We Plan to Change the World.

According to the UN Habitat 2014, currently 828 million people live in slums and inadequate housing around the world and this is projected to grow to 3 billion people by 2030. In South Africa, 2.19 of 16.9 million households live in informal settlements (StatsSA, 2016).

The above statistics have stirred Ubuntu Design Group to form a design process model known as Ubuntu Home, which is aimed at providing an alternative design method to conventional housing projects. Ubuntu Home is a tool that will provide dignified housing in line with the first target of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11: To make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

We want to give a voice to impoverished communities, empowering them to create sustainable homes and holistically healthy neighborhoods that incorporate local culture, craft and creativity. Through the Ubuntu design process, we want to build not only houses for the community but a spirit of togetherness.