We’re well aware that our work has a positive impact on participants, and a growing number of studies illustrate this. Sometimes though, we learn of the lasting benefits from former participants, post-incarceration. When we do, it gives us reason to celebrate. We’d like to share one of those stories with you today.
Kimini Randall spent 23 years in California State Prisons, several at San Quentin, where he became involved in my yoga program. Eventually, he was transferred, first to one prison and then another. After his transfer, other than occasional letters, we didn’t have much contact.
Kimini was finally released from Soledad Prison this past June. We’ve been back in touch because he‘s been living in Oakland. It wasn’t until we sat down to chat via Zoom that I became fully aware of the profound impact our program had on him. Please watch this short video from that conversation with him, and follow-up clips of me and Chanda Williams, our Program Director for California.
The return to society of people like Kimini, with his emotional intelligence and social values, directly contributes to the public’s safety. Much more so than tough on crime initiatives, harsher sentences, and sole punishment as justice.
We need your help with our continued work that makes possible successful outcomes like Kimini’s.
Over the last few years, we’ve experienced a tipping point in the demand for our services. Our initiative has solidified our reputation, and many more correctional facilities are open to our trauma-informed yoga as rehabilitative programming. We’ve expanded programs to prisons in Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Ohio, and New Hampshire in the past two years. We now have more than 120 programs across 19 states for incarcerated men, women, and youth. Our book, Yoga A Path for Healing and Recovery, has been sent free-of-charge to 33,000 prisoners who have written and requested it.
We need your support to keep our momentum moving forward.
Help us raise $20,000 by the end of the year to support Prison Yoga Project’s mission in 2021.
Your donation supports:
- Publication and printing of an all-new book specifically for incarcerated women, the fastest-growing segment among incarcerated people
- Creation and distribution of additional distance-learning video, audio, and printed materials to support incarcerated people isolated due to COVID-19 lockdowns
- Establishment of a scholarship fund for formerly incarcerated people to attend 200-Hour Yoga Teacher Training so that they can give back
- Scholarships for a diversity of people to attend our Foundational Training and our Youth Facilitation Training hosted in partnership with YogaEd
- Creation of a Spanish-language version of our Foundational Training to support the growing interest in Mexico and Latin America