ken atchity door to door: Yoga Gives Back

Yoga Gives Back - May E- Letter

Celebrating Mother's Day!!

The Impact of your Donation!!

With your support, YGB has doubled the number of mothers funded this year to 209 in West Bengal!! You can read their encouraging reports here.

Women are the best poverty fighters. Studies have shown and YGB has witnessed that mothers are more likely to use the profits from their businesses, not only to improve their families' nutrition and living conditions, but also to send their children to school, thereby giving the next generation a much better chance to climb out of poverty. YGB's Sister Aid program also requires all mothers to save at least 50 rupees a month for their daughters' higher education, which is a very innovative initiative worked through with our local partner NGO NISHTHA.

Exciting FACTS for 2014!!!

YGB revenues have grown every year since its inception. 2013 revenues were up 45% from the previous year, with only 1% spent for admin cost as we are all hard working volunteers!
Total of 503 mothers and children funded this year in Karnataka and West Bengal, more than double from 2013.
This year, YGB's new program SHE (Scholarship for Higher Education) funds 65 high school students in West Bengal and Karnataka. This program aims to give chances to poor high school students to complete high school level and aim for even higher education.

Your chance to act!!! Become a YGB Member to support these mothers and children!!!

Whether you are a student, teacher, studio owner or business owner, empower yourself by giving back!!! More details here.

Exciting News:

YGB Film

Watch this moving new YGB FILM “Deenabandhu: Home of "Love & Trust” (6 minutes)!! Music by DJ Drez and Sheela Bringi. You can also become a sponsor for new films, details here!
Thank you for these sponsors already committed to support this new series: Aparna Khanolkar, Ashtanga Yoga Confluence, INC, bluShiva.com, Chuck Miller & Chapati Productions, JalaClothing.com, Namaste Water, ORGANIC INDIA, Sattva Yoga, StoryMerchant.com, YGB Netherlands and Belgium, YogaFit

YGB is delighted and honored to have these new powerful members to our growing global family!!!

New Advisor and Board of Director

Advisor

Mel

Melvyn Carlile, CEO
London, UK
MindBodySpirit Ltd

BOD

Kino MacGregor,
Miami, FL
Kino is donating % from her global workshop series for YGB this year!!
Kino Yoga

New Ambassadors and Representative

Ambassadors

Pete Guinosso,
San Francisco, CA
Pete Yoga

Sachi Doctor,
San Francisco, CA
Yoga With Sachi

Swati Pandey,
Kualalumpur, Malysia

Representative

Stephanie Baker,
London, UK

Events

May 8-11
Ashtanga Yoga Confluence 2014

Ashtanga Yoga Confluence choose YGB as Charity Beneficiary. YGB new film will premiere at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 10th!!

22 Mornings of Yoga
May Challenge by Yogaplace Maastricht, headquarters of YGB Netherlands & Belgium

22 mornings of YOGA in May! Roisterers are invited to find sponsors to support daily effort and donate to YGB!!

June 6-9
Asia Yoga Conference
Hong Kong

YGB is honored to be the Charity Partner again!! Twelve popular teachers will lead a special fundraiser 108 Sun Salutations class, 12:45 p.m.- 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, June 8th!! View details here.

May 31st
Ondrej become "IRONMAN" for Mothers and Children in India

"... I found my purpose by improving and adding value to the lives of others with love through the platform of health, fitness and spirituality… " Read more here.
Ondrej Zouhar will be competing in the Hawaii 70.3 IronMan on May 31st to help raise money for Yoga Gives Back! Support Ondrej's mission by donating here at Crowdrise.

June 21st
Summer Solstice - Celebrating with 108 Sun Salutations Summer with Melissa Christensen

@ RA Yoga, Costa Mesa

Thank you for all these past events and sponsors!!!

March 15th: Hot 8 Yoga, Beverly Hills, CA with Brit Middleton
April 26th: Yoga80, Carlsbad, CA with Robert Pastor & Reegan Lessie
April 26th: Indian Evening, Santa Barbara with Aparna Khanolkar
May 3rd: Ja Fitness & Wellness, Toronto, Canada with Lorraine Fetcher

Follow our YGB Blog for updated news from India and around the world!!

Thank you for all the past and future events,
which make a real difference one class at a time!!

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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.