Kind Kulture · Los Angeles · Operating Globally
A Los Angeles 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We work with survivors, young people, and educators to rebuild human dignity through firsthand storytelling. Twelve years in, the work has reached classrooms in four countries and over 100,000 students.
Why Kind Kulture Exists
Kind Kulture is a Los Angeles nonprofit. We bring survivors, young people, and educators into the same room and ask them to do something the news cycle does not allow: listen to one full human story, all the way through.
Our founder, Dydine Umunyana Anderson, is a survivor of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi. She was four years old. For more than a decade she has built this work on a single conviction: a story, told well and heard fully, can do what an argument cannot. It can change how people see each other.
The Shine · Los Angeles · Community storytelling event
Our Approach
A survivor speaks. The room goes quiet in a way that feels different from polite attention. People stop hearing a headline and start hearing a person. Most of them recognize something of their own grief or fear in the story before anyone in the room has said a word back.
Then we open dialogue. Police officers and immigrant residents. Holocaust survivors and survivors of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi. American teenagers and youth from Colombia. People who would never sit at the same table in ordinary life sit at one here, and they ask each other real questions.
People leave with something they did not walk in with: a question they cannot un-ask, or a different way of describing someone they had been taught to fear. Across eight years of dialogue work with law enforcement alone, we have watched officers change the language they use about the communities they serve.
Our Founder
Author · International Speaker · President & CEO
Dydine survived the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda. She was four years old. The work she has built in the three decades since circles one question: how does a person rebuild a life after the world has tried to erase them, and how do we keep that erasure from reaching the next generation?
She has spoken at Harvard Kennedy School, TEDx Cornell University, Talks at Google, and the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. In 2025 she delivered testimony at Kwibuka 31 in Los Angeles, standing in witness with the Rwandan diaspora community.
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Filmmaker · Creative Director · Secretary & Treasurer
Alex leads operations, production, and strategy at Kind Kulture. With a background in media production and nonprofit program management, he holds the work together behind the scenes: the contracts, the production schedules, the partnerships that have to survive past opening night.
Dydine carries the story into the room. Alex makes sure the room is ready, and that the story can keep traveling once she leaves it.
About Kind Kulture →
With Rick Caragher · Co-Director of PolyGlobal · Polytechnic School, Pasadena
What We Do
Books that carry lived experience across generations. Dydine's memoir Embrace Life, its Spanish edition Abrazar la Vida, and her forthcoming Still Here: A Survivor's Case Against Hate (2027).
Learn more →Storytelling sessions for schools, law enforcement, community organizations, and corporate teams. The work is built on a three-part framework: Mirror, Bridge, Change. Delivered across the United States and abroad.
Learn more →Long-term collaborations with universities, cultural institutions, nonprofits, and global foundations. Our partners are listed on the Partners page, and they are how this work reaches places we could not reach alone.
Learn more →"Dydine, I am the teacher of this class. Thank you for sharing your story with my students. Really, all I wanted to say is: wow. What a beginning."
Middle School Teacher
San Diego, CA
"I was in Rwanda right after the genocide. I cannot believe you are here. That you made it here."
Law Enforcement Officer
Los Angeles dialogue session
"When I speak it, you hear it. And when I speak it, I see it. That is why we must never stop telling the truth."
Rose Beryl · Holocaust Survivor
91 years old
Institutions & Partners
Museum of Tolerance Los Angeles · Harvard Kennedy School · Google · Meta · TEDx Cornell University · FILBo Colombia · Kwibuka commemorations (2025, 2026) · Aegis Trust · Serve to Unite · LAPD and partner law enforcement agencies · OLASTEO · Holocaust museums across the U.S. · University of San Diego · Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial
Community Impact · January 2025
When wildfires swept through Los Angeles in January 2025, we partnered with community organizer Kath Nash to launch Breathe Easy Los Angeles, a wildfire relief drive that put free air purifiers into the homes of families breathing the worst of the smoke.
It is the kind of work we do when our city is hurting. We show up.
Our Long-Term Vision
A future permanent cultural institution in Los Angeles, dedicated to preserving survivor testimony and advancing human dignity through education, storytelling, and the arts. We are building it the way institutions are actually built: one program, one partnership, one archived testimony at a time.
Learn About the Center →Two Ways to Build With Us
Kind Kulture has a decade of evidence behind it: classrooms changed, dialogues opened, partnerships that have outlasted news cycles. The next chapter is institutional. Our long-term plan is the Center for Human Dignity in Los Angeles, and we are building toward it now. Your support is what carries us there.
Kind Kulture is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (formerly Umuco Love Inc.).
EIN: 85-0780571 · 5219 Packard Street 1/2, Los Angeles, CA 90019 · All donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
Stay Close
A weekly letter from Dydine, every Sunday.
Join the work
We are building a permanent home for survivor testimony, art, and human dignity in Los Angeles. The work ahead is larger than any one of us. If something in our story moves you — to write, to organize, to host, to give your time, to introduce us to someone who should know — we would like to hear from you.
We read every message. Replies usually within a week.