NATIONAL IMPACT COMMITMENT

Over the years, we have been inspired by your requests for us to start New Leaf projects in other areas of Canada. At this point, in order to build the strongest relationships possible with our teachers, partners and the communities we work within, we will continue to only operate our direct programs (the ones we pay for and oversee) at a local level, no more than approximately 2 hours away from our headquarters in Toronto, Ontario. However, we have heard your voices and are excited by your dreams to see this work happening in more and more places across the country.

We want to support YOU in whatever ways we can so that more people have opportunities to tap into this healing practice of yoga.

In order to do that, we are going to begin to disseminate our tools and learning in the following ways:

1.Developing workshops for yoga teachers to share our training tools

Our first teachers workshop, called Reaching In Reaching Out, was piloted to a group of 25 participants in Montreal in May, 2013, and we look forward to announcing more dates. If you are interested in hosting a workshop in your city, please contact us or visit our events page to view upcoming dates.

2.Creating online resources sharing our teaching tips and best practices

Our first online teaching tips videos and podcasts are being planned for 2013/2014. Through this series we will share examples of our led practices, themes and tips to engage youth effectively.

3. Carrying out and disseminating our research

We have been approved by the Ministry of Children and Youth services to conduct the first formal research of its kind in Canada on the benefits of yoga for youth in custody – this is a long-term under-taking and we’ll be very excited to update you on our progress in the coming year. We are excited to conduct more research over the next 5 years and to share our findings online so that others interested in this type of work can utilize our reports to support their own proposals.