Newsletter, Feb 7, 2004

We enjoyed our first snow a month ago, but are back to Portland rain. It nourishes the earth and gives the plants life. I hope we can find such nourishment in our breaths, our loving hopes, and in the good works grand and small that we can act each day.

We found out yesterday that the site of one of our programs is being forced to close because of lack of funding. The White Shield Center ShelterCare has been providing up to eight weeks of temporary shelter for girls (11-17) transitioning through the foster care system. Many of the girls come to Shelter Care from abusive homes, and now this safe place where they can stay to catch their breath will no longer be available to them.

With fewer safe options such as this, undoubtedly, some of the girls who would have ended up at ShelterCare will instead flee to the violent safety of the streets, a truly unnecessary tragedy.

We at Street Yoga want to thank the staff and girls at White Shield ShelterCare for inviting us in to teach yoga, and for welcoming us with smiles and sincerity. We wish them all well.

There is another program at White Shield, the Cottage Program, which offers longer term shelter, up to two years, for girls 12-16. We will able to continue our work at White Shield through this sister program, and we are very grateful for the opportunity to remain of service in this way.

The only benefit Street Yoga will see out of this is that we will get to teach the same, stable group of girls over a much longer period of time, instead of the more transitory ShelterCare girls. Instead of always introducing yoga to girls who are on the move, we will be able to develop a deeper, curriculum-based practice. We hope this will allow us to build models of yoga instruction that can be used by others wishing to teach girls within the foster care system.

A fact sheet about foster care in our country published by the state of Idaho late last year states: "Nationwide, the number of children in foster care reached 565,000 in 2001, which is more than twice as many as in 1987 (280,000). Each year, nearly 300,000 U.S. children enter foster care." We will be adding more references to information such as this as we gain new knowledge from our work.

With $87 billion, you could buy for each of these half million children their own $150,000 house.

Our first Nutrition Workshop for homeless youth will be held Feb 29th at Outside In. You can read the curriculum under the learning section of our website.

The other day i walked upstairs where the kids where playing and found my wife sitting in lotus pose knitting a sweater for our youngest child. I begged her to teach me how to do that. She looked up at me and smiled.

A few days later, we at Street Yoga were contacted by a woman forming a group based out of Los Angeles that is bringing together the practices of knitting, yoga and service. They have offered to knit for the youth of Street Yoga socks, sweaters, hats and the like. We are blessed to make connections such as these and are honored to be able to pass on such gifts.

We will have more information on this in the future, but in the meantime, if anyone is interested in connecting with these folks, drop me an email and i'll forward it along.

We have had a lot of interest in Street Yoga from people all over the country. We were finally able to put together some of our initial thoughts about building a new class. If you haven't already, you can read about Starting a Class on our website.

If anyone from one of these cities is interested in contacting others there who are interested in building Street Yoga-like programs, please let us know:

Send us an email and we'll facilitate making connections.

There are two main opportunities in the Portland area for interested folks. We are building a program at the Community Transitional School for 5th to 8th graders. It looks like it will be a class of about 20 young people from ages 10-14, most of them girls. We will be crafting a curriculum and meeting in the coming weeks and months to get this going.

Our work at Outside In continues. In many ways, this is the most challenging of our programs. For youth living on the streets, yoga is not a survival skill. It does not help them meet the constant crises of finding shelter, food and cash. In addition, teaching homeless youth is fully unpredictable. One class might have three students with previous yoga experience, while the next will have two students who are new, who haven't slept for 48 hours and are only awake because of the power of their stimulants.

What we are continually striving to do is meet the youth where they are, and bring them to yoga by relating yoga's benefits both short and long term with their daily realities. For this we need to be engaged in continual, creative marketing and educational work --in addition to teaching the classes.

We are striving to build an ongoing outreach and educational presence to meet this need. This group will work to bring books, magazines, workshops and other information about yoga to the youth living on the streets.

If any of you are interested in teaching the young people at CTS or helping with marketing and educational outreach to homeless youth, please fill out our volunteer form or email us directly.

We also met with the people at Insights about setting up a program there and we are waiting to see how those seeds germinate.

Finally, we are always looking for people interested in teaching yoga with any of our ongoing programs, at Outside In or White Shield Center.

As we grow and gain experience, we are hoping to be able to serve as a focal point for sharing useful information about teaching yoga to homeless, at-risk and sheltered youth and adults. If you come across any interesting articles, hear of any innovative programs, or know of folks who might be interested in our work, please let us know.

Also, if anyone is interested in working on creating educational or promotional material, flyers and the like, we would love to have your assistance.

Finally, i want to thank all of you for all the support you have given to this project over the months. It has helped those of us who are teaching face issues that are emotionally tough and at times simply painful. In return, i hope we can be a small inspiration for the good works that are possible anywhere, by each of us.

I found a simple quote that expresses it well: ‘As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.’ --John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Blessing to each of you.

Peace, mark