Christopher Lowman

A visionary changemaker on a mission to seed kindness and solve poverty.

Christopher Lowman is the founder of Mahtabe, a New York-based public charity that promotes global goodness through intelligent, service-driven initiatives. He has worked extensively in Rwanda, Kenya, and India, as well as in the US and UK, on a number of successful projects connected to values-based education, infrastructure development, and income generation.

Immersive field experience, combined with 25 years of study of holistic and traditional medicines, has given Christopher the uncommon ability to understand people and anticipate how his organization’s initiatives will unfold across divergent cultural lines and competing interests. Consequently, every active project he is involved in has achieved an at or near 100% rate of self-reliance.

Christopher embodies the “service before self” credo and dedicates himself to service work because he sees a world in need and he knows what to do about it. His commitment is “all-chips-in” and palpable, and as a result, he naturally garners deep trust and respect from colleagues, donors, foundations and especially from those he serves, who he refers to as "friends.”

Christopher has presented about his work and life’s journey through interviews, speaking engagements at places like Friends in Deed NYC, Omega Institute, Sounds True, and numerous in-home gatherings, as well as in spots on live radio (BBC) and television. A sanitation project in Kenya, which in part helped reform criminal gang members, was academically researched and cited as a model of holistic development in a thesis on global health.

Over $550k raised for micro- to mid-scale service initiatives

Over 1,200 students educated and 450,000+ meals served in Kenya

Trauma work with 1st generation survivors of the Rwandan Genocide

6,000+ lives improved through critical infrastructure development

A Journey Begins

In 1999, while on a promising pre-law track at New York University, I had a life-altering experience with an Ayurvedic doctor while visiting family in London. I was astounded by his diagnostic ability, and because of that one session, I had a dramatic realization that the major things we seek — security, peace, happiness, love, etc. — lie within us and can be internally cultivated. Leaving this doctor’s office rattled to the bone, I knew I had to pursue this realization to its conclusion.

Instead of applying to law school, I took a job at Satellite Records in New York City, a now legendary underground dance music record store. From a night shift position, I worked my way up to clerk, serving elite DJs and eventually partnering with a colleague to produce several records for underground labels like Twisted America and Wave. During this time, I was introduced to Jin Shin Jyutsu, an ancient Japanese form of medicine (similar to Ayurveda) that amazed me in both its philosophy and practical application. Shortly after training in the method, a senior teacher gave me space in his Upper West Side office, and I went into private practice.

West

In 2005, I moved to Santa Barbara, California, to be with my father who was dying from emphysema. He passed later that year. I stayed, working project management jobs, and continued my investigation of traditional medicine, which by this time included family trauma work and botanical approaches to health and wellness.

A few years later, I was invited to travel to Rwanda to provide care to several hundred first generation orphan survivors (ages 14-18) of the ‘94 Genocide who were experiencing cPTSD and unable to learn in the classroom. Profoundly moved by what I took part in, on a remote hilltop in Kigali, I made a commitment to finding a way to do this type of volunteer, heart-centered work full-time.

A way would soon find me.

East

Instances of kismet, involving the Indian Ocean earthquake and a painter from Sri Lanka, connected me to a non-governmental organization (NGO) based at the Sabarmati Gandhi Ashram in Ahmedabad, India, which welcomed international volunteers. In 2011, I quit my job, gave up my apartment, let go of the majority of my possessions, and booked a one-way ticket to India to volunteer for a year.

Warmly welcomed, the NGO leaders arranged for me to live in an impoverished leprosy community with no agenda other than to serve the residents with love and see what happens. There, in a slum, where so-called beggars, leprosy patients with missing fingers and toes, and others living in severe poverty were my neighbors and became my family, I found my bliss.

One year became three. I oversaw numerous development projects and facilitated extracurricular learning circles for the community’s youth, in particular adolescent girls with dreams stymied by a repressive, patriarchal culture. Thanks to our co-creative efforts, for the first time in the community’s history, a trailblazing group of young women enrolled in college and later found meaningful work, which disrupted the cycle of poverty in their homes. You can learn more about their incredible journey in this short documentary.

I don’t try to solve problems — I listen deeply and follow my natural instincts, working to improve the welfare of others and the world without expectation.

After leaving the leprosy community, right up until the Covid-19 pandemic, I resided at a nearby environmental institute steeped in Gandhian tradition where I engaged in a transformative process of inner cultivation. Surrounded by a rich community of like-minded individuals, including elders with humbling levels of experience and wisdom, I honed my own values, discipline, and facilitator skills.

Everything is of mixed quality — wealth is in poverty and poverty is in wealth. I don’t try to solve problems. I listen deeply and follow my natural instincts, which usually entails working to improve the welfare of others and the world. However, I do so without expectation or need. To me, this is the essence of service — being a facilitator only, an effortless actor, and serving ‘just because.’

That is what I have come to understand and what breathes through everything I do.

E. Africa

I visited Nairobi, Kenya, for the first time in 2012 and lived there for six months.

Within days of arriving, friends at an NGO took me to one of the city’s harshest and most neglected slums, Kitui Ndogo. There, I bore witness to disturbing sanitation issues and the heart-breaking reality of extreme poverty. I met Grace Kavoi, an inspirational community leader and founder of the Malezi Centre, a space where the children of Kitui received basic education for free.

From that initial stay and annual visits thereafter, I helped facilitate a critical sanitation project that improved the lives of over 6,000 people, assisted a fledgling community-based school improve its infrastructure, and forged relationships that have helped the Malezi Centre grow into what it is today — a professional academic institution with 250 students and 20 dedicated teachers and staff members (read the full story here).

Horizon

With partners around the world, Christopher is looking to the horizon and currently:

  • investing in female social entrepreneurs and changemakers;

  • developing a self-sustaining community center to address urban migration and farmer poverty issues;

  • reimagining education with the Earth School Alliance with kindness and earth stewardship as founding values; and,

  • reimagining the economy with the TOWYN™ (Take Only What You Need) concept, where markets offer essential goods at no cost.

When asked, more than a decade later, how he feels about abandoning law after the London experience, Christopher, reflecting, says, “Every path leads to the same destination. I can’t judge what I decided to do. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, ‘The saving of our world… will come through the creative maladjustment of a non-conforming minority.’ I don’t know about saving the world, but I like to think that I am part of this growing minority. And I feel great about that.”