Fatuma Namisango

As people live in cross-cultural contexts, there is a need to recognize and appreciate the role of different worldviews and how they shape our understanding of humanity, upbringing, and engagement in social or work environments. The key starting point to enable this is exploring the often-overlooked indigenous philosophies of life such as Ubuntu and examining how such value systems survive alongside opposing or similar traditions. This chapter improves the understanding of cultural values by discussing the central tenets of the African philosophy of Ubuntu, in comparison to the Western ways of life and the strategies that Africans in the diaspora are applying to preserve Ubuntu values. Strategies for promoting Ubuntu in the education system and community settings are also recommended with the goal of enhancing cross-cultural awareness.

Although Ubuntu/Obuntu philosophy remains a foundation for many African communities, there are also growing concerns about its gradual erosion and assault. There is limited understanding about the struggles that African parents, especially in the diaspora experience as they pass on Ubuntu/Obuntu values to their children who live in a different context from the one their parents were raised in. This knowledge is crucial for facilitating Ubuntu/Obuntu's revitalisation and transmission to the younger generation. Using a critical approach, this chapter draws from lived experiences and existing literature to discuss two key challenges that the authors, who are African parents, have experienced in passing on Ubuntu/Obuntu. The challenges relate to past and ongoing colonialism manifested in Eurocentric education systems in Africa and the diaspora and dwindling community interactions. Strategies adopted by the authors in the diaspora to overcome these barriers and implications of an Ubuntu/Obuntu-inspired education are also presented.

Nonprofit organisations use social networking platforms to interact, engage, and build productive relationships with target audiences for co-created outcomes. This chapter pursues two interrelated objectives: First, it identifies key stages in the growth of organisation-community relationships on co-creative social networking platforms. Second, it discusses the multi-levelled factors influencing these relationships at the respective stages. To achieve these objectives, we make a general review of scholarship on nonprofit use of social media, social networking platforms for co-creation, and organisation-public relationships on social media. We used the ecological systems perspective to identify the internal and external environmental influences on organisational relationships in social networking platforms. This chapter presents three abstract stages of organisation-community relationships: emergence, growth, and collapse, based on existing empirical observations and theoretical perspectives. We reveal four levels of ecological-based factors that influence different stages of organisation-community relationships on co-creative social networking platforms. We indicate the potentially strong and weaker influences on organisational relationships.