Ubuntu Village is an Oakland-based 501(c)(3) public charity founded in 2026 by educators and artists Hodari Touré and Shylah Hamilton-Touré.
Ubuntu Village strengthens the people who teach and raise the next generation, through culturally rooted education, art, technology, and rites of passage. We train, advise, and build alongside the educators, families, and elders around young people of color, with a particular focus on Black youth from kindergarten through high school.
We have spent years in classrooms and community spaces with young Black people who are brilliant and are rarely treated that way. Too often their curiosity is managed instead of fed, and their culture is left at the door. Young people want to be recognized, to belong, and to be welcomed into the community as they grow. When the adults around them are not equipped to offer that, young people find belonging wherever they can.
We believe the most lasting way to change that is to strengthen the village itself: the teachers, youth workers, mentors, parents, and elders who are with young people every day. A single program ends. A trained mentor, a confident teacher, or an elder who has been invited back into the circle keeps showing up for years.
Young people of color are often talked about as if they move through pipelines: narrow channels toward a single outcome, where anyone who leaves the channel is counted as lost. We think of education differently. A portal opens into something larger. It connects a young person to their history, their community, their creativity, and futures they may not have imagined. Our work is to help adults build more of those openings.
Ubuntu: a person is a person through other people. None of us becomes whole alone.
Ubuntu Village was incorporated in California on August 5, 2026, and recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) public charity effective that same date. This is our founding year. We are building our first partnerships with schools and community organizations in Oakland and the East Bay, and raising founding support through our 100 Founding Families campaign. You can follow our progress on our news page.
Ubuntu Village is led by its co-founders, who bring decades of combined work in education, art, scholarship, and technology.
An educator working at the intersection of culture, technology, and learning. Hodari designs learning programs and technology platforms that open doors for young people of color, grounded in a background in social and cultural education.
An artist, scholar, and educator with an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Associate Professor of Critical Ethnic Studies at California College of the Arts. Her work spans experimental documentary, educational game design, and ritual practice across the African diaspora, and her writing appears in Sternberg Press and Frontiers.
Explore Shylah's work ↗Ubuntu Village is governed by a board of directors under California nonprofit public benefit corporation law. Our founding board is Hodari A. Touré (President) and Shylah Hamilton-Touré (Chief Financial Officer, Treasurer, and Secretary). The board has adopted bylaws and a conflict of interest policy based on the IRS model policy; each director and officer signs an annual acknowledgment of that policy.
Our fiscal year runs from January 1 to December 31. As a newly recognized public charity, we will file our first annual information return with the IRS after the close of our first fiscal year. Organizational documents are available on request.
Ubuntu Village is a California nonprofit public benefit corporation, recognized by the IRS as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) public charity.
| Legal name | Ubuntu Village |
|---|---|
| EIN | 42-4285210 |
| Entity type | California nonprofit public benefit corporation |
| Federal status | 501(c)(3) public charity, IRC 170(b)(1)(A)(vi) |
| Exemption effective | August 5, 2026 |
| Contributions | Tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law |
| CA Secretary of State no. | B20260357753 |
| Physical address | 3255 Blandon Road Oakland, CA 94605 United States |
| Fiscal year | January to December |
