Christmas is everybody’s favourite time of the year: purses begin to open, smiles begin to appear on unexpected faces and total strangers are inclined to greet you. For, after all, this is considered a time to celebrate abundance and plenty, a time to eat, drink and be merry. Yet the true meaning of abundance and plenty is so distorted by the mindless Christmas shopping fever that gets everybody rushing to the shopping malls. Udumo Group restores the wider and deeper meaning of good cheer by aiming for prosperity in its most profound sense: the uplifting empowerment of those who need and deserve it most. Udumo gives the gift of dignified lives.

Their ‘Work 4 A Living’ training brings skills such as crocheting, beading, sewing, arm knitting and crafting into the hitherto empty hands of the disadvantaged and has resulted in award-winning projects (the Tyger Valley Shopping Centre Festive decorations, 2016) which spread more than good cheer – visionary creations such as these add the ingredients of faith and hope to the lives of the crafters and simultaneously inject these qualities into festivities that too often seem bereft of them.

One succinct quote here will be followed by another that brings into wider focus the perhaps unappreciated value of the creative impulse:

“Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design.” –Charles Eames

And:

“The goal of a designer is to listen, observe, understand, sympathize, empathize, synthesize, and glean insights that enable him or her to make the invisible visible.”-Hillman Curtis

The gift that keeps on giving

Udumo Group has proved itself capable of meeting this multi-dimensional challenge, and of moving even further in an effort to offer skills of timeless and enduring worth to those who would otherwise be unemployed. Their services also include interior designing for residential homes, commercial and retail enterprises, hospitality events and filming spaces.

In times of drought and scarcity, it is the entrepeneurs of this world that bring rain from the heavens in the form of new ideas that promote growth in any country’s communal ecosystem. The innovative and creative qualities that make one an entrepreneur are the same qualities that motivate other entrepeneurs to pass on the baton to the next runner towards that celebratory winning line!

For it is this kind of team spirit and enduring giving which provides the satisfaction of basic human needs, the reason to begin the day with a smile, the freedom of personal choices, and an environment of community creativity that allows the emergence of new forms and standards of life and culture, new relationships with nature, with oneself, and with one’s fellow human being. And, apart from the birth of Christ, what could be of deeper significance and warrant a more joyous celebration than that?

Udumo Group delivers interior décor and design services by empowering unemployed people with skills development initiatives. We believe in investing in the individual, nurturing inherent skills, and uplifting communities. We hold as our mission making the future sustainable by mentoring meaningful change in the wider environment. Our interior design philosophy is to design beautiful spaces that are both functional and timelessly pleasing. We have proved that promoting the values of creative excellence, discipline and commitment can bring forth the beauty within each person and reflect it in both private and public living spaces around them.

For information on Udumo Group, visit: www.udumogroup.co.za