2011 Global Seva Challenge participant Anne Lenhart

Monday, February 13^th, was our ninth day on our 2011 Global Seva Challenge immersion trip in Haiti and the second of a two day “rest” in middle of our trip. The previous day had been spent inhaling the color, smells, and music of Carnival in Jacmel. Monday we planned to spend hiking up to Bassin Bleu–a series of waterfalls and pools in the mountains above the city–and lounging on the beach in Jacmel.

In order to reach the falls, we transferred into pick-up trucks, which had been modified with benches built into the beds. The necessity of the pick-up trucks was immediately clear when we started fording the Riviere de la Cosse on the outskirts of Jacmel. Stretching nearly a mile wide in some places, the river is really a multi-use parcel of land with cleaner ponds where people bathe, do laundry, and wash their cars and livestock, as well as dry regions with piles of burning trash and large expanses of mud littered with tap-taps and small cars. Those of us in the smaller truck held onto our benches for dear life. Despite the bumpy panorama, we made it safely across the river with relative ease.

The drive continued another half an hour up nearly vertical roads.  Reaching the general parking area for the falls, our trucks were immediately mauled by local guides who could not wait to show us the best footpath up the hills. As someone who generally refuses help of any sort, I looked with complete disdain at these men who would offer me a hand over the rough rocks. My rejection of their assistance is most ironic considering I would completely rely upon these same men a short time later.

We spent the last thirty minutes hiking through the forest and scaling up and down large rocks to finally arrive at the luminous waters of Bassin Bleu. The largest pool is approximately 30 feet in diameter and it’s rumored to be 70 feet deep. While you cannot see the bottom of the pool, the water is wonderfully clear. Nature has carved the pool into a stone cavern with a cascading waterfall and cliffs on one side. It’s perfect for climbing.

I have never been comfortable with even semi-opaque water (I get panicky in a murky bathtub) and saw this entire experience as a chance to challenge my irrational fears. Convinced there was nothing to be afraid of, I not only swam in the pool, but joined the smaller group to climb up the waterfall onto the cliffs above the water. Standing there, about 30 feet above the water, I lingered trying to decide if I was brave enough to jump off. The distance itself was not so frightening–it was the outcropping of rocks about ten feet down that I would need to clear before I hit the water.

As I reached the decision to turn around and climb back down the rocks, I placed my foot on an area of rock already wet from earlier divers. In that instant I knew I had made a mistake. I felt my foot slide forward and awkwardly reached out to grab hold of the nearly sheer rocks to either side. Falling forward, my right knee came into contact with rocks protruding from the side of the cliff nearly ten feet down. The impact broke my patella neatly in two and ripped open the flesh surrounding my knee. I knew that once I hit the water I had to surface as soon as possible and ask for help. Falling the final 20 feet, that was the only thought in my head.

I remember the sense of going into the water and the immediate fear that I couldn’t come back up. The split second it took me to regain direction and pull my head to the surface felt like hours of effort. As soon as the water was out of my mouth, I shouted “I am not okay.” Cyril, our group tour guide and my personal savior, appeared instantly and pulled me to the shallow area of the water and out onto the rocks. I looked at my knee long enough to know I didn’t need to see it any longer. Abby, one of the other Global Seva Challenge participants, who would be the source of my strength for the next hour, grabbed a hold of my hand and reminded me to breathe. “I was okay,” I said to myself. “Breathe.”

We used the beautiful sarongs that Kelly Campbell, our trip leader, gave each of us when we arrived to create a turnicate, and someone found a long stick to create a splint. The blood soaked through all the layers of cloth as soon as they were applied. I felt blood on my nose and asked if I had broken it. Fortunately the answer was no. Knees I can deal with, but I like my nose.

“Breathe. I am okay. Breathe.”

With the leg stabilized, our group quickly packed up our bags and we moved back through the other pools of water to the head of the trail. I was carried and pulled easily in the water, and finally lifted onto the ground. We now faced a much greater question: how to get back down the mountain to the trucks. The hike up to the ponds was by no means rigorous, but it required two legs and a good sense of balance. Completely unable to walk, there was no way I would be able to maneuver the path. The trail was well worn by previous visitors, but totally inaccessible to trucks. Cyril spoke to the group of local men to discuss the best options. I smoked a cigarette. Much of what happened next seemed like magic.

The first obstacle was a sheer rock. On the way in, we used a rope and easily rappelled the ten or so feet to the bottom.  Climbing back up with two legs would challenge anyone who wasn’t fit or confident. It would be impossible to push/pull/carry me up the boulder. Faced with no other option, I grabbed the rope and pulled myself up. There were hands to help guide my good leg to the small places where I could push up. I yelled a lot. We made it to the top in record time.

Then there were so many hands. They lifted me onto a metal cot with a thin mattress–the folding type popular in the 1970s and in cheap hotels. The cot was lifted into the air, above the heads of these men, and I was moving down the mountain.

“Breathe. I am okay. Breathe.”

I hung onto the mattress for dear life as I jostled along. I felt branches lightly scratching me. There was a time or two that it felt like the cot would drop–but it felt like the men carrying me would have dropped their only child before letting me fall. Occasionally they would put me down to rest. I weighed probably twice what any one of them did. Sometimes I would stop breathing and I would hear Abby, a few steps behind our caravan, yell at me to breathe.

“Breathe.  I am okay. Breathe.”

When we finally reached the trucks, I kept attempting to thank the man who carried my broken leg. Even when the group rested he held my leg to keep it from moving. I think I was crying and trying to say thank you. His response was always the same: “Okay. No problem.” Like it was everyday he carried a big white girl down a mountain with a broken leg. I am certain he had asked earlier if I needed a hand on my trip and I had said no. If I could have, I would have tipped him with my house and everything I owned. He and the others helped load me, along with the mattress, into the backseat of the pick-up truck. OTM founder and Global Seva Challenge director, Suzanne Sterling, was in the front seat. She held my hand. She let me squeeze it for the next two hours nonstop. If you ever encounter an angel–they might come in the form of Suzanne.

I don’t remember much of the next two hours. There was not an adequate hospital facility in Jacmel, so Suzanne and I flew in a tiny prop plane to Port au Prince. They removed the passenger seat and replaced it with a cooler to place my outstretched leg on. The plane had no digital readings and the pilot kept turning around to talk to us. At one point, he opened his glove compartment and handed us breath mints. Suzanne and I had been singing and making noises to drown out the sound of the plane and to keep me from focusing on the pain. I think maybe he was trying to tell us something with the breath mints, but at the time we missed it.

Cyril, still my savior, had called his father, Lionel, to meet us at the airport in Port au Prince. I was placed in the back of his truck and driven the last 45 minutes to the hospital in Pentionville. My surgeon, one of the best in the country, rebuilt my knee that night. They gave me an epidural rather than general anesthesia. It wore off before the surgery finished and I could feel as they wrapped the stainless steel wire around my knee cap and pulled the pieces together. I felt each of the 25 stitches used to put the flesh around my knee back into place. I felt them as they moved me back to my hospital bed where I stayed for next five nights. I was still feeling it when I checked into the hospital in Dallas a week later.

I am not one to talk the spirituality or religion. I have spent far more of my life fighting the idea of God than embracing it. That said, there was something magical that happened on the edge of that cliff. I fell 30 feet and broke one bone. I had people around me who could not only pull me out of the water, but locate a crew to carry me down the mountain. I was taken to the best hospital in Port au Prince and operated on by the best surgeon in Haiti. The infection I contracted in the water in Bassin Bleu did not show until a week later, when I was in a hospital in Dallas with all the infectious disease doctors I could want. I could say that it was just luck that saved me that day but I think there was something more.

Haiti is a place with many layers of magic. Our Voodoo interpreter explained to us that here there are mountains behind mountains–that each time we think we know the truth we find another layer beyond our understanding. I don’t know why I was the one who fell that day. I do know, however, that, although my trauma was small in comparison, my accident made me feel connected to the trauma that I imagine the thousands of Haitians experienced when they saw their friends or family injured in the earthquake. And I feel very connected to how lucky I am. For many Haitians, help never arrived. In my case, fortunately, I received the best medical care that Haiti could provide.

Find out more info on Off the Mat, Into the World’s 2012 Global Seva Challenge to battle sex trafficking in India here.

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Anne Lenhart lives and works in Dallas, Texas with her girlfriend, their cat Emmy Lou, and their bird Zoey. Anne participated in the 2011 Global Seva Challenge, raising more than $20,000 for Haiti.

Off the Mat, Into the World’s Empowered Youth Initiative is a weeklong, in-field training, working to reverse the disruptive cycles facing urban and suburban youth in Los Angeles. We bugged Hala Khouri, head of OTM’s Empowered Youth Initiative, about the program she helped craft, the amazing partners she’s collaborating with, and the special event participants will attend this year. (It’s filling up fast. Sign up here.)

Off the Mat, Into the World: What is the Empowered Youth Initiative?

Hala Khouri:  This is a 7-day on-the ground training for people who are interested in working with under served communities. We’ve teamed up with innovative and revolutionary LA leaders who are really making a difference in the lives of the youth here. Our leaders will be sharing their work with us and some will take us around to engage with the youth in their programs.

OTM:  How does yoga fit into the training?

HK: One of the foundational philosophies at Off the Mat is that the inner work is a vital part of doing conscious service. Yoga is a tool for self reflection, so we will be practicing every morning of this training with the intention of checking in with ourselves and noticing how our experiences are impacting us.

OTM: Is this training just for yoga teachers?

HK: No. It’s for anyone who wants to work with these communities in any capacity. Some of the participants are already engaged in their community and want to deepen their knowledge and self-awareness. Others are searching for their way to engage and come to the training for inspiration.

OTM: If someone is not from Los Angeles, does it make sense to attend this training?

HK: Yes! We find that many of the dynamics that exist here in LA are mirrored in other cities. When kids feel lost and alienated, they turn to drugs, gangs, or crime. More than half of the attendees last year were from another city, and they all went back and did some amazing work in their communities.

OTM: What are you most excited about for the upcoming training?

HK: It’s hard to choose one thing. I feel so blessed to be collaborating with such a diverse and talented group of leaders. One unique experience that we get to have is attending the 20-year anniversary celebration event of the truce between the Bloods and Crips, two of LA’s biggest gangs. Aqeela Sherrills, who negotiated the truce, will take our group on a tour of Watts and talk about his work with gangs.  Then we’ll get to attend some fascinating panels and hear stories from community members in Watts.

OTM: Give us an example of the types of programs that participants will be learning about.

HK: Yes. I’d love to. Our partners are incredible. Leila Steinberg uses hip-hop and spoken word with youth so that they can tell their story and start to be liberated from their past.  Krishna Kaur brings yoga to juvenile halls and believes that raising self esteem is key towards breaking unhealthy behaviors. Fidel Rodriguez does rites of passage rituals for youth as a way to support their growth and inspire community. Tessa Hicks-Peterson trains her university students in a humble approach towards community engagement that is about empowering community members to lead the change in their area.

For more info click here. And for the full itinerary click here.

2011 Global Seva Challenge participant Gina Pachkowski in Haiti

Carnival in Haiti is bustling with colors and sounds, and nowhere are colors more vivid than in the Southern seaside town of Jacmel. The city’s paper mache artisans design new costumes every year for the parade: devils, dinosaurs, animals, buildings, and politicians!

Traditionally the costumes are created to poke fun at political figures, corporations, policemen, bankers, and other authority figures. During the day our 2011 Global Seva Challenge group walked around, looking at all of the different paper mache masks and costumes. What I loved was that the creation process was not hidden. There were no surprises. The artisans are proud to share their work, so we were able to see the artists at work. And then we later saw them in the parade.

Carnival is like Mardi Gras. Whether the sights are funny or scary, carnival-goers can easily become spellbound. Throughout the day and night, we immersed ourselves in the magical. Other times in the burlesque, the whimsical, and even the devilish world of Jacmel’s own Mardi Gras celebration.

That day we stopped on the parade route for lunch and to join the masses watching the parade. At times, we took refuge from a scary scene inside the restaurant. Other times we jumped right into the parade with the participants to sing, dance, and act with them!

In the evening we returned downtown to enjoy the nightlife. A sea of sweaty bodies and loud music set the scene that night. With thousands of people swaying in unison, Carnival is alive after dark. At one point I closed my eyes, and I imagined that I could have been anywhere, even a NYC nightclub, but instead I was in the streets of Jacmel, celebrating a European tradition from medieval times with the Haitian community.

It has been an incredible day today in Jacmel! How magical that we were here for this extra special celebration. But, then again, it’s been magical since we stepped off the plane onto Haitian soil.

Find out more info on Off the Mat, Into the World’s 2012 Global SevaChallenge to battle sex trafficking in India here.

By Gina Pachkowski

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Gina lives in Cranford, NJ, and she is the owner of Alluem Yoga Studio. Gina participated in the 2011 Global Seva Challenge, raising more than $20,000 for Haiti.

2011 Global Seva Challenge crew

Haiti’s countryside is stark and beautiful. Steep hills are cut with rows of crops against a perfect landscaped sky. This magical setting conceals the long struggle that Haitian farmers and rural communities have endured throughout history. At times, they’ve been enslaved, tortured, forgotten, and exploited. But as I dig my hands in this soil, among the weeds and fire ants, I can feel the opportunity for rebirth in every single moment.

Before I arrived in Haiti, I was inspired by the courage of thousands of Haitian farmers who marched through the streets and burned 400 tons of hybrid, genetically modified, and chemically treated seeds donated by multinational corporation Monsanto. Some of these farmers had lost their homes, their equipment, and their seeds in the 2010 earthquake. But they rejected the mindless international meddling in traditional practices with revolutionary force. The protesters chanted: “Long live the native maize seed! Monsanto’s GMO & hybrid seed violate peasant agriculture!”

Today, we stepped out of urban Haiti and into the power of one rural community. The Association of the Peasants of Fondwa (APF) is a grassroots organization that for more than two decades has empowered local farmers. APF’s approach is deeply rooted in sustainability—teaching farmers natural growing practices like crop rotation and seed saving, discouraging use of pesticides and herbicides, and maintaining native crops, as well as providing a range of services to improve the lives of the families in this community.

The story of peasant agriculture in Haiti is a tumultuous one. A majority of Haitians still live in rural communities like this one and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. We walked through the fields and saw row after row of peas and beans, sweet potatoes, and corn. The area around the small village of Fondwa also produces plantains, bananas, citrus, and coffee. But paradoxically, Haiti remains one of the most food-insecure nations in the world.

The problem is a complex blend of misaligned agricultural policies, misdirected international food aid and trade policies, and the devastating mark of natural disasters on the Haitian landscape. But I can’t help but stand in these fields and feel that we are complicit in this. Haiti’s own governments have repressed the rural poor and contributed to massive degradation of the once-lush countryside. But since the 1980s, Haiti has become increasingly dependent on cheap imported food and food aid, and open trade and U.S. agricultural support policies have hurt Haitian farmers.

Today Haiti is one of the largest importers of U.S. rice, which is significantly cheaper than Haitian-grown rice because the U.S. government subsidizes rice production. Haitian rice farmers simply can’t compete, and rice production in Haiti has fallen dramatically as a result. In 1980, Haiti was nearly self-sufficient in food production; today, Haiti imports 60% of its food, including 80% of its rice, a staple of the economy (and one of the foods that we’ve been eating with every meal on this trip). Recently, President Clinton recently apologized for his role in backing additional subsidies for rice farmers in Arkansas, which in his words, have had “the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did.”

Before I arrived here in Haiti, I imagined a denuded countryside and a dim future for agricultural production. But standing today among these vibrant fields, I am confronted once again with my own assumptions. This place offers an opportunity for rebirth in every single moment. Underneath the garbage, the soil is rich and dark and fertile. Another paradox.

The farmers, activists, and teachers who are remaking this landscape and their community through traditional agriculture and teaching the next generation of Haiti’s rural population are an inspiration for the rest of the world. It’s a long road ahead, but giving farmers the tools, knowledge, and opportunity to produce the food their struggling nation needs, rather than just the food, must be the start of the road to recovery.

Find out more info on Off the Mat, Into the World’s 2012 Global Seva Challenge to battle sex trafficking in India here.

By Kristin Adair
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Kristin is trained as a lawyer and policy wonk, and now teaches vinyasa flow yoga classes in Washington DC.  Kristin participated in the 2011 Global Seva Challenge, raising more than $20,000 for Haiti.

Global Seva Challenge participant Robin Borrud with the kids of ACFFC

Art is a language anyone can understand.  It crosses all race, religion, and social, economic, and political boundaries, and it unites people in a way that is truly magical. Art is also one of the most influential forms of inspiration on this earth (second only to music, in my opinion!)

Now place art in the hands of children. Teach them to conceptualize and create art, and you get the feeling that you can change the world through their hands. That’s the way I felt today! The work that the people at the Art Creation Foundation for Children (ACFFC) in Jacmel, Haiti are doing is magnificent. One of Off the Mat’s 2011 Global Seva Challenge partners, ACFFC teaches the children of Jacmel how to conceptualize art, draw up designs, assemble their materials, and create their artwork. And, man, can some of these kids create! They also work to instill in them the value of respecting their tools and their work environment. I was unbelievably impressed with how clean and organized they keep their space, especially knowing that 95 children all share the same space. Many of the pieces that are created are then sold to the public at local hotels and stores or in their showroom. And the money is then put back into the school. It is a powerful and empowering program that not only keeps these children off the streets but gives them a chance at a better life.

Our day with these beautiful children centered around four activities—finishing the mosaic benches, painting a house that they have recently built for a student and his family, decorating old glass coca cola bottles, and making papier-mâché masks for Carnaval. The last two activities were taught by the students and not nearly as easy as they sound. The glass bottles are a Haitian art form traditionally used in voodoo ceremonies, although currently purchased mainly as art pieces. I tried my hand at one but had to admit that I found it very challenging to work with the glass. The children on the other hand were amazingly adept with the process and couldn’t understand my struggle. The papier-mâché masks are a traditional Haitian art and used to make bowls, masks, hanging art, etc.

In addition to art education, ACFFC also helps to provide housing for their students most in need. They recently were able to acquire funds to build a house for one family of nine that had been living in a tent. When it rained, there was no way to stay dry. This family’s new home is a 16′x16′ plywood structure with an aluminum roof. It cost about $1700 to build. Our Global Seva Challenge group spent the day helping to paint the family’s new home a cheery shade of blue with a clean white trim. There was so much joy and excitement around our painting project. The boys from ACFFC filled our paint trays and instructed us in the proper ways to paint the corners and edges. There was a great sense of pride and ownership in the project, and it was wonderful to see them so confident in their abilities. As we made our way back to the hotel at the end of the day, it was clear that everyone is gearing up for the Carnival festivities this weekend. There was a buzz of excitement in the streets and music at every corner. Jacmel is the place to be for Carnival!

Find out more info on our 2012 Global Seva Challenge to battle sex trafficking in India here.

By Robin Borrud

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Robin is California-born and currently lives in Sydney, Australia with her husband and three children. She participated in the 2011 Global Seva Challenge, raising more than $20,000 for Haiti.

OTM Founder Seane Corn in Jacmel, Haiti

On the road again…The road to Jacmel was breathtaking. Little by little the tents, dust, garbage, chaos, and grey earth of Port-au-Prince gave way to lush greenery and brown earth suitable for farming. We traversed steep mountains, some of which were terraced for agriculture. The seaside town of Jacmel was in stark contrast to the city we’d just left…what we saw of the main street looked cheerful, tidy, and industrious. 

We went straight to the Jacmel Children’s Center, one of the recipients of the funds we raised through the 2011 Global Seva Challenge. Mama Bonite, the founder of the children’s center, told us her story. Haitian born, she had lived in Brooklyn for many years, working as a registered nurse, but she felt a calling to help the people of Haiti. Her plan was to establish a food distribution center for the poor which she would visit from time to time. She came to Jacmel, bought some land, and ended up staying for nine months on that visit. She began by feeding just a few children, and now six years later, she lives here full time and feeds 300 children a day, turning no one away. Some kids walk an hour each way for their only meal of the day. In addition, she provides free medical care and adult education. As she said, “If you’re hungry, I’m here, need nursing, I’m here, need diapers, I’m here.”

Mama Bonite told us of a father who brought his sick two month old to her just the other day. The baby’s mother wasn’t producing much milk so they were feeding the baby mashed graham crackers mixed with water. He was so grateful when she gave him a supply of formula that he almost began to weep.

Mama Bonite has built a beautiful community structure where the children eat and worship, and she is now in the process of building an amazing home for 90 orphans. As we helped serve their lunch, I was astounded; although it was 2:00pm, and for many this was the only meal of the day, they waited patiently and quietly for about 10 minutes until everyone was served. I thought of our dinners back at our comfortable hotel where we start eating the second we get our food.

 Mama Bonite is one of several people I’ve met so far who challenge a strong assumption that I came with: that all Haitian people want to get away from here and would give anything to get to the U.S. Instead, I’ve seen people leave comfortable lives and good jobs to return to their home country. Bonite funded her project with her retirement savings and maintains it with her social security, pension, and donations from her church in Brooklyn. The new Jacmel Children’s Center is being funded primarily through Lisa Rueff’s fundraising efforts in the San Francisco Bay area. To support these projects or sponsor an orphan, visit www.jacmelchildrenscenter.com or e-mail Mama Bonite at Boniteaffriany@yahoo.com. Before we left the center, the kids sang us a beautiful Haitian song, and Off the Mat founder, Suzanne Sterling, led us in singing a song back to them. I am learning the unifying power of song.

Next we visited Faith and Love Orphanage. Again, this was started by people who had a
 comfortable life outside of Haiti. Ninety kids live there in rather primitive conditions; electricity is sporadic and even then most of the light sockets are empty. However, they have a bed and food, they attend school, and they have each other. Some of the OTM trip participants led the kids in a super fun yoga class with lots of giggling and wide smiles. Then Suzanne broke out her drum and the singing and dancing began. It was so fun and is such an icebreaker and unifier. If only they started all meetings in the U.S. with a drum circle, negotiations would probably go a lot faster, be a lot more just, and everyone would end up friends…just an idea! 

Lastly, we paid a quick visit to a small orphanage of 11 kids run by a Haitian man and his wife. As we had with the other places we visited, we brought them a suitcase of donated school and medical supplies that all of us had brought with us. We all had fun drawing with chalk under a big mango tree in their courtyard. 

I’m so grateful for what I’ve learned so far. Haiti’s has a long history of tragedy. Its resources have been depleted by other countries, and this history has informed so much of what goes on in the country today. But still people are trying in noble ways to do the right thing. Hopefully the example of these selfless people will spread and move up the ranks to the ones in charge who are in a position to make widespread improvements.

To find out more info on Off the Mat, Into the World’s 2012 Global Seva Challenge to battle sex trafficking in India, click here.

By Caroline Gronowski

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Caroline Gronowski is from Akron, Ohio. She participated in the 2011 Global Seva Challenge, raising more than $20,000 for Haiti.

2011 Global Seva Challenge participants in Haiti

We hit the ground running today. It was Off The Plane, and Onto Haitian Soil. Day one of the 2011 Global Seva Challenge immersion trip has begun and here welcomes a change in the way I perceive Haiti. Seeing the land surrounded by blue ocean and meeting the locals with their honest smiles drew me further away from existing preconceived notions and closer to the reality of present day Haiti.

Over the last year, my initial perception of Haiti has been influenced heavily by NPR reports, internet articles, CNN updates, Paul Farmer stories, and disaster relief-related news.

All of this coverage has been helpful in keeping me updated as I followed Haiti’s conditions and reconstruction efforts after the earthquake, but within the first few moments of being here, I knew that all of this past knowledge must be looked at again through a new lens, and I must find a way to relate to Haiti through my own experiences.

As our group of Global Seva Challenge travelers piled into the bus, we were introduced to our amazing guides, Syril and Genesis, who would show us around the city of Port-au-Prince. The experience was up close and personal. We stopped to see the city’s cathedral, or what was left of it, after the earthquake. We heard the personal stories by our guides, local Haitians who were here in 2010 when the earthquake struck. In the afternoon, our bus pulled in to Camp Adokin, the second largest tent city in Port-au-Prince, housing an estimated 30,000 people, and home to Genesis. He’s a camp leader there. For this camp, Off the Mat has raised enough money to purchase six solar lampposts to help light the streets, helping to increase safety for many young children and women at risk of violence or rape at nighttime.

As our group engaged in many conversations throughout the day, one statement by Genesis really stood out, helping me piece together a better understanding of how Haitians dealt with the massive effects and struggle that took place directly after the earthquake occurred. When questioned about how the people he knew reacted to the sudden loss of their homes and what they would do next after knowing that nothing was left for them but ruins and rubble, Genesis replied, “everybody then tried to get a piece of the land.”

Find out more info about Off the Mat’s 2012 Global Seva Challenge to battle sex trafficking in India here.

By Christina Sabatini
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Christina Sabatini lives in Los Angeles, CA, and she is an Off the Mat regional Global Seva Challenge leader for the Western United States. She participated in the 2011 Global Seva Challenge, raising more than $20,000 for Haiti.

Microfinance recipient Josephine and her new baby girl

Today was big. It was Day 2 of our Global Seva Challenge immersion trip. The feeling of hopelessness from seeing the conditions of the tent camps shifted as we moved to the beauty of the Central Plateau, 90 minutes outside of Port-au-Prince. Here we witnessed the amazing work and impact of an organization called Fonkoze. The organization has been in Haiti for 16 years. They run a three-stage program that begins with Chimen Lavi Mi Vo (CLM), which translates to: path to a better life. This stage lasts for 18 months and consists of building self esteem, providing the poorest of the poor with a dollar a day, and providing participants with an asset: a pig, goat, or cow.

The second stage of the program is called Ti Credit and means little credit. Fonkoze provides small loans of $25-50, which must be repaid monthly. This stage can also include schooling if participants need to learn to read and write. Phase three is called Solidarity. Groups of five women work together to support each other in their various ventures and keep each other accountable.

But these are just the facts. The empowerment and emotion behind the facts are what really make the work of Fonkoze and Zafen so big. The happiness of these women to have control of their lives is evident in their bright smiles and the welcoming songs that they sing. These are women who used to support themselves through panhandling or prostitution. Now they have businesses and are responsible for large sums of money. They borrow, they spend, they save, they smile, they sing. They are beautiful. You can feel their pride and sense of self worth.

One of the projects that Off the Mat funded through this year’s Global Seva Challenge is through Fonkoze partner, Zafen. Zafen provides micro loans to small businesses. Our donation financed the digging of three ponds for raising tilapia and the digging of a well to fill the ponds. This is a loan that will be paid back and can be used over and over to fund other Zafen projects. The owners of the future tilapia farm are a coop of 75 women. Through this work and the small pond they’ve already created, they have employed 125 people. The new ponds we funded added five more permanent jobs.

A feeling of hope radiates from these amazing women, who are breaking the chains of poverty and changing what it means to be a woman in Haiti. These are the success stories. It’s hard to imagine them any other way. On our last stop of the day we got a glimpse of what their former lives may have been.

By far, the most emotional part of the day was our visit with Josephine at the tent where she lives with her three children. The last of these children was born just three days before we arrived. Her baby girl was delivered in the tent. Josephine, who has been in the CLM program for two months, called her Fonkoze agent to help catch the baby and cut the cord. After being in this program for only two months, he was who she trusted to call for help.

At first Josephine would not turn and look at us. “You are all too beautiful for me to look,” she said. The lack of self worth in her statement is what CLM is pushing back against. The women who are chosen for this program have massive cards stacked against them. They have been abandoned by society and many have little hope. CLM gives them money to live on so they can begin to learn how to provide the bare necessities for themselves and their families. And their agent provides other support they may need. Josephine chose a pig as her asset. She will care for it and then eventually sell it to earn money for her family. Fonkoze will also aid in the construction of a real home for her and her family.

This program will continue for 18 months while she continues to build hope and confidence in herself. The plan is that one day she will be one of the women paying back a business loan, placing money in savings, and of course raising her voice to sing! With a 95% success rate within the Fonkoze microlending program I have no doubt that she will succeed, flipping the system on its head and paving the way for her three beautiful daughters so they can follow in her footsteps one day.

Find out more info on Off the Mat’s 2012 Global Seva Challenge to battle sex trafficking in India here.

By Adrienne White
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Adrienne is a mom to Rowan (8) and Shay (6). When not buried under a mountain of laundry she enjoys teaching yoga and getting her seva (service) on. Adrienne participated in the 2011 Global Seva Challenge, raising more than $20,000 for Haiti.

Seva participant Lisa Rueff kneels to chat

We stepped off the plane in Port-au-Prince on a quiet Sunday morning, as if this massive city with all of its commotion, rubble, and pain was just rubbing the sleep out of its eyes and offering us a gentle welcome. It was Day 1 of our Global Seva Challenge immersion trip. The smell was not as overpowering as I had expected. It smells a lot like India. A mix of burning and spice with sewage and the trash that seems to be everywhere I look.

Later our bus stops in the shadow of the destroyed national palace. This is a complicated symbol I can only begin to understand, the less-than-functional relationship between a long-troubled government and its long-suffering people. The majestic standing metal figure of the marron inconnu, the unknown slave, is a symbol of the spirit of revolution that this country embodies, now obscured behind port-o-potties gaping open and tattered tents. Once we would have stood at the foot of the statue and listened to its powerful history. Now, we stay on the bus. To reach the statue would mean traipsing through makeshift plastic homes, and it’s simply not an option.

I meet eyes with a woman sitting on the dirt path next to her tent, washing clothes in an oversized basin. She sees me and I can see the pain on her face. She might be my age, not much older, but it’s hard to tell. All I can think is, what does she see of me? I’m ashamed for all I have, for the air conditioned bus, for my camera, my clothes, my money. There’s more in my overstuffed suitcase than this woman owns, perhaps more than she has ever owned. And through all that pain she keeps washing. I can’t help but imagine that I would have given up by now.

After lunch, our first tent camp visit, the second largest with thousands of tents as far as I can see. The scene is a sad one, to say the least. We are sad, but these children with missing items of clothing (one with pants but no shirt, another with only a donated t-shirt on top), they are joyful. One tiny girl just beams with a smile as she poses for the camera, tries to get into every piece of the action, even pressing her finger to my lens as if she could make it come to life. There’s something to live for in the makeshift community. A passion that we can’t begin to understand—it seems to run like an unbreakable thread through the country.

It’s a challenge for me to really feel this, both the pain and the joy, rather than just observing and capturing it from behind a window glass shield. That will be my work this week. Can I set aside the intellectual observer and really be a part of this? I hope so.

Find out more info on Off the Mat’s 2012 Global Seva Challenge to battle sex trafficking in India here.

By Kristin Adair
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Kristin Adair participated in Off the Mat’s 2011 Global Seva Challenge, raising more than $20,000 for Haiti.

2012 Global Seva Challenge participant Kristin Adair

Many Haitians lost everything in the devastating 2010 earthquake that crumbled buildings and lives. Even before the quake, however, poverty was endemic in Haiti, and those with already shaky foundations were that much more affected.

As I set out on my own journey to learn about Haiti and connect with Haitians from afar—part of my commitment to raise funds for relief efforts through Off the Mat’s 2012 Global Seva Challenge—I was deeply affected by something I didn’t expect to see in Haiti: hope. Somehow, even Haitians who have lost what little they had to lose—homes, possessions, small businesses, crops—have not given up hope. They are unshakable in will and passion. They have shunned handouts for jobs, charity for opportunity, and stepped up under the most difficult circumstances to support their families and communities.

“We wake each day with an idea that we can build a better life for us and our children.” These are the words of a small group of women, who along with tens of thousands of others, are benefiting from microfinance programs through Haitian NGO and Off the Mat Global Seva partner Fonkoze and other organizations like it.

Microfinance offers an opportunity for the world’s poor to climb out of poverty and traverse challenges like natural disasters, through education, savings, and hard work. Many Americans have heard about microlending, which provides very small loans to the poor, most often to help them start backyard enterprises. These businesses are the fabric of the economy in places where job opportunities are few. Microfinance programs also provide other financial services, like savings, insurance, and funds transfers, to those who ordinarily lack access to mainstream financial institutions.

Microfinance grew out of necessity and innovation, from humble beginnings in South Asia in the 1970s. Commercial banks are for profit institutions, and it’s just not profitable to provide small loans to low income individuals who don’t have the credit or collateral to secure a loan. These same potential customers likely don’t have enough to maintain a savings account or pay fees for other financial services.

The view of poverty as a circle, an inescapable cycle of misery, is much more than a cliché for many in the developing world. It’s a reality. Without access to mainstream financial institutions, the world’s poor are unable to start or grow businesses, or they find themselves at the mercy of predatory moneylenders or other informal arrangements that are unstable or unsafe. After an emergency, like a natural disaster or a death in the family, they may be unable to recover without savings or financial assistance. For many in Haiti, this became a stark fact of life on January 12, 2010 when Haiti was impacted by the strongest earthquake in the country’s history.

Fonkoze, Haiti’s Alternative Bank for the Organized Poor, is a powerful model of successful microfinance programs, providing much-needed financial services to some of the poorest Haitians. Like many other microfinance programs around the world, Fonkoze focuses on women—they work with more than 57,000 of them—who receive literacy and business education and microloans to provide for their families and support small enterprises in farming, handicrafts, and roadside shops.

It’s an undeniable fact that women can be powerful instruments of change for their communities. As microfinance has expanded to a global movement over the years, research has shown that women in the developing world are more reliable borrowers, less likely to default on loans, and more successful in translating small loans into big gains on the scale of poverty.

Fonkoze’s programs also demonstrate the force of microfinance as a community-driven movement. Fonkoze doesn’t simply hand out loans to poor women and send them on their way. Instead, they activate small “solidarity groups” of friends and neighbors who join together to learn about managing their finances, providing mutual support and accountability. These small groups are connected to a web of others like them and receive community-based support from local branches of Fonkoze.

Microfinance is not without its challenges. Small loans come at a high cost to the lender, interest rates are high, and in countries like Haiti that lack basic infrastructure and stable governance, maintaining reliable services can be a formidable challenge. Tens of thousands of Fonkoze clients still face an uphill battle recovering from the earthquake’s damage—crumbled walls, physical scars, and those scars unseen. But it is hopeful that healthy community-based organizations can succeed when paired with strong-willed and deeply committed individuals and communities, because the path out of poverty is not a ladder, but a long, winding staircase.

Off the Mat’s Global Seva Challenge is all about community, and for me the women of Fonkoze were the fuel powering my own efforts to raise at least $20,000 for this and several other inspiring Haitian nonprofits.

Lasting change often rises out of moments of unbelievable hardship. Innovation grows out of the challenge presented by that ugly thought: I can’t do it, I can’t go any further. I have seen this unfold during my year of fundraising through Global Seva. Just when I thought I couldn’t find one more penny for these women in Haiti, I made a connection or saw a spark and found a way to reignite my commitment. My community rose around me. And the donations flowed as if into a dry riverbed.

There is an incredible moment happening right now in Haiti. Women who lost nearly everything are joining with their communities to move forward. And it’s not just the money and tangible assistance that is making change possible, but the things that can’t be quantified. Women armed with information—how to read, how to spend and save money, and the simple knowledge that something other than poverty is possible—and community—a circle of love and encouragement, particularly from other women—may just be the most powerful weapon in the world.

As I arrive in Haiti, I’m meeting these amazing women who are stepping out of their comfort zones, setting aside their pain, and challenging convention to transform themselves and their families. And I can only imagine what I will learn from them.

Watch this video to meet some of the women of Fonkoze. And find out more information on Off the Mat’s 2012 Global Seva Challenge to battle sex trafficking in India here.

By Kristin Adair
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Kristin Adair participated in the 2011 Global Seva Challenge, raising more than $20,000 for Haiti.

Off the Mat cofounder and Global Seva Challenge director Suzanne Sterling

This is an important time for us here on the OTM team because our Global Seva Challenge Haiti fundraising deadline is December 15th. Our yearly leadership program empowers and mentors yogis to raise $20,000 (no small feat!) for a different recipient country each year. To date, we’ve raised more than $2 million for organizations creating real impact around the world.

This year, our focus is on Haiti, a country still reeling from the 2010 earthquake that rocked the nation’s already shaky infrastructure. Through this program, we’ll donate necessary funds and work with our local partner organizations on infrastructure, child services, and job creation.

The participants of this year’s Seva Challenge have inspiring and very creative events coming up in the next few weeks. Many of them have been working for months…producing events, teaching donation classes, and in general galvanizing their local yoga communities to support their fundraising efforts. And in the midst of the economic turmoil that is happening worldwide, their efforts have been even more impressive.

We urge you now to support the Seva Challenge participants and their events in your area so that we can all say we have been a part of supporting health, well-being, and sustainability for the Haitian communities. If it’s hard for you to offer money, we’d love for you to offer your time to volunteer at one of the events or simply help to get the word out in your area.

As we say to our Global Seva Participants…there is NO failure in the Seva Challenge because the money raised will be directly supporting our projects in Haiti and the awareness raised is a strong reminder of the power of our collective yoga community. We are most empowered when we come together in collaboration, and we are getting better and better at working together to create the world that we wish to live in.

We have been deeply moved by the Seva Challenge participants’ willingness to step out of their comfort zones and into leadership, find their voices to speak out for those who are suffering, and take risks rather than playing safe. Our hope is that they can feel supported in their growth and efforts by our entire worldwide OTM community.

We are honored to be in an activated community with all of you! And we couldn’t do the work we do without each of you.

So…what can you do to help Haiti? A lot. Or a little.

1. Party Down!

Our Global Seva 2011 participants are hosting tons of seriously awesome events. And you’re invited!
Find a local event.

2. Donate Now. Every Dollar Counts!

Haiti’s unemployment rate is 70%. This year, we’re working with microfinance group Fonkoze to create jobs & financial stability in the country. It’s not too late to support our 2011 Global Seva Challenge! Every single dollar counts.
Donate Now.

3. Share!

Help us get the word out! Post on your Facebook or twitter, and email your friends and family.

It’s really that easy!

Thank you,

Suzanne Sterling
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Suzanne Sterling is a founder of Off the Mat. You can read her full bio here.

Off the Mat, Into the World: Favorite pose? I know, it’s so cliché for a yoga org to ask this of our staff, but we had too. Right? Right.

Leigh Ferrara: Viparita Dandasana. I could stay in that pose for eternity. And, also balasana. It’s the best.

OTM: Best part about working at Off the Mat?

LF: No question. It’s the people. Our founders, our staff, our regional and community leaders, our community members… Everyone is just incredible. It’s a movement/a ground swell of some of the most devoted and wonderful people I’ve ever met. It’s no wonder we are kicking so much ass.

OTM: Defining off-the-mat moment?

LF: It was the first time that I handled a really difficult conversation with my Dad with compassion and honesty. It was such an expression of what I had learned from my daily practice. I remember surprising the shit out of myself. I almost didn’t recognize the person–me!–talking. That was the day I began to take yoga off my mat.

OTM: If you could have one sentence written on your yoga mat, what would it be?

LF: Can it just be one word? Home.

OTM: We had to mix in one non-yogic question, and we’re headquartered in one of the foodie capitals of the world, so….best bite you’ve ever had in San Francisco?

LF: Well, my video is about tacos, so I’ll try to be more creative here. How about anything that Minako on Mission Street is putting out on the table.

Off the Mat, Into the World: Favorite pose? I know, it’s so cliché for a yoga org to ask this of our staff, but we had too. Right? Right.

Claire Williams: Natarajasana

OTM: Best part about working at Off the Mat?

CW: Cultivating, empowering, and sustaining a global community of inspirational leaders making powerful steps towards social change.

OTM: Define the Off the Mat movement in your words.

CW: The movement is about inside out transformation leading to collective expansion towards a higher planetary self. It’s about identifying that the personal is political and consciously choosing empathy, love, and action.

OTM: If you could have one sentence written on your yoga mat, what would it be?

CW: Be a light for truth.

OTM: We had to mix in one non-yogic question, and we’re headquartered in one of the foodie capitals of the world, so….best bite you’ve ever had in San Francisco?

CW: So many to choose from! I’ve been fortunate enough to work at Chez Panisse and Bar Tartine. I would say Butternut Squash Quesadillas at Gracias Madre and Chef Jason Fox’s (now of Commonwealth) gnocchi with hens of the woods mushrooms, sweet corn, sage, and Parmesan.

Off the Mat: Favorite pose?

Jocelyn Corbett: Trikonasana. Side body stretch? All day every day.

OTM: Best part about working at Off the Mat?

JC: Have you seen my coworker’s profiles? These ladies make it all worthwhile.

OTM: Defining off-the-mat moment? Go!

JC: At Wanderlust CA 2011, more than 500 people danced to Michael Franti at Seane Corn’s request: “Get off your mat, and get on someone else’s!” Opening up my very personal and sacred space like that allowed me to feel deeply connected to other yogis and drove home for me the metaphor, “Off the Mat, Into the World.”

OTM: If you could have one sentence written on your yoga mat, what would it be?

JC: Don’t Fall.

OTM: We had to mix in one non-yogic question, and we’re headquartered in one of the foodie capitals of the world, so….best bite you’ve ever had in San Francisco?

JC: Back left corner of the Peanut Butter Chocolate Fudge Brownie at Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack. Mm hmmmm.

Each week, we pluck a favorite pic from our past and present albums to highlight.

We love this photo. It has this “this is my mat; hear me roar for peace, unity, and love” type of sentiment to it. On Monday, nearly 200 yogis stepped onto Wall Street with our founder Seane Corn to add a yogi perspective to the already very alive dialogue and action of the NYC protests: “We are for 100% of truth, 100% of justice, and 100% of unity 100% of the time. That is our intention.” Were you there? We want to hear about your experience. Don’t feel like yogis should take a stand like this? We want to hear your thoughts on that too.

This fabulous photo by: J.T. Liss Photography for Social Change.

J.T. couldn't resist this sight across from his perch at The Grasshopper rest stop in Arizona.

Each week, we pluck a favorite pic from our past and present albums to highlight.

This stunner was shot by the talented and social change-championing NYC photographer, J.T. Liss. He and our friends at YogaDork hit the road this summer, crossing state after state on their way to Wanderlust Festival in Tahoe. Along the way, J.T. snapped photos for change. 25% of all proceeds from the sale of J.T.’s pics goes to help us do the work we do around the globe. Thank you, J.T. and YogaDork!

Think this highwayscape is as gorgeous as we do? You can purchase it right here at Yoga Dork’s online shop.

Off the Mat: Favorite pose?

Sara Levine: Urdhva Mukha Svanasana. It’s a lovely reward after chaturanga. And my whole body feels happy in this pose. I feel strong, open, and lifted.

OTM: Best part about working at Off the Mat?

SL: Getting to witness yogis at the moment when their hearts break open.

OTM: Defining Off the Mat yoga moment? Go!

SL: Dancing without reserve while Suzanne pounded her drum in my first OTM leadership training in San Francisco.

OTM: If you could have one sentence written on your yoga mat, what would it be?

SL: Find grace in moments of blundering.

OTM: Best bite you’ve ever had in San Francisco?

SL: The pomme frites, accompanied by the toasted banana bread, at Universal Café on a sunny Sunday morning. MmmHmm.

Off the Mat: Favorite pose? I know, it’s so cliché for a yoga org to ask this of our staff, but we had too. Right? Right.

Rebecca Rogers: Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana. Pigeon Pose. I love the name. I love the way it feels. I love pigeon while lying on my belly. Or lying on my back. Folding forward. Flying Pigeon. Upside down headstand pigeon. Double Pigeon…. I love the anticipation leading up to it through all sorts of hip openers, the simultaneous intensity and surrender of the moment while I’m in it, and the new way of walking through the world (literally) that I inevitably experience afterward.

OTM: Best part about working at Off the Mat?

RR: The best part about working at OTM is collaborating with yogis in a work environment where we endeavor as much as possible to come from the Heart instead of from the Ego (it helps that all of my peers have such beautiful hearts!).

OTM: Defining Off the Mat moment?

RR: During my OTM Intensive in Washington D.C., there was one concept in particular that really resonated with me: “We are the unique individuals we are not in spite of our traumas and our life experiences, but because of them.” The notion that our core wounds can be our greatest source of strength made so much sense to me, and has since been a message that I have woven into my yoga classes to pay forward to other students out in the world exploring their path.

OTM: If you could have one sentence written on your yoga mat, what would it be?

RR: What is my intention?

OTM: We had to mix in one non-yogic question, and we’re headquartered in one of the foodie capitals of the world, so….best bite you’ve ever had in San Francisco?

RR: Mmmm…Delfina’s Panna Cotta.

OTM Global Catalyst Kerri Kelly

I did not grow up a yogi. If my life had played out like I planned it to, it would look like this: senior executive in marketing; married with three kids; living in the suburbs; with a beach house on the Jersey Shore; marathon runner on the weekends; ultimately, burnt-out and resentful superwoman. Of course there is nothing wrong with this life plan; it just wasn’t mine.

As I reflect on the day that changed my life, it’s a mixed bag. There is the trauma of 9/11/01, the grief of a lost parent, the anger, the thoughts around what wasn’t done to prevent the events/what was done to cause it, and the confusion around why a God could let something so horrific happen to so many people. And…there is the way that that moment pivoted my life. I don’t know if I’d call it gratitude, but it’s definitely acknowledgement that I’d be a very different person, in a very different place if that day never happened.

My step dad was on the 78^th floor of Tower 2 when it, and everything I knew to be normal, collapsed. An LT in the NYFD, he was on his way up and into the impact zone when everyone else was running out. Unlike many, we have a small glimpse of what he experienced as he climbed the building because they recovered the radio tapes capturing the last two hours of his life…a small gift amidst huge horror. After that day, I found myself in a life I could never have prepared for. And I adapted in the way I always do–take care of everyone and everything else around me so that I can disconnect from my own pain. It’s a familiar story for many. It might be your story.

Enter yoga. I look back now, and I’m so grateful that I had yoga in my life, even if it was motivated by vanity (look good, feel good). But I quickly realized that my time on the mat was the only time that I could feel anything. I know now that the trauma of that event was very much embedded in my body. Only when I moved and connected in my body was a I able to disable my “doing self” and open up to being with my grief. It wasn’t pretty, but it was real, and it kept pulling me back and bringing me deeper. Before long, my practice was like eating or breathing; it was something that I had to do to stay grounded in what was real, to stay in the process of grieving, and to allow for healing.

Yoga was the single source of healing for me during that time. All the therapy, counseling, books, treatments they threw at me did not put a dent in my armor. The gateway to my healing was through my body.

But that wasn’t all…the more I healed the more I awakened to something else within myself. I found a new outlook–a new idea of who I was and who I could be in the world. Suddenly, my old path did not feel right anymore; I felt called to something greater than myself. I felt aligned with a purpose, and I wanted more.

Here was another pivot in the road. I could say “yes” to a life of purpose or remain stuck. I hollered “yes.”

While there is still so much I don’t understand about 9/11 or can’t reconcile (and I would not wish my experience on my worst enemy), I do know this: the event was my greatest teacher, and while it took so much away from me, it gave me so much back. My step dad would be proud of what I chose in response to 9/11. I chose to be empowered and not oppressed, to live my greatest potential so that I can inspire the same in others, and to listen and learn always from the hidden blessings. Because they’re everywhere.

by Kerri Kelly
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Kerri Kelly is the global catalyst for OTM. You can read her full bio here.

Hala teaching yoga at the Oakwood Recreation Center in Venice

The under-served communities in Los Angeles have a history. It’s one of racist bank lending and high profile gang violence. Its home state has one of the highest incarceration rates in the United States, and the youth in South LA are 1.6 times as likely as kids in other neighborhoods to face arrest and incarceration. It’s an understatement to say that this city needs resources.

Thankfully, they have some. In April, during the first Off the Mat Empowered Youth Initiative, Seane, Suzanne, and Hala brought 18 women to spend a week with some of the amazing local leaders who are actively pushing back against a very strong and alive punitive system. Through yoga and art (the list goes on), the participants learned about the various approaches and programs that have been effective in empowering and healing at-risk youth. They witnessed kundalini yoga in juvie, spoke with state officials about gang intervention, and toured Homeboy Industries, a nonprofit dedicated to finding at-risk youth and former gang members jobs.

LA is important because it’s a model. Many of the dynamics that the city faces are mirrored in some way or another in other urban and suburban settings in our country. That’s where our new leaders come in. The Empowered Youth Initiative’s goal is to create local change makers. Our hope is that through the inspiration, training, and education provided by people like artist and community organizer Leila Steinberg, Yoga for Youth founder, Krishna Kaur, and Father Gregory Boyle of Homeboy Industries, the EYI participants will engage with their local communities in similar efforts. They’ve already started engaging with their words. Read our participants’ powerful experiences here, here, and here.

And we’re happy to be welcoming back many of our 2011 partners for EYI 2012. For more information about next year’s immersion or to sign up, visit our site.

by the OTM team

Yemaya in parsvakonasana

I am sobbing outside the building of Homeboy Industries. My girlfriend is holding my hips, facing and grounding me as she lets me cry. We started our tour of the nonprofit with a delicious healthy Latino-inspired lunch at Homegirl Cafe. With a super clean industrial look and strong art on the wall, this could be just another fashionable LA establishment. But if you look carefully at the staff–if you know the history and what this place is really about–your imagination be taken over by stories of hardship, gang violence, and a different start in life written on our waitresses’ and cooks’ faces.

Gathered afterward in the main hall, we sneak into the souvenir shop, where t-shirts proclaiming “Jobs Not Jails,” books from founder Father Boyle, and rap CDs produced by Homeboy Industries supplement the income of this amazingly-run organization. We find out later that the manager has been there about seven years, and, like in each Homeboy and Homegirl we interact with that day, I can see a light of deep gratitude and love. It turns on when she shares her commitment to the place and how Father Boyle’s commitment to her recovery saved her life.

Our guide, Vince, a short African American man in his early forties, tell us about Homeboy losing its funding. The staff kept coming into work, without being paid, giving their time to the place until the funding came back.

Homeboy Industries’ focus is on jobs. They work to give dignity back to at-risk youth, and those who have been recently incarcerated, through employment and a place in society. Tatoo removal (painful and often necessitating multiple sessions), anger management classes, therapy, yoga, legal services, trainings, and certification programs are some of the free services that Homeboy provides to the LA at-risk population. Baked goods, solar panel installation, and silkscreen products are some of its most successful enterprises.

We entered the large bakery site through the back and we could see the herbs garden set up outside, covering the wall of the large building. Oregano, thyme, and basil were basking in the downtown LA sun, and the sustainable gardener in me was grinning inside.

After a step-by-step tour of the multi-use facility, Vince took us to the snack/kitchen room and opened up to share his story. Once again I was shocked by the kindness and love that I could feel emanating from his presence, as with each individual I met on this trip. There was none of the edge and roughness that I was expecting to find. I didn’t see it in any of the kids at Camp Gonzales that we would later meet or in the probation officers we interacted with at a couple of the facilities.

Vince told us of his past, how his mother’s lover beat her badly more often than not, and how he could have killed the guy. I knew the story, as it could have been mine, except that my abuser was my father. When his mother, hooked so badly on her abuser, chose his violence over her own son’s love, Vince left and joined a gang. And then one day he witnessed one of his homies commit a murder. Vince was with his girlfriend parked in a car, making out, or killing time, but when he saw what was happening he jumped into his “gang-member devotion suit,” drove around the block and picked up the escaping homie. He got life plus 25 years, at 17, for accessory to murder. It was going to be a long journey in jail for him.

He started corresponding with his mother and Homeboy’s founder, Father Boyle. After a case of good behavior, and many attempts for redemption, Vince was released after 20 years. Where I lost it–and it was building up from the start of Vince’s story–is when he shared that two days before his release date, his mother passed away. This hit home so hard for me. I could not hold back my tears. I lost my dad 20 months ago, and he passed the day I was booking my flight to go home to see him in France.

I have not spent 20 years in jail, but I have known the suffering of my own emotional jail and the winding road to recovery to feel like a normal and functioning human. I could relate to many of the journeys that were shared with us that week.

It got me thinking about what has allowed me to create the reality that I now live in. At 40-something, I finally have a handle on my emotions. I have survived physical violence, energetic, emotional and verbal abuse, early life trauma, and deep abandonment. Throughout my hardships I refused to turn to medications, and I now don’t have a single self-medicating habit. Instead it took 25 years of healing spiritual medicines, rituals, community learning, somatic bodywork, expressive dance, art and yoga, meditation, and shamanic journeys. I wonder if it’s my connection to Source, higher guidance, and protection that got me to where I am today. It could be my inner strength and my commitment to “pay it forward”? Or maybe it’s my mother who left when I was five to save her own life, but has held my spirit’s hand since then. I am not sure, but I know that like the kids and adults I met at Homeboy Industries, A Place called Home, and the MIC sessions, I feel so immensely grateful for who I am now. I trust that I can make a change through my actions, simply by sharing the depth of my love and commitment, and by deeply trusting in the mystery.

by Yemaya Duby

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Yemaya Duby was an Empowered Youth Initiative 2011 participant.

The amazing Fonkoze staff meets with OTM co-founder Suzanne.

How do you rebuild a country after a devastating earthquake? One with a pre-quake unemployment rate of 70% and a history of corrupt governments and exploitation? This has been the struggle facing Haiti since January 12, 2010. In the months following the quake, NGOs, corporations, and governments promised billions in funds. Tent cities went up, and organizations worked to provide basic resources. But reconstruction has been slow. The media wants to know where all the promised aid went. And the Haitian people still need long-term solutions.

We’re thrilled to have this year’s Off the Mat Global Seva Challenge benefit Haiti. But we’re faced with a challenge: In the midst of all of this struggle, how can we as Americans (and Canadians) approach the idea of being of service in Haiti? In our trainings and service work, we have consistently stressed the importance of listening to the needs of others, and, rather than fulfilling our own agendas, doing our best to serve the actual demands of the situation. We do this by taking ownership of our own conscious and unconscious agendas, listening and asking questions, and by learning what it means to actually empower ourselves and others in the interest of sustainability and a long-term vision. This is challenging and rewarding work. And with each of our Global Seva Challenges, we gain an opportunity to get closer and closer to what this looks like.

For some, the situation in Haiti is improving. The airport is up and running, streets are being cleared of rubble, and people are doing their best to go on living. And there is hope that the general election will bring about economic independence, prosperity, and unification. Yet there are still more than a million Haitians living in tent cities, exposed to cholera and lacking in basic amenities. And now some of the larger NGOs are leaving. In the city of Port au Prince rubble removal, water/waste treatment, and education are crucial, and we’ll be spending a few days of our 2012 Seva trip focused on these basic needs. But after days of listening to stories from those most devastated by the earthquake, it became immediately clear that Haitians need jobs. The citizens of this country want to become financially stable, and they want assistance in their long-term vision. Every Haitian I met was extremely proud of his/her country and people and expressed the need for empowerment through employment—self sufficiency as opposed to another hand out or temporary shelter. This is exactly what we stand and work for at OTM: sustainability.

After our trip, we feel confident in our original plan to support sustainable communities and create jobs through microloans in cities outside of Port au Prince. This process aids in decreasing overpopulation in the capital, and, through this type of lending, women in the country are getting the financial support that they need. But we are revising part of our strategy, which originally included support for land and temporary housing work, to focus more of our attention on these microloan opportunities, as well as small business loans for community collectives, long-term water capture and treatment systems, reforestation, and support for orphanages.

We are excited to be working with Fonkoze (Haiti’s largest micro-finance organization), which has 15 years of proven results and is making a major impact on extreme poverty in Haiti. Through microloans and health, literacy, and education programs, the staff provides important financial support to some of the poorest women in the country. During our trip next year, we’ll visit communities supported by Fonkoze’s network and their micro-credit branch Zafen. Fonkoze’s founder Father Joseph Phillippe also heads up the Associated Peasants of Fondwa—a rural community center that before the quake housed a school for 700 children, a radio station, a community center, an orphanage, and a bank. In January, this active hub for the Fondwa community was devasted. During our visit last month, Father Joseph gave us a tour of the site (deep in the mountainous region of Fondwa), where we’ll be rebuilding the community center and planting more than 1000 trees in 2012.

We also traveled to Jacmel to meet mama Bonite who single handedly feeds 300 Haitian kids per day. Our work in that region will be focused on children: we’ll be supporting OTM community member Lisa Rueff in her plan to build Jacmel Children’s Center, which will have room for 80 children. We’ll also be helping to fund the building of a dental clinic at the Faith and Love orphanage in Jacmel, and we’ll lend a hand to the Art Creation Foundation for Children, which feeds and teaches art to hundreds of children per day.

As with every Seva Challenge, our goal is to work with locally run organizations with a successful history of empowering people with basic needs, education, and employment. This work will help Haitians rebuild not only their buildings and communities, but a solid foundation of self reliance, educational opportunity, and healthy communities.

by Suzanne Sterling
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Suzanne Sterling is a founder of Off the Mat. You can read her full bio here.

Surprisingly my regular life elicited some initial feelings of relief after the day-long journey: I cried from immense gratitude that I lived in a magnificent twin house on a clean and friendly block; I marveled at the ice cubes in my Brita-filtered water and that my porcelain toilet, which flushed completely, was just 10 steps away. But it was all too much. I was told that I might experience some reverse culture shock but I wasn’t prepared for what those moments would look like.

The very first night at home, I immediately started engaging in my old, unhealthy habits. Just one hour after my return, my boyfriend and I were sitting on the couch, eating Chinese take-out, and catching up on the TV shows that I had missed. My ability to check out was still intact.

And I played a great game of appearing to assimilate back into my life. The question, “How was your trip?” plagued me. I couldn’t answer that question in 10 words or less. I often responded with, “It was just…incredible. Really amazing.” And it was. But, truthfully, I was lonely and sad. I felt that I’d lost my sense of purpose: For all of 2009 I was focused on fundraising and preparing for the Seva trip. And then there I was, 14 months after taking on this challenge, experiencing a massive void that I hadn’t had to confront in more than a year. It was time again to face myself—the self that I’d pushed away and ignored, only to have it resurface with greater force than ever. I’d gained 30 pounds. I was a mess. I realized that the way I had approached service and preparing for service was not sustainable.

Thankfully, I had the amazing crew at Off the Mat to turn to during these difficult times. I took their advanced leadership training program in June of last year. During the training, I realized that I could use a little help with all that I was struggling with. Through therapy, I began the gut-wrenching work of sifting through my childhood traumas and recognizing the coping mechanisms that I had carried into adulthood. During the first four sessions, I cried profusely for the entire hour. It was intense and exhausting. But I knew that it was good and necessary work if I was going to be able to be of service in a sustainable way. And I wanted to be of service.

If it weren’t for Uganda, I wonder if I would have found the courage to finally start digging up the things that were holding me back. We’ve all gone through challenges in our lives, but if we push down the pain, shame, hurt, anger and guilt, it will just show up in other ways. I feel thankful that it showed up for me as excess fat. It made it hard to ignore. And if this is my biggest obstacle, then there’s so much that I can accomplish in this world. I just need to practice my yoga every day to keep in tune with what my body needs.

One year later things feel on track. I face my challenges twice a month with my therapist. I’ve lost 20 pounds. And this past October I finally felt ready to explore the possibility of service work again. I now believe that it’s impossible to not be of service, unless you’re actively trying not to be. Raising your kids and dogs well and smiling at a stranger on the street—these are acts of seva (service). And they shouldn’t be ignored. Service shows up in many forms. Some of us have the time to be of service. Some have the money. And some can just pray. For a while, all I could do was pray. Today, I’ve managed to find some time to dedicate to a new project that I’ve created—Furry Feet Yoga. I’ve found a sustainable way to be of service without burning out or engaging in unhealthy habits. I’m learning the balance of work and rest that I teach to my students every day on their mats. Life is good one year later. And I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for Off the Mat.

by Megan Ridge
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Megan Ridge is a yoga teacher and conscious activist living in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania with her partner, Christopher, and their beautiful puppy, Horatio. To learn more about Megan, visit her website at http://www.MeganRidge.com

Then I went to Uganda with 21 inspiring women to get my heart and eyes blown wide open. As soon as I was headed back to America, I knew that I was going to have to deal with my own inner discontent when I arrived home. I’d been hiding from the rest of my life by focusing on my Africa fundraising and the upcoming trip. When it ended, I had nowhere to hide. One thing that I learned from seeing the incredible spirit of the African people, especially in the face of their many challenges and everyday struggles, was that it is unacceptable for me not to pursue what makes my heart sing and ignites my passion. The resilience, strength, and beauty of the Ugandan women helped me find faith in myself. As cliché as it sounds, I realized that there was no time like the present to make changes. I knew that I had to pursue opportunities to make my life more sustainable, enjoyable, and rewarding. So I did. I made changes.

One of the biggest changes to my life is that I’m now a birth doula—supporting women through labor emotionally, physically, and spiritually. I empower women every day to make choices that are right for them. Pursuing this work came directly out of my time in Africa. During our trip in February, I helped a young woman, Miriam, through her labor, along with two fellow Seva participants Amanda and Davian. We supported her as she navigated birth. It was the most present and alive I had felt throughout our entire trip. When I returned to the States, I signed up for a doula certification program immediately. I was following my gut. It was something that I hadn’t done in a long time. Since my first birth as a professional doula in July, it has been a wild, intense, rewarding, exhausting, and inspiring ride. I feel called to this work of empowering women, and I feel like my soul has found a home on this path.

I also now live in Brooklyn. I moved out of my Manhattan apartment that I’d been in for 10 years and found a new neighborhood that has more trees, space, and like-minded people. It’s a much better fit for me. I was able to make these changes because of my trip. After Uganda, I found confidence in myself, a respect for life, and my purpose.

In May, I’m joining Amanda and Davian on a trip back to Uganda to revisit the work that we started last year and to continue our relationships with the people that changed our lives. I am excited to go back to this country that cracked my heart wide open and to open myself up again to challenging and rewarding experiences. I’m grateful to Off the Mat for providing the opportunity for these experiences and supporting me on this path. I couldn’t be happier with the way my life is now, and I’m thrilled to see what the future holds.

by Heather Snyder
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Heather is one of the NYC regional leaders for Off the Mat, Into the World, and she currently lives in Brooklyn. She’s a Pilates and Alexander Technique teacher, conscious activist, and inspired new birth doula! She is committed to bringing together communities of inspired, empowered, and like-minded people to see what we can create
together.

South African history has some very deep parallels with our own…the irony of settlers seeking religious freedom and in doing so sparking a systematic genocide of the indigenous people of the land…long years of organized slavery… continued white privilege ingrained in almost all aspects of our lives…from media to education, access to employment to governmental policy…and yet there was something that seemed so different in the open dialogues and radical honesty we were encountering.

As we examined our own internalized apartheid, racism, fears, assumptions and misunderstandings…as we created an open and non-judgmental dialogue about our conscious and unconscious white privilege, as we explored the ways in which the suffering of any (race, class, gender, sexual orientation) of us, effects all of us, I began to see that the culture we were immersed in was an incredible teacher for us. I became aware of how we in America are so challenged to find ways to talk about the cycles of trauma that have created years of internalized and externalized oppression. How we all suffer from the continued racial and economic divides that exist all around us. How easy it can be (especially in spiritual communities) to avoid the important and deep discussions about our most challenging and divisive issues for fear of being politically incorrect. How in being afraid to admit and talk about our own fears and assumptions, we limit ALL of our truth, all of our unique perspectives and in doing so we all lose.

Slavery still exists in our world today. It is both overt (the worldwide sex slave trade is rampant) and covert (privatization of water, economic control of entire third world economies, corporate control of our media and educational institutions). Stories need to be told. Some of the most meaningful and effective work for change in communities in crisis has been initiated by the simple act of creating conversation amongst community members. When people are given an opportunity to find their voice and to tell their stories, real healing occurs and the freedom of self expression, which is a universal desire, can play a huge part in the creation of systems of inclusion and empowerment in which there truly is enough for all.

When exchanging stories and meaningful dialogues are seen as crucial to our healing…when we can actively utilize the spiritual and emotional tools that we have had the privilege to be able to learn…when we learn to not be afraid to ask uncomfortable questions to bring the issues to light…when we learn to face each other and hear each others truths without trying to fix or change or explain them away…we may be able to then learn and embody one of the deepest and most difficult to master spiritual truths…the art of forgiveness.

I am so very thankful to all of the participants this year who showed up with their hearts and minds open and ready to be challenged…ready to peel away the layers of appearance and get down to the deeper levels of their experience…willing to take responsibility for their unconscious assumptions and irrational fears. We did some amazing work together and learned to love some incredible people. We met Rosie, a quiet but strong willed Mama caring for over 180 orphaned children, housing on her site a clinic, a hospice, a soup kitchen and running many programs for the community. We worked in collaboration with the South African Whole Grain Bread Project to build a bakery on her property which will provide high protein bread and jobs for the site, and we also supported her purchase of property for a halfway house to help the orphans learn crucial life skills. We supported Linawo Children’s home who are helping to create a new model for bringing up orphans in a supportive family setting. We worked with Gold, an organization mobilizing nationwide efforts to utilize peer to peer trainings for empowerment and health education. We provided funds for a classroom so that the incredible Earthchild Program could have a space to bring yoga and wellness classes to the children in local schools. And we launched the senior library at Christel House which is educating and nurturing some of the most poverty stricken children to be the future leaders of the country! Most importantly though, we showed up in each situation and engaged deeply, asking questions, stepping out of our comfort zones and finding real connections. We worked, we told difficult truths, we laughed, we danced, we sang and we loved. And each of us is now changed forever by the simple experience of presence.

Thanks to the participants, trip leaders and South African partners who were part of this unforgettable journey. And thanks to ALL of the fundraisers and supportive community members who made this entire year’s Seva Challenge a memorable and successful experience!

by Suzanne Sterling
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Suzanne Sterling is a co-founder of OTM. You can read her full bio here.

This is my South Africa healing story.

As an African-American woman that lived through the 1960′s, the peak of a worldwide civil rights movement, I came to South Africa well aware of it’s history of apartheid. I entered the country full of concepts, beliefs and judgements of what it would be and how I would be treated. Full of my own ideas, I came prepared to defend my ‘blackness’.

After an overnight flight delay in Johannesburg, two others from the OTM group and I were met at the Cape Town airport by Linda, one of our two local guides. As Linda began a South African history lesson, she spoke openly and honestly about current and past race relations. As we engaged in conversation I found myself surprisingly uncomfortable yet refreshed. This kind of conversation doesn’t often happen at home in the U.S.

Linda explained the hierarchical racial classifications of the apartheid: Whites, Coloreds (mixed race) and Black. I asked her: “What group I would have been in?” She answered: ‘Colored’. Well aware that my great-grandmother was the product of a Kentucky-based master-slave relationship, I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise.

The next day our group visited Robben Island. The articulate and provocative bus tour guide challenged us to look at ingrained attitudes and beliefs as he educated us on Nelson Mandela’s philosophy of truth, reconciliation and forgiveness. Himself a Colored, he gave an hypothetical example of a party attended by 10 whites and 1 person of color. After realizing that his wallet was missing, he admitted that given the room make up, his first and immediate assumption would be that the wallet had been stolen and that the person color was the perpetrator. Admitting my own prejudice, I made a truthfully self-confession that I think the same way. The shame manifested as a disturbing churning in my stomach.

Later in the day, at an orphanage and AIDS hospice, several Xhosa women welcomed me speaking in their indigenous language. They seemed surprised when they realized i had no idea what they were talking about. Now I’m feeling super confused. I ask myself; ‘Who the hell am I? How are people seeing and relating to me?’ Envy of my white yoga buddies swept over me. I can hear my comparing self talk; ‘Hell, at least they know who they are.’

The very next day we toured the District 6 museum. On February 11, 1966, the South African government declared District 6 a whites only region, ordered in a cadre of bulldozers to demolish all the residences as the mortified homeowners watched. Our museum tour guide, a resident at the time of the travesty, spoke of the multi-cultural vibrancy of the neighborhood and the trauma of seeing his family home destroyed. As he spoke, vivid memories of the TV images of black people being fire-hosed and beaten during the American civil rights struggle ran through my mind. I left the museum feeling like my entire body had been bulldozed.

Perplexed about the myriad of confusing thoughts, feelings and sensations, I found myself even more critical, judgmental and cynical than I first arrived. I acknowledged being in the midst of my own apartheid, an personal apartness, withdrawal, separation from everyone and everything – especially me. All the mind chatter had me split, disconnected, and a bit detached; the exact opposite of my soul’s desire. I prayed for reconciliation.

As the trip pressed on, so did my unraveling. While at Christel House, a spectacular school for grades 1 – 12 that offers the poorest of the poor township children a cost-free college prep education, I met a stunning older Colored woman who had lived through apartheid. As several of us worked together categorizing books for the OTM funded library, we began a conversation about racial relations in South Africa. As she elaborated a specific point, she gave an example in which she referred to me as Black. Later in the conversation, someone from our OTM the group inquired about the reference. In what seemed as an almost overly apologetic response, she explained that it was only an example; insisting that she didn’t mean to imply I was Black – suspecting that I thought the reference was derogatory.

Later, I realized this moment as the beginning of a breakthrough. After our evening group processing work and especially during the next day’s yoga practice, I began to see/feel/experience my inner division and fragmentation as a result of my own misperception (yogi’s will recognize this as avidya). The experience was quite deep; in many ways defying words. This is my best shot at describing it.

I recognized that apartheid and the system of slavery before it, worked by assigning explicit meaning and standing to each racial classification with Whites superior to all and Coloreds and Blacks respectively more inferior. Even after the outlaw of chattel (physical) slavery, the psychological slavery of inferiority continued.

Yoga has helped me understand that everything is energy. Inferior and superior are energies that I embody and can become aware of right down to the level of nervous system sensation.

When I mentally buy into inferiority it shows up in me as a contracted, heavy, dullness. Though awareness and years of practice, I’ve become conscious of this energy. It’s same energy that follows the core belief “I’m not ____ (fill-in the blank) enough.”

However, in this instance – I suspect because of the deep historical roots – I got really caught up in misidentification. Here is what happened: at the level of cognition Colored and/or Black became inferior; then the energy of inferiority (dark, dull, self-centered fear) dictated my affect and behavior.

With the awareness that I was allowing this to define my experience, the doorway to self-reconciliation and forgiveness opened. I allowed the energy of inferiority to move (which is all energy naturally wants to do). Inferiority shifted to self-forgiveness then opened to forgiveness to anyone feeling inferior or superior, because living in either is psychological slavery. By grace, my whole experience shifted.

Someone once told me that coincidence is God’s way of keeping anonymity. Like everything else that happened in this healing story, I realized that it was no coincidence that I made it to Greenmarket Square on the last full day of our 2 week journey.

Greenmarket Square, now vibrant and bustling with craft trade, was formerly the center of slave trade. Standing on the cobblestone still in place from that period, I felt and heard the ghosts of the human suffering that happened there.

There could be no more perfect place to celebration my healing story. I symbolically kissed that sweet ground and said a silent prayer. I LOVE South Africa!

by Nikki Myers
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Nikki Myers is an OTM Regional Manager and attended the Global Seva Challenge 2010 South Africa.

You may be wondering how the nation shifted gears and adopted democracy without causing more turmoil. After the ban of apartheid, South Africans adopted a form of restorative justice to return the nation to peace. This system was called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The TRC was set up by the Government of National Unity to help deal with the violence and human rights abuses under apartheid. It was used as a way to shift the nation from apartheid to a free democracy and was seen by many as having crucial significance in the healing of the nation. But first let me recap on Apartheid so you will understand the impact of the TRC…

Apartheid took place from 1948-1993 and was enforced by the National Party of South Africa. This system created legal racial segregation where minority rule by white individuals was upheld and the non-whites were stripped of all rights and privileges. In 1958, all black people were deprived of their citizenship. Education, medical care and all public services were segregated by the government, which provided black people with services much inferior to whites.

Violence and internal resistance was the natural result as well as the prohibition of resistance and imprisoning of anti-apartheid leaders, such as Nelson Mandela. The end of apartheid began in 1990 and concluded in multi-racial democratic elections in 1994, which were won by the African National Congress under Nelson Mandela. Although Apartheid is over, it continues to impact this nation through society and politics.

At the helm of the TRC was Archbishop Desmond Tutu . As the chairman, his goal was to help South Africans come to terms with the extreme troubled past. The TRC was established to investigate the violation that took place between 1960 and 1994, to provide support and reparation to victims and their families, and to compile a full and objective record of the effects of apartheid on South African society. Based on the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, No. 34 of 1995, the TRC was empowered to grant amnesty to those charged with committing abuses during Apartheid. There were two requirements: the crimes had to have been politically motivated and the entire and whole truth was to be told by the person seeking amnesty. In total, 7112 people applied for amnesty; 5392 people were refused amnesty and 849 were granted amnesty, and some fit in the category “withdrawn.”

But really, what did the TRC stand for?

You may remember the story of Amy Biehl’s tragic death. She was a white American Fulbright scholar living in Cape Town as an anti-apartheid activist. She was killed by a black mob while driving through a black township, Gugulethu. Amy’s parents used the TRC as an instrument of peacemaking and a way to heal after their daughter’s death. Her father stated, “The most important vehicle of reconciliation is open and honest dialogue…we are here to reconcile a human life which was taken without an opportunity for dialogue. When we are finished with this process we must move forward with linked arms.” This is just one example of the triumph of the human spirit in the face of tragedy. The TRC created a bridge for people of any color to unite, to reconcile the past and to progress with hope for a brighter future.

On so many levels the story of apartheid and the TRC can act as our teacher. Desmond Tutu told South Africans during the TRC that, “To forgive is not just to be altruistic. It is the best form of self-interest. It is also a process that does not exclude hatred and anger. These emotions are all part of being human. You should never hate yourself for hating others who do terrible things: the depth of your love is shown by the extent of your anger.”

I then ask myself, where in my life have I not forgiven? If Mandela forgave the people who imprisoned him for 27 years, leaving prison with more grace and virtue than when he entered, then surely I can forgive those in my life. But often the forgiveness seems so challenging because it’s not others we must forgive, but ourselves. The TRC required the candidates for amnesty told 100% of the truth. We see in this example how truth and forgiveness walk hand in hand.

Truth is the crucial starting point, but to reconcile in hopes for peace, there must be forgiveness. In forgiving we surrender. We make a choice to not carry the burden and we choose self-transformation instead of motionlessness.

Through yoga we learn that any and all separation within self or self to other is the root cause of suffering. Our judgment or illusory thoughts (the story we create about ourselves or others) often feed this gap making it more and more difficult to find union, clarity and ultimately peace. So I ask myself, how can I use the history of this nation, from Apartheid to the TRC, to influence my personal inner-journey? Or to heal my inner-apartheid?

I begin by embracing forgiveness of self. Allowing my authentic diversity to shine and feeling “free to be!”, just like the South Africans continue to celebrate the rich diversity of their land, their people, and their past. I can also remember what Mandela told his nation, “We are all masters of our destiny. A better future depends on all of us lending a hand – your hand, my hand.” Service is about you and me; it’s about giving back as much as I can and knowing it will be returned in ways unimaginable. While in the townships I kept reflecting on a parallel crisis in my town of Newport, Rhode Island. As I stared at the corrugated tin shacks and the children playing in the dirt, I was reminded of the massive homeless population in the states and in Newport. Why did I need to leave my hometown to become aware of the crisis in my backyard? I notice the shift in perspective that occurred in me while in SA – a land that also required their locals to open their minds, hearts and begin to awaken.

In sum, what I can tell you about the OTM experience abroad was that it is priceless. There was no limit to the space created for me to transform. There was no boundary of LOVE. Yet there was interminable freedom to go deep and to love BIG. And for me, Africa is where I woke up.

by Courtnay Meletta

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Courtnay Meletta is a  Global Seva Challenge 2010 participant.

I have never seen such obvious separation between whites and  blacks, sprawling communities of one to two room shacks housing up to 10 or more people, and lack of what the majority of the world considers necessity; shoes, toothbrush, toilet, space.

Despite all this, what has been shocking and a sledgehammer to that expectation of total hopelessness is the spirit of the people we have met and worked with. The kids are like bundles of electric love, there is nothing like the total attention of  their hearts as they race to you for the sweetest hug you will ever receive, and then hold your hand throughout the entirety of your time together. Or the way in which they freely show affection to one another, girls who huddle around the friend who cries as she discusses the death of her brother, 16 year old boys who watch a movie with us with their arms slung around one another’s shoulders the whole time. These are 2 examples in a sea of hundreds.

The leaders of the communities we have worked inside: the mamas, mentors, and guides, have been equally as inviting to the most personal of questions and trusting in their interaction with our group. Playing at the Baphumalele orphanage, taking the children from Linawo’s Children’s home to the beach, opening the yoga room with Earthchild Project while spending the day practicing yoga, touring the organic garden, and having spontaneous paint wars with the kids was all a reminder that in the most desperate of situations there is a universal connection that is so pure and loving inside each being.

So on Monday I felt good. Then I spent the afternoon at the Baphumelele Hospice Center. We were there to have a crafting session with residents, all HIV/AIDS patients who are very ill and unable to receive care from anywhere else. When Thako walked towards me to sit down and begin beading I knew immediately she was going to be my friend. So quiet, sweet, but very open in speaking with me, she seemed extremely innocent. After 20 minutes she disappeared, shortly after I went upstairs in the home looking for her. As I walked up  to the residents room I had a tangible experience of walking into a cloud of decay. I found Thako sitting on a chair silently crying. I went to hold her and asked her why she was upset. She said being around people made her uncomfortable and reminded her of being sick. I continued to ask her questions as she tried to stop crying.For a moment she was quiet, and then said, “Can I ask you something? What would you do if…” and she told me her story, which I have to share with you.

Born in a small village her mother left her family at age 1. Her father remarried, and she spent the whole of her childhood being physically and verbally abused everyday by her father’s other children. They told her to leave, to find her mother. And as a teenager she did, searched for quite a while, only to find a mother who said she wanted nothing to do with her children. Thako moved in with a friend to a shack which her roommates boyfriend and friends would break into,  abusing the girls and doings drugs at their home. During this time she began a relationship with a man with whom she became pregnant. One day he walked up to her in the street, in front of her community, and said “I have HIV, now you do, and so does your baby.” He had always known.

In Cape Town’s townships HIV patients are ostracized by their community, as she was. Stoned, bullied, and shunned Thako had to continue living in this place. Her baby’s father would periodically return to beat her stomach hoping to abort the baby, and rape her. When she gave birth, it was in the toilet of an overly full hospital, with no one around to help. Fortunately, the baby was HIV negative. Thako’s mom finally asked her to move in with her, which is where she currently lives. Now she is beaten and abused by her mother, even during the darkest moments of her illness when she can’t walk herself from the bed to the outdoor toilet. She is at the hospice because she was so ill she could no longer care for her chld, and she is fortunate to have found the hospice.

This 22 year old girl has never had a time in her life that was not a desperate struggle, that did not involve being abused. She has no memory of a time where she was happy, felt love, or even self-worth. In every word there was the weight of surrender to total hopelessness. I asked if she had ever told anyone any part of this before, she hadn’t. I don’t know why I had the privilege of being allowed to listen and hold space for her, I do know I am very lucky to have been there.

At one point she told me at times she just wants to cry for no reason. I told her I feel that way sometimes too, which she was surprised at; she thought she was going mad. No one told her that people get this thing called depression. She also told me she didn’t understand why this had happened to her. Whatever part of my heart hadn’t already broken was totally done for. I don’t know why this happened to her either. I know it’s not fair, I know she deserves all the love, support,and affection possible. And I know she probably is never going to receive very much of any of those.

When I left we hugged a million times. I tried to pour in to her all the adoration I was feeling, something to help her feel her importance and worth. Because that hour and a half was the most poignant time I have spent with another person in my life. And I really got to experience a raw truth of what is happening in this country, and many other places, due to lack of awareness, initiative, and fear.

What Thako doesn’t see is her strength in being able to endure all of this. How beautiful it is that after everything she radiates nothing but kindness and a longing to connect to another person’s heart. She is an embodiment of so much of what we have witnessed on this trip. The dynamics of complete devastation and despair married to forgiveness, openness, grace. I can only hope that her story inspires others in many various ways. It reminds me that the ugliest situations creates room for the most beautiful.

by Marley Vigdorth
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Marley Vigdorth is a Global Seva Challenge 2010 participant.

As a first time visitor to SA, it would initially seem that the days of Apartheid are far behind, and the future is bright for all of the youth here regardless of color. After landing in a nice airport where you see people of different races moving about, we drove to the hotel along nicely paved roads scattered with all types of people in cars or walking. So far, there are no obvious signs of disparity.

After dropping off our bags and immediately getting to work in Khayelistsha (a township in Cape Town), however, the picture changes dramatically. Driving by bus we headed to an orphanage in Khayelistsha . You see rows and rows of tin shanty style homes…..a city of them….. with many kids running the streets and trash scattered about. As we approach the orphanage, I become acutely aware of the state of the people and the neighborhoods most affected by the aftermath of Apartheid.

The townships of South Africa were designed during the Apartheid era as a way of keeping the black and colored population in the marginalized area of the city away from more desirable neighborhoods. These neighborhoods house the poorest of the nation and the population is unknown and still growing. The government takes aerial photos periodically to determine population growth; however, as there is no regulation or significant support in these areas, the numbers are unknown. Along with overpopulation and limited resources is the prevalence of drugs, teen pregnancy, unemployment, and HIV/AIDS. The children that grow up in the townships are faced with small, make-shift homes, most without plumbing, lined with porta-potty after porta-potty around the perimeter and the smell of urine and trash. I immediately notice that there is a gap in the community of people, seeing only children and the elderly. Due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, a whole generation of parents have left behind older sisters, brothers and grandparents to care for the children. Families have been devastated by HIV/AIDS, and therefore the youth are left to lead.

No matter how much the laws have changed regarding the rights of individuals, the actuality is the current living situation of many black youth leaves them without the many of the advantages of the white youth. Although schools are no longer segregated and there are not laws keep the races separate, the actual structure of many of the neighborhoods has not changed. The townships, which are entirely black and colored (a term to describe people of mixed race), are the poorest part of the city with the least amount of resources. Schools in the townships are overcrowded and have fewer resources than those in the wealthier white communities, and these students do not have a family income or parental educational experience that can support education outside of that provided by the government.

Another deciding factor that will dictate how these young people find success and escape from poverty is the disparity of the unemployment rate among the various races. Currently, the population of South Africa is 80% black and 9% white. According to the most recent survey done by the South Africa’s Labor Force, there is a 57% unemployment rate among blacks and a 21% unemployment rate among whites. After spending the night with a family in the township last night, it is clear that what the youth face in these neighborhoods automatically place them in a high risk category with the possibility of finishing school and going to university only that much more difficult. Drugs and teenage pregnancy are prevalent as a result of limited possibilities.

It is clear that there is a lot of pride in the people of South Africa and a true desire to develop and evolve into a nation based on equality. However, there are basic differences among the living conditions and expectations of blacks and whites that fuel the cycle of inequality. We at Off the Mat have been very fortunate to see first -hand the wonderful movements toward change and the heartbreaking realities that fight against progress. The greatest hope I see is in the attitude and motivation of many of the young people to get educated and move beyond the despair. Similarly, the  the organizations that we have visited have put focus on building children up to become the leaders of the future. It is these children that will incite true change.

The lucky few of these children that have access to proper education through private resourced groups such as GOLD (a peer/leader organization in the townships), Christel House (a magnet school for academically gifted children of the townships), Earthchild ( an organization that comes into the schools to promote holistic development)and the many strong Mamas have a chance to shift the future for their neighbors, peers and younger siblings. If these select few can break through the cycle with education, which brings hope and possibilities, and offer an alternative model to the next generation, change will happen. It is clear this will be a slow process in South Africa, but the hope and possibility is there.

by Gwen Soffer
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Gwen Soffer is a Global Seva Challenge 2010 participant.

I’m traveling with a group of amazing women and men that are all a part of OTM’s 2010 Global Seva Challenge and we are on the Bare Witness Tour. The purpose of the Bare Witness tour is to create permanent, significant and sustainable change in the lives of poverty stricken children. We are here to create a sense of purpose, community and action through yoga and direct service and through this experience I trust that most of the people in our community will become leaders of social change.

Between volunteering our time, meeting with local leaders, and working on the various projects that OTM has funded, we have been learning about South African culture and history. Over the last few weeks, we’ve explored the townships and visited the District Six Museum where we learned about the 60,000 people who were wrenched from their homes, livelihoods, community centers and societal networks, and relocated to the bleak plains of the Cape Flats. I’ve witnessed extreme poverty, heard so many upsetting stories; and despite all of this, I’ve never experienced such an optimistic and forgiving community.

We also visited the notorious prison of Robben Island – home to former President Nelson Mandela for 17 years. Our prison guide was an ex-political prisoner of the island and shared his experience of prison life during Apartheid, a system of legal racial segregation enforced by the National Party government of South Africa between 1948 and 1993, under which the rights of the majority ‘non-white’ inhabitants of South Africa were oppressed by the minority white race. He shared personal memories of brutality, isolation, and victimization. It was heart breaking to hear him talk about the various policies the guards used to keep the prisoners from finding strength in their unity. And It was inspiring to see the resilience of the human spirit.

Nelson Mandela was in prison for 27 years and he came out willing to shake the hand of the man who kept him there. He and other political prisoners’ devotion to their struggle for freedom and justice blow me away. “I am grateful to God who enabled me to play a role in this reconciliation and forgiving process,” Mandela said. His attitude turned his country around and I have seen a similar grace in the people I have come into contact with. They have taught me something… I guess you could say that I’m experiencing the healing power of forgiveness on such a deep level and that is why I have fallen in love.

by Claudia Whitney
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Claudia Whitney is a Global Seva Challenge 2010 participant.

As I look into the souls of the beings that I am here to connect into, I see so many aspects of myself reflected in their eyes; some of which, I have not wanted or been willing to see until this moment.  At first, these reflections were so overwhelming to me that I unconsciously manifested vertigo in order to cope with what was arising emotionally.  On the other side of the world from my home, my world was being rocked.  My center, normally maintained by my usual methods of unknowing, of disconnecting, of dissociating, were no longer available to me, and I was spinning in an attempt to regain balance.

On our first day in the field, at Baphumelele orphanage, I saw myself in a small, frail child, rocking herself vigorously and furiously back and forth in a swift motion, a thumb in her mouth, lying supine in a crib, attempting to self-soothe.  Witnessing her desperate need for holding caused me to cringe and repel, not from the child, but from myself.  By holding her up as a mirror, I came face to face with my warded-off self, the part of me that I heavily and convincingly defend against, the part of my shadow that I have not been in touch with since I, myself, was that age, too  young to verbalize my experience.  I saw in her desperation my own wish to be rocked, to be held, to be soothed, to be safe.   Although I didn’t connect it at that moment, I, too, was rocking.

Three days later, as I once again experienced vertigo upon crossing into the threshold of a room full of libidinal, voluptuous, self-proclaimed “food-loving” African mamas who gathered in the township of Thambo to adopt our group of volunteers for a one night home stay.   Immediately upon entering the room, I was overwhelmed by the abundance and bounty of embodied love in the room, symbolized in the physical shape and tender embraces of the many mamas, each eager to take home and nurture a complete stranger. Not yet identifying what was causing such a strong reaction, my eyes filled immediately with tears and I had to reach down deep into my belly for breath to resource.  I bee-lined for Suzanne and held onto her hands as I tried to stop the rocking sensation in my body.  I realized later that I was time-traveling back to my own childhood and standing in full awareness of my own unmet, but longed for needs to be loved and to be safe.   In their welcoming eyes and arms and embodied in their curves, I felt a palpable availability of unconditional love, complete acceptance and total safety.

Although I came here under the auspices of service, I am realizing that in order to truly serve, I must accept that, truthfully and surprisingly, I am here to feed me, to soothe me, to learn to love me.  And I am being shown this by experiencing these teachers: the wisdom of the moment, the beauty of the mamas, the vulnerability of the children.  Integrating the parts of me that need just as much and have just as much as those I am here to “serve” has been my teaching.  I knew this, intellectually, but feeling it at my core is an entirely new, very uncomfortable, and completely rocky experience.

This trip has allowed me to feel fully into my yoga.  I am one with the children in need, and I am one with the mamas with so much to offer.  I embody and must embrace them both.   This is my lesson.  This is my yoga, my integration, and my connection.  This is my healing from my soul’s apartheid.  I am holding both the ability to serve, to love big, to open up to and into situations and people and places that are underserved, disenfranchised, and even helpless, and also to the parts of me that are all of those things.  Since realizing this, I’ve come back into balance.  Physically, I am no longer rocking and the room is no longer spinning.  I am seeing that in my desire to come here to serve, I have been shown my need to heal the parts of me that wished to be held and rocked.  And in acknowledging that need, I inherently acknowledge my connection and empathy for those I thought I would be in service to, and who have, instead, ended up serving up invaluable lessons for me. In embracing me fully, the orphaned children and the tender mamas have inspired me to love compassionately and with grace.  In seva, I got rocked by love.

by Melody Moore
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Melody Moore is a Global Seva Challenge 2010 participant.

Asisipho lives in a large, impoverished township called Khayelitsha with her eight brothers and sisters and her parents, both of whom are unemployed. She enjoys worm farming and gardening, and she loves yoga because it provides exercise, makes her feel strong, and gives her “an edge.” She is going to be a lawyer.

After a gorgeous hike up Table Mountain on Friday morning, we headed to Khayelitsha to practice yoga and paint the yoga studio we funded for the Earthchild Project with the children, including Asisipho, who participate in the program. In 2006, Janna Kretzmar, Mama Noks, and several other community leaders created the Earthchild Project, a non-profit organization focused on the holistic development of children, teachers, schools and communities. The organization focuses on the environment, self-awareness, and health and wellness in order to create meaningful and sustainable change by providing practical skills in how to live a more balanced and fulfilling life.

Of all the organizations we are supporting through the Global Seva Challenge, the Earthchild Project seems to align most closely with our personal focus on yoga, health, and sustainability. There was not a dry eye in the yoga studio we funded for the Earthchild Project as Mama Noks thanked us so deeply for our contribution to her organization.

I have been impressed by the strong focus on preserving the environment in South Africa. The Earthchild Project focuses on environmental education by providing arts and crafts classes using recycled materials, teaching worm farming, creating container gardens for classrooms, and planting trees. Two of the other organizations we are supporting, Generation of Leaders Discovered (GOLD) and Christel House South Africa, also prioritize environmental sustainability. Next to almost every garbage can are separate bins for glass, tins, paper and plastic. Even on top of Table Mountain there are signs that say “Eco-friendly Environment.” Various television stations feature programs that explain how to conserve energy and focus on alternatives to unsustainable resource use. Overall, South Africans are incredibly proud of their country and are working hard to preserve their precious land.

Before this trip, I expected to cry tears of sadness for South Africa’s helpless victims of Apartheid, HIV/AIDS, and poverty; instead, I feel immense hope for and appreciation of the inspirational people I have met in this country. My perspective continues to shift as I meet patriotic South Africans, many of whom subsist on less than $1.50 per day and battle with racial inequality and HIV/AIDS issues, who exhibit more joy on a daily basis than I have ever seen exhibited by any of the people in my life. Organizations like the Earthchild Project are creating a new generation of confident, conscious and responsible young leaders like Asisipho in a country that is in great need of hope for the future.

by Christine Geiser
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Christine Geiser is a Global Seva Challenge 2010 participant.

Now, fast forward a few days and we are now at another local school (more typical in size and scale) working with Earthchild to inaugurate their new yoga classroom and to paint the mural attached to it. It was a wonderful day spent with the children and members of the local yoga community. There was yoga, singing, drums, dancing and more. I, like most of the other participants, found myself “picked” by a little girl who stayed glued to my side all day. She was beautiful. She was happy. She didn’t speak English, and I still don’t even know her name. But somehow, we communicated enough to make it through the day together, and rather well. The day ended with the group in a circle and the little girl sitting on my lap. Then, her mama walked in. I knew it instantly because she looked me in the eyes. My chest tightened – “uh oh, here we go”, I thought. So, I proceeded as normal and continued my interactions with the girl, making sure to not put a damper on her lovely experiences of the day. Here’s what went down.

As she left with her mama, I walked outside to give her one more hug good-bye. Standing nearby, fellow participant Tim Thill spoke up and asked the woman if she was the girl’s mother at which she, of course, replied yes. We both jumped at the opportunity to compliment the girl on her behavior, her spirit and her physical beauty. And then the moment of truth arrived. The moment I had been dreading. The anticipated “who do you people think you are” moment. Here is what Mama said when she opened her mouth, “Thank you. Thank you so much for what you guys are doing. My daughter is normally so shy but when she comes home from school it’s all she talks about. If she didn’t have yoga after school, she’d be home by herself and I don’t know what she would be doing. So thank you, we really appreciate it.”

Wow. Assumption shattered. Heart exploded. So I responded by giving up my box of Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies that were for the bus, and giving them to my new favorite people on Earth. Whose names I still don’t know. But at least I got to say hi to Mama.

by Maura Manzo
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Maura Manzo is a Global Seva Challenge 2010 participant.

I’ve had many of these types of experiences so far – making deep connections here and there with a child or person, only to leave them a few hours later to likely never see them again and never know what will become of them.

I’ve been challenged by the way in which we have been serving – in making these short term yet deep connections with amazing women, inspiring children who so clearly need sustainable, long term love and support. At times it has felt invasive and incomplete to be dropping in and dropping out of their lives. I’ve felt deeply challenged by this – it does not feel like enough for these people. I wanted to do more, to spend more time, to develop deeper relationships, to understand the full extent of their lives, to find solutions for better living and to see it through to the end. To know that our presence and contributions would translate into real impact and change…a future for these children. I felt like I could only love them if I could save them.

Then I realized that my resistance was in response to my own needs…to love only if there was a chance to support and save these people. My love was conditional based on how it could translate into positive change. How dare I hold back love from these children because I don’t know how it is going to impact them or because I am afraid it is not good enough? These people need a lot, no doubt, but first and foremost, they need to be seen, they need to be loved…as do I.

When I think about my life, and the ways I loved…I see it so clearly. All of the ways I have held back in both the giving and receiving of love for fear that it is not good enough or I am not worthy. I grew up well supported and resourced, but somewhere along the way (probably when my parents split) something shifted in my relationship to love. Because when my stepdad came along fully committed to loving and accepting me despite my not being his natural daughter (and far from being welcoming), I rejected him and his love. And for most of my life I held back…I’m not exactly sure why…perhaps it was my fear of abandonment, of losing his love that made me turn away from it. Through the many years of my resistance, his love was fierce and persistent. And as I got older I started to see it for what it was…pure love, unconditional, limitless, and compassionate.

When he died on 9-11-01, I had still never expressed my love an gratitude for all of the ways he let me be who I was, in all of my resistance and judgment, and loved me despite it all. I had not learned yet to love fully and I lost the chance to give that love him in the way that he deserved.

My experiences here in South Africa have been such a reflection and reinforcement of how to love. It is about loving abundantly in every moment. Loving fully without attachment to the outcome. Loving openly without conditions or expectations. Loving IS letting go…and I am learning to love in a new way.

Now when I go into an orphanage or a home here in South Africa, I go in 100%, knowing full well that I will never see them again or know what might become of them. Nonetheless, I will BE LOVE.

by Kerri Kelly
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Kerri Kelly is Director of Possibility at Off the Mat, Into the World.

Our group of 23 arrived and all met at one house where we would be divided off into pairs and assigned to a family in the neighborhood to stay for the night.  We were told that the families who participate in this home stay exchange are always very happy to have visitors — it is sort of like running a hotel for the evening, so while we are able to experience what it is like to live in the flats for a night families are paid for sharing their homes.  My partner for the night (Courtnay Meletta) and I were assigned to a family with a mother, father, and 5 children living in the house.  The chance to be able to share an experience with a family where both the mother and father are present was actually a very unique one as many of the men in this culture tend to be absent (either physically or mentally as alcohol and drugs are a major problem within the community). Walking through the neighborhood with our house mother, or “Mama” as all the mothers are called by everyone in the neighborhood, I was aware of my judgement and fears about what I would potentially be confronted with during our overnight visit.  Several of my group members were staying with families where there were no men in the household and there was something inside of me that told me that was somehow “safer” and I was definitely nervous walking in to my new environment.

When we walked into our new home there were several children sitting on the couches waiting for us (3 of the kids who lived in the house, a cousin, and a friend).  It was evident by their expressions and their immediate hugs to both Courtnay and I that our visit had been something they were looking forward to for quite some time.  We spent time getting to know the kids, talking about school and soccer and what they do for fun.  Taking pictures – both of children and allowing them to hold the camera and take pictures of each other - is something that children in this country never get tired of. After dinner we were sitting in the main living room and the father came home.  South African names are difficult to say and even more difficult to spell, but the father’s name is Zebran (or at least that’s how I would assume to spell it).  Zebran was quiet and shy at first but as he started eating his dinner he began to loosen up and feel more comfortable around us.  Courtnay and I went outside to play with the kids for a while and after they came back inside Mama got the children ready for bed and Courtney, Mama, Zebran and I were able to sit down on the couches for a while and talk.  We started with simple subjects — their kids, how they met, if they have always lived in Capetown – and then Courtnay asked Zebran if it was ok that we started to ask some more specific questions about life in South Africa and the daily struggles that he and his family face.  He was more than willing and told us that we were free to ask whatever we wanted.  We asked about living through the era of apartheid and what that was like, how they feel black people within their community are treated now, and if less than 20 years ago they could have ever imagined 2 white Americans staying over night in their home (they said they couldn’t).  We asked them about raising their kids within the community and how the rampant spread of HIV affects them as both parents and as individuals.  South Africa has more people infected with the HIV virus than any other country in the world.  This fact has been difficult for me to really comprehend based on the fact that South Africa is NOT the poorest country in Africa and there ARE resources here — the questions becomes, why aren’t they being used?  With the wealth, education, and opportunity this country has available to it why is there still such the divide between black and white, rich and poor, healthy and sick.  It is not a simple question to answer and there is no quick fix.

When I asked Zebran how he chose to talk to his kids about HIV / AIDS, he told me that he encourages his kids to ask questions and he answers them honestly.  He said that the only way he knows how to protect his kids is to educate them.  He wants to tell them what they need to know so that when they are presented with a choice they do not respond out of fear or ignorance but they choose wisely based on the truths they have been told.  He told us that when he is talking to his kids about safe sex, drugs, alcohol, gangs, rape, violence and they look away and say that they say “I know, I know, I know…” (as most kids tend to do when getting lectured by their parents), he’ll ask if he may have just one more moment of their time and then say, “Would you mind explaining to me what you know?”.  The intention is to have them explain back what they have heard, what they have learned, and have the freedom to interpret the message for themselves.

The experience Courtnay and I had with Zebran and his family was the only one out of our group where the man of the house played a positive role.  Not all of the men living in this neighborhood are faithful to their wives, not all stay home and have dinner with their families instead of getting drunk at the bars, and not all speak so openly and honestly to their kids about HIV / AIDS giving them the only protection that they can truly give them - the truth.  This was not everyone’s experience, but this was ours.  And I am really grateful for it.

by Carly Weis
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Carly Weis is a Global Seva Challenge 2010 participant.

The effects of HIV/AIDs are dealt with everyday in South Africa, whether it is in the lives of the endless amounts of orphaned children or the young school drops taking on the role of caring for sick parents and even becoming head of the household, looking after their younger siblings. These children who are unable to receive an education are much more likely to spread or catch the disease and become pregnant or impregnate someone. They are also much less likely to obtain a career or a job. When a person isn’t educated they are missing valuable tools and therefore are unable to understand or even be aware of the detrimental effects of HIV/AIDs. This lack of education is part of what is continuing this devastating cycle and is robbing children of their childhood experience, their innocence and energy that makes them so pure.

Crime, prostitution, rapes, drugs, teen pregnancy, gangs, disease and death are completely outrageous to have as the ‘norm’ for any childhood upbringing. I can tell you first hand that these amazing kids are incredibly bright and have so much potential; they are untapped resources and are the future of South Africa. They should not be stripped of that potential before they are even given the chance to thrive. They need to be given tools, education, and the love and support just like any other child in Canada, the USA, or any other part of the world. These kids are OUR future leaders, they have what it takes to make history, to end the reign of terror that HIV and AID’s have struck onto our human race.

I heard someone say today, “what color is your blood?” which compliments Mandela saying, “we are all one but with different languages”, or the South Africa saying, “Simunye”, we are all one. We are one but with different backdrops to the human experience. The importance of a child- their education, their well-being is no different in Canada than it is in South Africa, no different in SA as it is in the United States. It doesn’t matter your age, gender, sexual orientation, or the color of your skin… what color is your blood?

There is so much more to this South African nation and the 26 million people living with HIV/AIDS. I feel as though I am just barely touching the tip of the iceberg. But I can say that through all of my learning around apartheid, marginalization and segregation, I have been inspired…

I have been inspired by the courage and resiliency of children raising themselves and each other; Inspired by the strength and devotion of the grandparents who are carrying the weight of the nation- caring for both their children and their children’s children. And of course, inspired by forgiveness, a structure molded by Mr. Mandela himself, I have been blown away at the country’s ability to forgive one another. When it comes down to it, as I’m sure you have heard it many times before, we are all one race…the human race. And if you ever have any doubts of that, what color is your blood? Simunye.

by Megan McDougall
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Megan McDougall is a Global Seva Challenge 2010 participant.

But there were things that were not taken from these people, no matter what they endured. Their heart, their hope, their love, their faith. It is truly inspiring, yet at times unfathomable. I think about the things in my life that have happened to me, that I’m still upset about; about the people I still hold grudges against, for silly things like getting cut from the basketball team, and it’s ridiculous, right? How can someone be robbed of so much and but still hold so much love in their heart?

The answer, I think, may be found in this poem found inscribed on the wall of the Muir Street Mosque in District Six:

Enthusiasm is the vehicle of my life
Contemplation to Allah is my compassion
Faith is the source of my power
Sorrow is my friend
Knowledge is my weapon
Truth is my salvation
Worship is my heart
Love of all men is the core my belief

Profound.

by Maura Manzo
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Maura Manzo is a Global Seva Challenge 2010 participant.

As I reflected on the day, I thought about all of the different interactions I had with the children. More importantly, I acknowledged the test of empathy and sympathy that stood before me in each these interactions. Sympathy is a feeling of pity for the suffering of another, an impulse of sorrow for someone else’s misfortune. Quite differently, empathy shows up in our ability to understand and equally share feelings of another, free of misconceptions of any kind.  I considered how I was perceiving the precious lives before me – with empathy or sympathy? Was I taking words like, neglect, poor, HIV/AIDS, sick, abused, and molding each child into my own preconceived notions? Or in the midst of everything, could I find the strength of empathy over sympathy?

Instead of creating assumptions or concluding stories, I moved beyond this and saw through the eyes of each child. Here, I discovered all of the purity and presence that existed in each of them and in each moment with them. Empathy shined and was clearly reflected throughout the experiences of the day. Instead of experiencing feelings of sorrow for the sufferings and misfortunes of their lives, I looked in the direction of happiness. It was deep in their eyes that I found it.

The unity was also there. I could hear their laughter in the echo of mine, our dance rhythms synchronized, our voices clear and understood. Today, I reveled in baking biscuits, stringing beads, and exhaling through an upside down lion’s roar in camel pose, all kid friendly and inspired by these beautiful children and their innocence. This day brought so much to the surface, providing a great reminder to reflect on our experiences in order to gain better insight of ourselves and the environment around us.

by Christina Sabatini
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Christina Sabatini is a Global Seva Challenge 2010 participant.

My own emotions went from high to low as the day went on. Upon arrival, my initial reaction was to so many children and  so few of us. While there was an abundance of love and nurturing at Baphumelele, it hit me hard that there were 20 or more kids in each room and only five of us. I was immediately overwhelmed in my wanting to reach out to each and every one of these children and to give back the love and light that they deserved and were clearly yearning for.

And suddenly it became real. There was one of me, one set of hands, capable of stringing one bracelet at a time, and what felt like hundreds of kids at my feet eager to begin their creation. I was overwhelmed and the truth and reality of this entire situation hit me hard. This was just a microcosm of the bigger problem – over one million children have been left orphans in South Africa. Today, we were here to offer to them a bit of the childhood that we knew so well from home. So I turned to one child, with one strand to drop beads on, and dedicated the next 30 minutes to picking his favorite colors and watching the joy on this little boy’s face as he dropped beads onto this string that was to become his cherished bracelet.

Was he HIV positive? None of us knew, or cared to question. What I saw in that moment was that he had found happiness, joyfulness, and the spirit of childhood that every little boy and girl deserves. What he’ll be offered at Baphumelele, with the support of the community he is surrounded by, is the opportunity to grow with the world at his feet. With every day, he will ask questions, explore new opportunities, discover his truth, make choices and decisions that will have a significant impact upon himself and others, and quite possibly grow into a young man that will inspire by the life that he has lived.

When I loaded the bus with that evening, I processed of all that I had taken in on this day. Including the absolute appreciation I felt for being there, and love that I felt coming from those that dedicated their lives to the development of such a significant, grassroots organization. I was humbled by my surroundings at Baphumelele. I will never forget the genuine connection felt with each and every hug that was shared that day, from three-year-old to seventeen-year-old. They each embraced us from the bottom of their heart, which served as a reminder to me as to why I am here.

by Jenna Jeantet
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Jenna Jeantet is a Global Seva Challenge 2010 participant.

Before arriving I did a lot of research about the history of South Africa and apartheid. Apartheid fascinated me and I wanted to understand how it all started and how it came to be. I was so passionate in my effort and forgot a major component: I do not know what I do not know.

When I arrived, I was greeted by a dear friend whom I had met on a previous trip to Peru. She was born and raised in South Africa. I was excited to be able to get a perspective on apartheid from an insider who had lived through it all.

I was particularly interested in understanding the different dynamics that make up this incredible country and the history that created it – how white oppression could have survived so long into modern times (apartheid officially ended in 1994). And who were these Afrikaans who initiated and upheld a strict and oppressive policy of segregation? As I launched into my inquiry, showering my friend with questions of morality, equality and liberty – I quickly realized that I was asking these questions of a white Afrikaans-speaking person herself. This threw me. I felt awkward, ashamed and curious. How did I not pick up on this? I knew her to be kind, fair and open-minded, not at all the perception I had created of this group of people who were behind some of the worst atrocities in South African history. None of it fit into what I had learned, read and come to believe. Needless to say, I had a lot to learn.

South Africa has a long and complicated history of conflict, power struggle and oppression. The history of South Africa started well before the Europeans arrived. The country’s earliest inhabitants were the indigenous Khoikoe and San peoples (it is said that modern human beings were there many years before). However, most history books acknowledge the beginning of South African history as the moment the Dutch arrived at the tip of the Cape in 1652. It was there that the Dutch India Company set up the first trading post to service explorers and ships and brought with them a sense of white superiority. Dutch occupation in the South Cape grew over time and they eventually became known as the Boers. During that time, British forces started moving into the Cape with intentions to colonize the area and officially seized control from the Netherlands in 1806. Shortly after (and inspired by the emancipation of slavery), the local Boers emigrated north and east to live independent of colonial rule. Their settlement often came into conflict over land with local tribes (Zulu and Xhosa). However, the discovery of diamonds and gold in South Africa triggered Britain’s desire to expand their territory and was followed by a number of wars with both the Boers and Zulus. The Anglo-Boer Wars were particularly significant in its brutality and political impact. The British eventually defeated the Boers in the second war by adopting a scorched earth policy and instituting concentration camps in which some 26,000 Boer women and children and 14,000 black and colored (mixed race) people died in appalling conditions (this was known as the first modern war and the first known use of concentration camps).

Following the war, the Union of South Africa was created encompassing all British colonies. The black population saw this as a new beginning and an opportunity to reclaim the land rights that were originally theirs. However, only white authorities had decision-making ability and quickly began to adopt a policy of repression, passing the Land Act, which reserved 90% of South African land for whites. During this time, the African National Congress was formed to unite the black community across colonies, classes and tribes. Similarly, Afrikaaner nationalism emerged out of anti-British sentiments and an ideology that they were the “chosen people” of South Africa. This culture of white supremacy and black resistance continued until 1948 when The National Party was elected into power on the platform of apartheid.

Originally, the black resistance, led by ANC organizations, was peaceful and based on principles of non-violence. This shifted in 1976 when 69 unarmed and peaceful protesters were killed at a rally in Sharpeville. This was followed by increasing action against the black community, including the sentencing of ANC leaders to life imprisonment at Robben Island (including Nelson Mandela). The Soweto Uprising of 1976 was a turning point in the liberation struggle. It was a series of clashes between black youth and security forces that resulted in more than 600 deaths and led to a spiral of revolution. Following Soweto, South Africa experienced a state of emergency and general unrest throughout the population. When FW de Klerk became president, he initiated multi-party talks and started the process of unraveling apartheid. By 1994, apartheid laws had been repealed, the ANC came into power and Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s new president. After 200 years of power struggles, oppression and conflict, South Africa was finally on its way to equality and freedom for all.

What I’ve realized in being here and getting to know the different people of this South Africa, is that the facts/history do not tell the whole story . The depth and truth of this complicated country lies in the soul of the people of South Africa. When I’ve asked what about Nelsen Mandela won the country over and what inspired the shift towards unity, locals have said it was his universal compassion, empathy and forgiveness for all people within Africa. And in that moment, I realized that THAT was my lesson – empathy. Empathy not just for the victims, but for all. I arrived in this country with strong assumptions about who was good/bad, right/wrong. Like most difficult things, nothing is simple. South Africa’s history is a complex weaving of power, separation and suffering; not unlike many countries (including America). In fact, there are many parallels between the history of this country and America’s (from English colonization to slavery to the oppression of Native American Indians). What I’ve witnessed in my time here is a country and culture of contrast. More importantly, perhaps, it has reflected back to me where I am in separation- in my limiting beliefs, assumptions and judgments – and the opportunity within myself to open my heart and my mind to this place and its people.

This experience reinforced for me the importance of the work we are doing here in South Africa.This journey is, first and foremost, about listening and learning. The money raised, the local projects are a great bi-product of our program, Global Seva Challenge. But the purpose is about baring witness to this experience with honesty, empathy and openness. Only from that place can we serve in a way that is sustainable and effective.

While we call this Yoga…the Africans call this Ubuntu, the spirit of which is about cooperation, compassion, forgiveness and a sense of connection to our universe and to each other. Nelson Mandela described Ubuntu as “A traveler through a country would stop at a village and he didn’t have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food, entertain him. That is one aspect of Ubuntu but it will have various aspects. Ubuntu does not mean that people should not enrich themselves. The question therefore is: Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to be able to improve?”

by Kerri Kelly
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Kerri Kelly is the Global Catalyst for OTM. You can read her full bio here.

There was an unbearable moment when he laid down on the floor of the 6by4 foot cell where he was held captive to show us how he had slept. We could imagine him shackled, beaten and terrified of his unknowable future which for many included torture and death. When one of the participants asked him if it was difficult for him to share his experience with us, he turned to us, eyes shining, and passionately declared “I want the world to know my story…please share my story with the world”. We promised him that we would. We shared his story through our blogs on professional and personal sites and in this way, his intense suffering was not entirely invisible or in vain.

Since that time, we have committed to blog about the challenges, opportunities and revelations of our journey into other countries. We have published the blogs on yogajournal.com, oprah.com, as well as our own site offthematintotheworld.org/blog. At this time, we are in Cape town, South Africa on our 3rd annual Seva journey and are so excited to have an opportunity to share this experience with you and bring to light, from our perspective, both the beauty of this culture and the present challenges it faces that include poverty, HIV/AIDS, the residual impact of Apartheid and the lack of opportunities for education and employment.

Through these blogs-written by ourselves, as well as the 18 women and men who have joined us-we will explore both the practical challenges as well as the more personal, emotional internal conflicts that arise as a result of a deep immersion into another culture. Especially a culture that is as complex and rich with tradition and history as South Africa.
Our interest in exploring South Africa was a desire to understand the deep consequences of Apartheid as well as how a country with only 2 percent of the global population also embodies 30 percent of all HIV/AIDS cases worldwide. Because of HIV/AIDS there are an unprecedented number of orphaned children and with that comes the added challenge of lack of education, gangs, and high-risk behavior that, without education or access to products and information, can only continue the increase of this terrible, but avoidable, pandemic. Upon further study of South African reconciliation policy we were inspired to learn how some of the schools and programs implemented therapy and empowerment training to deal with the trauma of Apartheid, and the lingering consequences of prejudice and segregation. We were fascinated by the depths of the issues, both socially and practically, and felt equally inspired by their progress as well as disillusioned by the enormity of the issues, the lack of organization and the corruption that often exists when big money is being funneled into any country.

Part of our mission is to explore the existing needs of the cultures we encounter not by imposing our western ideologies but by literally asking them what their needs are and co-partnering with local organizations so as to fulfill those needs in a sustainable way that benefits the whole community. This year, participants raised over 550k for our partners in South Africa. We will be spending time with each of them, building a bakery, a library, a halfway house, a wellness center and supporting many other local projects, as well as engaging in deep self inquiry into how these issues affect our own lives and communities at home.

We are also excited about meeting and working with the local yoga community and learning about their commitment to serving their own nation in the ways that they have. We are contributing to one of their local projects and look forward to seeing how they are bringing yoga and wellness to their own community and the effect it is having on integration and healing.

On a personal note, we are so grateful to everyone who has participated in this and prior challenges. It is our intention to be pro-active in creating opportunities for healing and service and to create conversations that don’t just highlight what works within our world, but expose the challenges, the disconnection and the opportunities for awareness and healing.

OTM is our effort to create solution based initiatives that bring together all people regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, political diversity and socio-economic circumstance in order to create a more unified world that can co-exist safely and abundantly through mutual support, compassion and understanding. OTM is dedicated to shining a light on all aspects of the human experience and baring witness to the love, beauty, fear and divisiveness that exist simultaneously in all cultures and in the hearts of all beings. These blogs are our effort to expose the human experience, to express our own vision of transformation both within and beyond, and to create a dialogue for change that may challenge our own worldview and assumptions.

We invite comments, words of encouragement as well as diverse points of view and opinions. Please feel free to share these blogs on your own sites. We appreciate your support in generating outreach so that the many people in the yoga community and beyond can learn about our efforts and subsequent ways to get involved.

Our past two Seva Challenge trips have been intense and profound…full of growth, awakening, tears, laughter and unforeseen adventures. We trust that this year will be the same and we are looking forward to the ways that all of us will deepen our sense of the purpose and sacredness of our living activism. We send you many blessings on your own adventures and pray that as we all grow and expand our vision, we will commit to working together to create opportunities for peace, safety and justice for all beings everywhere.

In service and in love,
Seane, Suzanne and Hala (who, although she is not with us on this particular journey, as a co-founder of OTM, shares this deep sentiment and world vision)
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Seane Corn, Suzanne Sterling and Hala Khouri are co-founders of OTM. You can read their full bios here.