Living Values is a non-profit company rooted in South Africa and connected to the world.
We work to advance a more values-conscious society: one in which values are brought into conscious view and expressed through how we live, relate, lead, make decisions and build institutions.
They influence what we prioritise, how we make decisions, how we relate to others and how we engage with the world.
Clarify what matters when choices involve competing priorities and uncertainty.
Strengthen relationships grounded in respect, responsibility and mutual recognition.
Create shared points of reference through which people can engage difference and work towards the common good.
Vision: A world where values are lived consciously, enabling social justice, solidarity and sustainability.
Purpose: To shine a light on living values consciously.
Living Values works across four interconnected dimensions. Change does not necessarily move through them in a fixed sequence.
Bring implicit and often unexamined values into conscious view so that they can be recognised, named and discussed.
Explore how values, beliefs, assumptions and tensions shape behaviour, decisions, institutions and societal concerns.
Create opportunities for consciously affirmed values to find expression through everyday behaviour, decisions, relationships and leadership.
Work towards values being reflected and reinforced through organisational culture, governance, systems, practices and accountability.
Living Values combines research and advocacy as mutually reinforcing ways of doing the work.
Research deepens understanding of how values shape people, relationships, leadership, organisations, institutions and wider systems.
Advocacy brings these questions into public and institutional life through dialogue, storytelling, learning, convening and engagement.
Across these streams, we explore what it takes for values to move from awareness into lived practice.
Exploring how values shape leadership, judgement, accountability, decision-making and organisational practice.
Exploring how Ubuntu, solidarity and related values can be understood and lived in contemporary society.
Exploring how values shape our relationship with the natural environment and responsibility to future generations.
Exploring the role of values in ethical leadership and organisational decision-making.
A roundtable exploring how Ubuntu shapes contemporary community and institutional life.
Examining how values shape our relationship with the natural world and future generations.
Living Values is carried by an ecosystem of people, organisations and supporters who engage with the work in different ways.