The mission of Un Mundo is to promote dignity, community, and self-sufficiency while facilitating access to health care, education, and livable wages in marginalized communities.

Dignity...

• Un Mundo works directly with marginalized communities matching volunteerism and surplus with need.
• The dynamic of unconditional giving meeting grateful acceptance has become a hallmark of Un Mundo projects.
• It is a source of pride for Un Mundo and our partners that we achieve so much with our limited funds, taking a creative and sensible approach in our efforts of empowering communities to develop according to their own values.

Community...

• We act as a resource, designing and implementing our programs, and screening and enabling local projects.
• Un Mundo has generated immense enthusiasm by becoming a community unto itself, comprised of marginalized groups who have expressed interest in helping themselves and volunteers motivated by a true spirit of sharing.
• We believe knowing of another's need is not enough, but that action is necessary.

Self-sufficiency...

• Un Mundo is a pragmatic organization that often partners with, but is never beholden to, political and religious groups motivated to help marginalized peoples unite and develop a critical consciousness in order to better control their own destiny.
• Our projects develop local leadership and empower communities by requiring the communities themselves to assess and address their needs in some democratic fashion.
• By acting as a facilitator, Un Mundo avoids promoting a welfare dependence mentality, and instead helps people to help themselves.

Health care...

• We focus on providing access to the fundamental needs of education, health care, and a livable wage, because they are preconditions to the expansion of those freedoms that improve human well-being.
• Un Mundo health care volunteers focus on prevention and stress the responsible use of medications.
• Our health care programs have an educational component designed to foster awareness of disease as both a cause and effect of underdevelopment.

Education...

• Our projects are tailored to meet the unique cultural, social, and economic needs of specific communities.
• Un Mundo is aware of, and distinguishes itself from, the too often wasteful, paternalistic, and neo-colonial agendas of some larger development organizations.
• Our education programs focus on connecting the reality of immediate conditions with larger dynamics of underdevelopment.

Livable wages ...

• Our funds go straight to those in need, allowing the values of the communities we serve to determine the direction of their development.
• We recognize the fact that economic disparity is largely due to accident of birth, and that we all have a responsibility to one another that extends beyond any afflictions our own behavior may have caused.
• Over many years we focus on the infrastructure of communities marginalized by political persecution, economic transition, and/or natural disaster.

"I believe that what self-centered people have torn down, other-centered people can build up. Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives." — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.