Mpatapo Learning Programs
Mpatapo Learning offers a range of learning programs within our online community with a particular focus on supporting Emerging Leaders.
Our core program includes three sequential learning modules. Each is a six month, highly experiential program delivered in our Mpatapo online Community as a combination of virtual workshops, small group projects, group / individual coaching and lively online discussion.
The programs are built on a foundation of Umbuntu which Desmond Tutu has described as “My humanity is bound up in yours. I am only because you are. A person is a person through other persons. We need this communal harmony if we are going to survive at all.”
Join our free online community to learn more about how you can accelerate your learning journey.
Empowering ourselves together
The foundation of resilience and durable empowerment is that we empower ourselves. We are not dependent on anyone else for this, yet we can benefit greatly from being in community with others who are also committed to empowering themselves. We can learn from and support each other. Our growth is accelerated by seeing ourselves through another’s eyes.
We empower ourselves as we become aware of our inner world of thoughts, emotions, mindsets and values. As we bring awareness to the often unconscious, unexamined assumptions we make and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and how the world works, we open up new choices that can help us break free from traditional ways of thinking to see new possibilities.
Becoming curious and choiceful about our inner world, allows us to shift our concept of ourselves and others, to set new intentions and boundaries. From this place we can be more resilient, exercising more effective self care which supports us as we live into our deepening understanding of our purpose.
This is the Umbuntu foundation.
Empowering Others in Community
Building on the foundation we built in Empowering Ourselves Together, we can become more aware and skillful as we work to empower others and reweave the fabric of empowering community. This beloved community that builds up both those within the community and those beyond the community.
We can learn to be more aware and choiceful about how we see others – the judgments and assumptions we make in the stories we tell ourselves about them. We can strengthen our ability to have productive, real conversations with those with whom we fundamentally disagree, still holding them with respect, compassion and even joy.
We can relearn, what humans have long known but forgotten in recent times, the powerful, sustaining presence a beloved community can be in our lives. We explore ways in which humans are deeply wired to live in collaboration and interdependence with others – while deeply holding the value of diversity, inclusion and social justice.
This is how we deepen into the beloved Ubuntu Community.
Empowering Systems and Society
The empowered communities we build become beacons of hope for our society as a whole and a model for a sustainable world. From the foundation of living as we are wired to live in collaboration and harmony with others, we can deeply examine and evolve the systems that have held society back from finding the solutions we so desperately need to bring true equity and sustainability to the world.
The power of examining the broken systems in our world from the foundation of curiosity and non-attachment that we have built by Empowering Ourselves Together, and Empowering Others in Community, allows us to stay open hearted and wise while remaining steadfast and committed. Only from this place can we create new systems which do not unconsciously replicate the flaws of the systems we are seeking to replace.
This is how we extend Ubuntu into the world. This is how we reshape and reimagine not only development for Africa, but how we as humans survive and thrive on this planet.