Some of the most life-changing organizations have come from inconspicuous starts. Apple started in a garage. Amnesty International was founded following an article published in The Observer, UK’s Sunday newspaper.
Street Yoga, a non-profit whose mission is to help struggling youth and their families overcome early-life traumas, began when its founder Mark Lilly organized a yoga class at a shelter and school serving homeless youth.
All it takes is a seed of an idea to change the world – whether through electronics, the media or teaching yoga for service.
I’m proud to announce that Street Yoga will be joining #omchat on Nov. 7 at 9 p.m. EST/ 6 p.m. PST to talk about how their yoga activism is “changing lives, one breath at a time” of youth across the nation.
Street Yoga comes to Denver
From relatively small beginnings, Street Yoga hired its first staff member in 2008 and grew from a grassroots organization into a non-profit. Street Yoga offers a 16-hour weekend teacher training program that prepares yoga teachers, school teachers and social workers to work with youth. So far in 2011, they have trained more than 500 yoga teachers to teach yoga to youth in social service environments, from Portland to Tucson and New York to Belfast. And in 2012, they’re coming to Denver.
The weekend workshop is $290, and Denver’s Eliot Street Studio is set to host a training. However, any yoga studio can choose to host the workshop. Plus, if you co-sponsor (donate the space, time and advertise), Street Yoga will give a full scholarship to give to one of the studio’s teachers or divide up among several.
After the training, it’s up to the individual instructor to incorporate or spread what they’ve learned into the community. “We provide the language and the mindset of going into social service sites,” Alice Noyes, communications manager for Street Yoga. “Since we are small, we aren’t able to provide programming in all the cities, but it’s something we’re exploring how to do sustainably.”
Join Street Yoga for #omchat
To join us for the chat, log in to the Tweet Chat room with your Twitter account here. Street Yoga’s Executive Director Rachel Sample and Alice will be manning (womanning?) the @StreetYoga account. Be sure to follow them and @omchat, which I’ll be tweeting from.
Then, type your tweets into the chat box. No need to add “#omchat” to the end of your tweets if you’re in the Tweet Chat room – it happens automatically.
Bring your questions for Street Yoga, plus be prepared to chat about how you, too, use yoga to serve your community. See you then!