The Inspiration for Lassie

In the summer of 1923, Frank and Elizabeth Fraser and their two-year-old dog set out from Oregon, Indiana, to visit family. When they stopped for gas at a service station in Indiana, the dog was attacked by other three dogs and fled.

They searched everywhere for him, but in the end could not find him. They returned to Oregon heartbroken, believing they would never see their beloved dog again. After losing all hope, one day their daughter saw a skinny and exhausted dog on the street that looked like Bobby. After his joyful reaction, it turned out to be the missing dog Thanks to the people who sheltered him during the journey, they were able to reconstruct the complete route he crossed.

To see his family again, he crossed almost 2500 miles (4,000 kilometers) in six months. He hiked across the Rocky Mountains in the middle of winter and ended up being nicknamed "Bobby the Wonder Dog." He was the inspiration for the movie "Lassie Returns

🌟 How far could your next vinyasa reach if each class funded someone’s dream? 🌍

Awakening Magazine Shines A Light on YGB Mission of Empowerment and Unity in Action!

"Do your work. If everyone follows their calling and dedicates themselves to it, the world will be a better place.”

This insightful interview explores what began as Kayoko Mitsumatsu’s exploration of yoga philosophy and social entrepreneurship, which has grown into a global movement. As the founder of Yoga Gives Back, Kayoko transformed a simple idea—redirecting the cost of one yoga class—into a powerful nonprofit initiative that funds microloans, education, and empowerment programs for underserved women and children in India.

Each year, after visiting all of the Yoga Gives Back organization’s programs throughout India, Kayoko makes a meaningful visit to Mother Teresa’s Home in Kolkata. From a young age, she hoped to volunteer at the Home for the Dying. On one occasion, she spoke with a sister who had worked closely with Mother Teresa. When she expressed her desire to serve there, the sister responded, reflecting Mother Teresa’s own wisdom: “Don’t come here! You’ve already found your mission.“ Kayoko strives to stay focused on the mission itself rather than the outcomes.

With time, Kayoko came to see YGB’s work as truly divine. Yoga Gives Back continues to attract extraordinary individuals who arrive when needed most, helping move YGB mission forward. Our global family of supporters, Ambassadors, partners, and donors make our mission possible—embodying this year’s Global Gathering for India's mantra, Unity in Action. Every step we take together helps transform gratitude into action every day.

A Circle of Impact—Thanks to You

Since 2007, Yoga Gives Back has supported underserved women and children in India—the birthplace of yoga—by providing:

Microloans for 550 mothers through our Sister Aid program
Primary education for 600+ young girls to prevent child marriage and labor
Five-year college scholarships (SHE Program) for over 400 disadvantaged youths
Digital literacy training and internet access for rural women and girls
Safe housing and education for children with no families to care for them

GET INVOLVED!

One-Time Donation
Monthly Donation (Gratitude Circle)
Host an Event
Hold an Online Fundraiser
Volunteer
Check out YGB Impact and Ways to Support

Venice: A City Floating on a Submerged Forest

Since 421 AD, Venice has stood on millions of tree trunks stuck into the clay bottom of the lagoon. Not steel or concrete, but mostly alder, with a few oaks, support the entire city.

In the salt water, these wooden pillars have petrified over time, becoming as hard as stone. St. Mark's Campanile alone stands on 100,000 piles, while the majestic Basilica della Salute required over a million trunks. The ancient builders beat these trees into the seabed, creating a veritable submerged forest.

This unique structure extends up to three meters deep, with piles spaced just half a meter apart. At 1.6 meters below the waterline, this extraordinary feat of medieval engineering continues, after 1,500 years, to support one of the most fascinating cities in the world.

A Woman's Rejected Invention Saved Millions of Lives

In the year 1903, during a snowy trip to New York City, a woman named Mary Anderson watched as drivers struggled with a life-threatening problem. Every few minutes, they'd stop their cars, step into the storm, and wipe their windshields clean. Right then, she envisioned a solution that would revolutionize transportation forever - but automakers laughed in her face.

When she patented her invention in 1903, car companies rejected it as ""a distraction."" They argued:

Drivers should just pay better attention
Real drivers don't mind the weather
This is just a silly woman's gadget

But history proved them spectacularly wrong. By the 1920s, as cars reached deadly speeds, Anderson's wipers became mandatory safety equipment. Today, her invention:

Prevents millions of accidents annually

Is used on every modern vehicle (even spacecraft!)

Saves more lives than seatbelts or airbags combined

The bitter irony? Mary Anderson never made a penny from her genius. The patent expired before wipers became standard. Yet her legacy lives on every time you drive safely through rain, snow, or storms.

Fun Fact: The first automatic wipers (1923) used vacuum power from the engine - so they slowed down when you accelerated!

via Weird & Wonderful Facts

Frank Morris and The Seeing Eye Dog

Frank Morris was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1908. At the age of six he lost his right eye after hitting a tree branch while horseback riding, and at the age of 16 he lost his left eye during a boxing match. Morris was very frustrated with depending on others to help him get around.

In November 1927, Morris's father read him an article by Dorothy Eustis, an American philanthropist living in Switzerland who operated a school that supplied dogs to the police and Red Cross. The article described schools in Germany that trained guide dogs for WWI veterans who had gone blind from mustard gas.

Morris was inspired to write Eustis for help. "Is what you say really true? If so, I want one of those dogs! And I am not alone. Thousands of blind like me abhor being dependent on others. Help me and I will help them. Train me and I will bring back my dog and show people here how a blind man can be absolutely on his own. We can then set up an instruction center in this country to give all those here who want it a chance at a new life." Eustis agreed to help.

Morris went to Switzerland and trained with a female German shepherd named Kiss, which he quickly renamed Buddy. The training was hard, but after a few weeks Morris was able to get around the Swiss village safely with Buddy's assistance.

In June 1928, Frank returned to the US with Buddy in New York City. He notified the media and demonstrated Buddy's abilities by crossing a busy New York street. According to Morris "She [Buddy] moved forward into the ear-splitting clangor, stopped, backed up, and started again. I lost all sense of direction and surrendered myself entirely to the dog. I shall never forget the next three minutes: 10-ton trucks rocketing past, cabs blowing their horns in our ears, drivers shouting at us. When we finally got to the other side and I realized what a really magnificent job she had done, I leaned over and gave Buddy a great big hug and told her what a good, good girl she was."

Morris sent a one-word telegram to Eustis: "SUCCESS!"

In January 1929, Morris and Eustis cofounded the first guide dog school in the US called The Seeing Eye. It operated in Nashville for two years and then relocated to New Jersey because the weather was more suitable for training dogs. Between 1929 and 1956, Morris traveled throughout the US spreading the word about the organization and the need for equal access laws for people with guide dogs. By 1956, every state in the US had passed laws allowing blind people with guide dogs access to public spaces.

Buddy died on May 23, 1938. Morris named his next dog Buddy, as he would all his subsequent seeing eye dogs. On April 29, 2005, a sculpture of Frank Morris and Buddy titled The Way to Independence was unveiled in Morristown, New Jersey.

#LOL

Kenneth Atchity's Door to Door

An Eclectic Omnivorous Newsletter!

Kenneth Atchity's Door to Door

Happy Easter!

The Egg Dance: A forgotten tradition

The egg dance was a traditional Easter game involving the laying down of eggs on the ground and dancing among them whilst trying to break as few as possible. Another variation (depicted in many of the images featured here) involved tipping an egg from a bowl, and then trying to flip the bowl over on top of it, all with only using one’s feet and staying within a chalk circle drawn on the ground.

Read more about it to add to your Easter family game night on the Public Domain Review.

Marsha Wietecha Interviews YGB Kayoko Mitsumatsu

Marsha Wietecha, host of the Born To Talk Radio Show Interviews Yoga Gives Back founder Kayoko Mitsumatsu. Kayoko shares YGB 18-year journey and our two-fold mission: to mobilize the yoga community with gratitude and to empower women and children in India to build sustainable livelihoods.

LISTEN NOW!

Happy BOGO Tuesday!❤️

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Yoga Gives Back

Written by Kayoko Mitsumatsu

From Posture To Power: Microcredit Changes Lives On Both Sides of the Ocean

We can talk about making change. But affecting real change in the world comes from impacting the lives of individuals. It comes from empowering people to be independent and able to make a living on their own while at the same time being fully integrated in our interdependent global community. Sometimes it takes something that seems to be radical to make this change, but these shifts can be deceptively small. They can be even as small (or as large) as the cost of a Los Angeles Yoga class.

How could this be? In the practice of microcredit, lending seemingly small amounts of money to small-scale entrepreneurs allows them to succeed and change their circumstances. This is the fundamental basis of microcredit’s transformative power; it’s a revolutionary concept in finance. This practice shifts the emphasis from financial transactions being focused only about large loans and large scale businesses, which are out of reach of many one-person operations, institutions and organizations – to lending practices that actually make a positive difference in a person’s life. Microcredit practices based on social justice and empowerment operate through a combination of small-scale loans based on trust and community support, with structured repayment plans and programs that encourage savings. In these situations, people actually have the opportunity to solidify long-term change in their lives.

Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the Yoga Gives Back Team: Joel Bender, Leslie Hendry, Dr. Muhammad Yunus and Kayoko Mitsumatsu (left-right)

In 2006, economist Dr. Muhammad Yunus and the institution he founded, the Grameen Bank, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This award was in recognition of their revolutionary efforts to create this micro-credit model, support sustainable economic practices, and provide an alternative to what were exploitive norms. When a person is caught in a cycle of poverty, they may become trapped in the system, particularly since large banking institutions have historically ignored people without assets or credit histories, who are just starting out and who may not have already proven themselves. Most banks prefer to lend large sums of money that represent a greater profit margin and are set up only for large loans in order to make a profit themselves. And even making it more challenging, people at the bottom of the economic scale worldwide have had to rely on moneylenders charging usurious terms and interest rates to obtain funds to plant the next crop, buy inventory of new equipment, or upgrade a business in any way. Institutions such as the Grameen Bank and their affiliates are offering another approach. It’s one that has significantly impacted millions of people.

As Dr. Yunus described in an exclusive interview with Yoga Gives Back in May, 2009, “We started in 1976, and today within Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, eight million people borrow micro loans, ninety-seven percent of them women.” This represents an enormous potential for change and empowerment that just did not exist on a large scale in this form prior to 1976.

There is a social cycle in economics, and Dr. Yunus explained this: “Poverty is not inside the person. Poverty is forced from outside. Poor people are as capable [a] human being as anybody else. They have the same power and energy, same potential. But they are denied such facilities. They cannot express themselves. Money is one of the most important items missing in their lives. You need a dollar to catch a dollar. You cannot catch a dollar with an empty hand. So, that first dollar, nobody has given to her. So she remains dependent on someone else. She has to be hired, to slave; she has to work to make food available on the table. What we have done, we have put that first dollar into her hands as a banking proposition. Conventional banks never come to the poor people. They go to rich people to make more money. The person who does not have a dollar – she cannot get it. So we did it. We did it in a way that is affordable to her. Because we do not insist on collateral. There is no collateral.”

While that may seem like a radical concept, the Grameen Bank has proven that their success is much more than ideological. Dr Yunus cited statistics for us, “The repayment rate is almost 100%, without collateral or anything. This is the strength of microcredit which is now spread all over the world. There are by now at least 150 million borrowers in the world today. Bu it is still very small comparing to the need. We need more microcredit organizations in the world so that more people can be reached.”

Yoga Gives Back is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization begun in LA, with the goal to provide a way for Western Yoga practitioners to give back to India, the birthplace of Yoga, which has given us so much. We’re heeding Dr. Yunus’ call to reach more people through expanded opportunities for and awareness of microcredit and have targeted India and Indian families, women, and would-be entrepreneurs, who would be otherwise stuck in the cycle of poverty that Dr. Yunus described. Yoga Gives Back supports microfinancing operations in India, through the Grameen Foundation, headquartered in Washington, DC. Donations go directly to Grameen Koota, Bangalore, South India and our YGB awareness campaign focuses on the real stories of how poor women are changing their lives with small loans from Grameen Koota.

Ms. Vinatha M Reddy

Grameen Koota was started by visionary teacher and philanthropist, Ms. Vinatha M Reddy (pictured, above) in 1999, who learned about Nobel Peace Recipient Dr Muhammad Yunus’ microfinancing and immediately began exploring ways of replicating his work in her hometown. In 2000, she started providing small microcredit loans, averaging $25.00 a month, to fifty local women. Today, Grameen Koota’s work is reaching out to over 280,000 women in Bangalore, Mysore and many areas of Karnataka state, in South India, making real impact on these women’s lives as well as on the local economy.

Yoga Gives Back

The Los Angeles-based Yoga Gives Back has a worldwide reach and began out of the inspiration and dedication of my Yoga mentor Joel Bender and me. Our group has suddenly started growing almost daily and our mission is shared by a quickly expanding and loving Yoga community.

When I was growing up in Japan, which is a very middle-class society, I had never experienced or seen any real poverty, especially growing up in Tokyo in 1960s and 1970s, when Japan's post-war economic miracle was taking place. Then, I had a chance to live in Brazil in the late 1970s for two years, where as a teenager, I saw the divide between poverty and wealth, the reality of the real slums, kids on the streets begging every time you stopped the car at the traffic light, all very much like India. Social injustice hit me hard.

Once I started Yoga practice and feeling my life being so enriched by it , I felt a need to use my resources to help others. I was producing a documentary on Social Entrepreneurship and learned about microfinancing. I shared this information with Joel [featured in the teacher profile in this month’s issue of LA YOGA] who had been looking for the way he could give back to India since his first visit there – so we teamed up.

When I think about the growth of Yoga Gives Back thus far, I give a lot of credit to the entrepreneurship and volunteer spirit of Americans, willing to embrace and support a new grass roots campaign like ours.

Kayoko Mitsumatsu, co-founder of Yoga Gives Back, is a documentary filmmaker whose films deal with social justice issues, including First They Killed My Father a memoir of a Cambodia’s Killing Fields’ survivor.

A Life Changing Story of Microcredit: Jayashree

Jayashree

Jayashree lives in the suburbs of Bangalore and is married and the mother of two children. We visited her at her humble dirt floor one room home for the first time in 2007. We were touched by her warm smile and most generous hospitality, serving us hot tea and cookies.

Jayashree was born into a very poor family in Bangalore. When she was a child, her family’s financial situation became so severe that she had to drop out of school and work at a garment factory. She toiled throughout her childhood and after she got married at fifteen, her meager earnings had to support her ailing in-laws. She had two children. Her husband’s rickshaw business was not enough to pay her sons’ education or secure food for the family.

In 2007, Jayashree learned from her neighbors about Grameen Koota’s microcredit program and applied for her first loan. She was granted a first loan of 7,000 rupees ($175), and immediately bought her husband’s auto rickshaw. Owning their own rickshaw business increased their income significantly.

Jayashree was able to pay back her entire loan in one year and became eligible for her second loan in 2008. Having proven her diligence, her second loan amount doubled to 15,000 rupees ($375). This time, she bought a sewing machine and started stitching bags. The family’s earnings have now tripled and she is earning 150 rupees ($3.75) a day. In addition, she opened a small shop next to her house to sell her products which is earning her an additional 100 rupees ($2.50) a day.

She is sending her elder son to a medical school. Her son dreams of becoming a doctor and thanks his mother’s business for providing his education, their own home and daily food.

To participate in a Yoga practice where the proceeds support Yoga Gives Back and directly impact the transformation of not only your own life, but that of someone in India, start your Thanksgiving week at Yogaglo, Sunday, November 22, 10:00 A.M. - 12 noon. Some of the teachers include John Sahakian, Felicia Tomasko, Alexandra Aiken and Ally Hamilton; more to be announced. Yogaglo.com; yogagivesback.com.

For more information on Yoga Gives Back or to host a Yoga Gives Back class at your own studio or location, visit: yogagivesback.org or contact yogagivesback@earthlink.net.