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Recent Grants
Fostering a Global Consciousness of Oneness
Artship Foundationwww.artship.org
The Artship Foundation is a community of performing artists committed to the co-creation of an artistic process that births original, mythic work from communal intuitive depths. The ensemble's creative process or "art practice" is the central work of Artship. Themes draw on questions of identity, rootedness, community, and place in contemporary life. Kalliopeia supports the ensemble's production of Stories Without Words, an evening of telling, singing, playing, and giving voice and image to originally created or retold short stories.
An intimate portrait of ex-Yugoslavian émigré artist Slobodan Dan Paich, Silent Crescendo follows his daily ritual of creating simple drawings with tea and ink. In response to the modern pace of the art scene, Slobodan has embraced these fluid works of art to express his searching approach.
Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Associationwww.biodynamics.com
Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association is dedicated to the flourishing of Biodynamics: i.e., a spiritual, ethical, and ecological approach to agriculture, food production, and nutrition that focuses on creating diversified, balanced farm ecosystems. With careful attention to the subtle influences of soil, animals, water, earth, and cosmos, Biodynamics reconnects human life to elemental and cosmic rhythms, renewing the sacred dimension of agriculture and regenerating ecosystems and cultures eroded by a mechanized worldview.
See a recent issue of Biodynamics Journal: Is Agriculture Sacred?
Bioneers (Collective Heritage Institute)www.bioneers.org
Bioneers is a social and strategic hub for engaged citizens from all backgrounds and fields dedicated to solving urgent global problems within a holistic framework of interdependence. In its annual conference, Bioneers brings together leading-edge innovators to share solutions to environmental and social challenges, all based on the premise that nature's principles can serve as metaphoric guideposts for organizing an equitable, compassionate, and democratic society.
Business Alliance for Local Living Economieswww.bealocalist.org
The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) is a network of entrepreneurs and investors who share a vision of a life-giving economic framework that connects people to one another, the natural world, and to their own deeper calling. By driving new investment, scaling solutions, and harnessing the power of local business, BALLE seeks to catalyze and connect networks, and build inclusive, resilient, and living local economies.
California Institute of Earth Art and Architecturewww.calearth.org
Cal-Earth is dedicated to research and dissemination of simple, sustainable, and widely replicable earth building technologies for the benefit of humankind. Cal-Earth's primary initiative is to promote the philosophy and use of Superadobe, a technology developed by visionary architect Nader Khalili (1936–2008), who was inspired by the mystical poetry of Rumi to seek the equilibrium of earth, water, air, fire, and to unite them in design in service of beauty and human need. Cal-Earth's mission is guided by three principles: (1) shelter is a basic human right, (2) every human being should be able to build a house for him- or herself, and (3) the best way to provide shelter for the exponentially increasing human population is by building with earth.
Center for Action and Contemplationwww.cac.org
The Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) seeks to empower individuals to "live out their sacred soul tasks in service to the world" in their homes, workplaces, and all relationships, within a more spacious stance that is at once critical, collaborative, and joyful. Based on the writings and teachings of Fr. Richard Rohr, CAC offers a variety of educational resources that integrate the theory and practice of the Franciscan mystical tradition. Kalliopeia provides support for The Living School, a course of intensive contemplative study taught by extraordinary teachers who lift up the techniques and traditions of mystical Christianity for students whose dedication to positive change in the world is based in awareness of our common union with the Divine and with all beings.
Watch the short film Dualism and Identity.
Center for Earth Jurisprudencewww.earthjuris.org
(Fiscal Sponsor: St. Thomas University)
The mission of the Center for Earth Jurisprudence (CEJ) is to advance legal principles, laws, and governance that support and protect the health and well-being of all beings and ecosystems that constitute the natural world. Based on the premise that a transformation of legal thinking is required to extend "appropriate consideration to the intrinsic, spiritual value of the Earth," CEJ seeks to develop a philosophy and practice of law that respects the natural world in its own right and recognizes humanity as an integral member of the Earth community. Using an interdisciplinary approach, CEJ works to extend legal protection to all human and non-human members of the Earth community, including the rights of future generations.
Center for Ethical Leadershipwww.ethicalleadership.org
The Center for Ethical Leadership (CEL) is dedicated to cultivating leadership and capacity for change in individuals, institutions, and communities. CEL teaches and hosts group processes that tap collective wisdom in service of the common good—practices like restorative justice, gracious space, and convenings of people from diverse backgrounds for authentic conversation. Through this teaching and engagement work in communities, CEL's programs help people build understanding, trust, relationships, and cultural fluency—increasing their capacity to collaborate and create change.
Center for Partnership Studieswww.partnershipway.org/get-connected
Kalliopeia provides project support for the Alliance for a Caring Economy (ACE) Campaign, which works for a more just and prosperous world by redefining economic "productivity" to include the crucial work of caring and caregiving. Working with representatives from government, business, academia, and civil society, ACE innovates economic rules, measures, and policies that recognize the real value of caring – whether in market or nonmarket sectors, whether performed by women or men – to develop more caring policies and practices for our schools, workplaces, families, and environment.
Watch a Global Oneness Project interview with Riane Eisler, founder of the Center for Partnership Studies.
Read the article, "Building Cultures of Peace," by Riane Eisler in Yes! Magazine.
Center for Whole Communitieswww.wholecommunities.org
Center for Whole Communities (CWC) seeks to create a more just, balanced, and healthy world by deepening the connections between land, people, and community. Understanding that fragmentation between social justice and environmental conservation movements limit the success of both, CWC works toward a new land movement that integrates conservation, health, justice, spirit, and relationship. Kalliopeia provides project support for the Whole Thinking Program, which convenes nonprofit leaders from a wide variety of social, climate, land, and water issues for intensive week-long retreats designed to build a more connected, effective, and resilient network of leaders in the movements for social and environmental change.
Link to the site Whole Measures.
Download a pdf of "What is a Whole Community," by Peter Forbes.
Council for a Parliament of the World's Religionswww.parliamentofreligions.org
The Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions was created to cultivate harmony among the world's religious and spiritual communities and foster their engagement with the world in order to achieve a just, peaceful, and sustainable world. Acknowledging that religion is all too often misused as an instrument of division and injustice, the Council seeks to mobilize the treasury of wisdom and compassion within religious communities toward care of neighbors, protection and restoration of all life, and cooperative relationship that replaces fear and hatred with understanding and respect. Kalliopeia contributed to scholarships for underrepresented women leaders to attend the 2015 Parliament.
Cultural and Educational Media Productionswww.cemproductions.org/globalspirit
Cultural and Educational Media Productions is a nonprofit film and video production and consultation group that uses film, video, and television technologies to promote new understanding, awareness, and tolerance between peoples, cultures, nations, and faiths. Kalliopeia provides support for the Global Spirit "internal travel" series, which investigates the most urgent existential, philosophical, and spiritual issues of the 21st century. Each Global Spirit program highlights the transcultural, transcendent dimensions of human inquiry, from the ancient or indigenous wisdom traditions to the latest advances in scientific knowledge.
Daily Actswww.dailyacts.org
Daily Acts is a community-based sustainability education network grounded in the principle that simple, mindful choices enrich our lives and world. Guided by a vision of a healthy, just, and reverent culture, Daily Acts creates media, initiates and implements models of regenerative design in local communities, builds networks, and provides hands-on education. By sharing the powerful relationships, skills, and tools needed to create healthy lives and resilient communities, Daily Acts empowers citizens, strengthens leaders, and cultivates local self-reliance – all with a focus on the power of gratitude and mindful choice.
DreamWeather Foundationwww.dreamweather.org
DreamWeather Foundation is dedicated to exploring and celebrating the unique strengths of feminine spirituality. DreamWeather believes that women's unique spiritual capacities contain the wisdom of healing, interconnectedness, and transformation so profoundly needed by the world. Through workshops, retreats, and conferences around the country that provide time for women to gather, share dreams, meditate, and listen to the guidance of the heart, DreamWeather seeks to nourish feminine spiritual capacities for the good of the whole.
Earth Charter Fund, for Earth Charter Internationalwww.earthcharterinaction.org
(Grant to Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors' "Earth Charter Fund")
Earth Charter International (ECI) is dedicated to promoting the Earth Charter, a declaration of global interdependence and shared responsibility for the human family. Developed through a unique decade-long, cross-cultural, participatory drafting process, the Earth Charter articulates fundamental ethical principles for building a just global society. ECI stimulates and coordinates international grassroots activity around the charter, generates commentary and advocacy from global thought leaders, and works toward the charter's adoption as a UN declaration.
East Bay Meditation Centerwww.eastbaymeditation.org
Founded in a celebration of diversity, the East Bay Meditation Center's mission is to foster liberation, personal and interpersonal healing, social action, and inclusive community building. EBMC offers mindfulness practices and teachings on wisdom and compassion from Buddhist and other spiritual traditions, with a profound commitment to diversity and welcoming all who seek to cultivate equanimity and happiness.
Genesis Farmwww.genesisfarm.org
Genesis Farm is a learning center for Earth studies, focusing on the interrelationships between the health of our global commons – air, water, land, and nature – and the health of our local communities and bioregions. Rooted in Thomas Berry's cosmology, which reverences Earth as a primary revelation of the divine, Genesis Farm offers a variety of programs and academic credit for graduate courses in "Earth Literacy" – an exploration of the mysterious unity and relationships binding Earth and all of life together within the unfolding of a single, living Universe. Kalliopeia provides general support and project support for Genesis Farms' Transition Towns Initiative.
Sister Miriam MacGillis Introduces Cosmology at Seven Pillars' Inauguration (video).
Global Peace Initiative of Womenwww.gpiw.org
Global Peace Initiative of Women (GPIW) was founded to help awaken and mobilize spiritual energies in places of great need with the goal of aiding in healing and unifying the world community. Under the stewardship of a group of women spiritual leaders and practitioners, GPIW gathers women and men of great insight, compassion, and dedication, many of whom are working quietly for the upliftment of the world. A major focus of GPIW's work is to aid in building a global network of contemplative leaders who through their inner work can help transform the causes and conditions that lead to suffering at both the individual and collective level. Kalliopeia recently provided project support for A Spiritual Narrative for the 21st Century: Becoming a Sacred Earth Community, held in New York City, and for Balancing Material and Spiritual Development, a conference held in Bhutan.
Read the article, "Report on the Sufi-Yogi Dialogue," by Dena Merriam.
Watch the video, Interview with Dena Merriam.
Global Systems Initiativeswww.globalsystemsinitiatives.net
(Fiscal Sponsor: Institute for Multitrack Diplomacy)
Global Systems Initiatives brings the principles and perspective of systems thinking — i.e., the observation and understanding of a whole system and its complex dynamics as opposed to its individual parts — to policy-making, international conflict resolution, and climate change challenges. Systems thinking acknowledges that we live in an age of dynamic interdependence, and recognizes that solutions to "intractable" global problems can be found by understanding how systems function in nature. Kalliopeia provided project support for Simple Rules of Systems Thinking for Complex Global Issues as well as the Breakthrough Initiative, which tests the hypothesis that when whole systems are in distress, the application of whole systems thinking can generate breakthrough results.
Download a pdf of "A Systems Approach to Peacebuilding," an article by Louise Diamond.
Read The Global Systems Review, a periodic e-newsletter that explores critical world issues through the lens of whole systems thinking.
Green Mountain Monasterywww.greenmountainmonastery.org
Green Mountain Monastery is home to a community of Benedictine sisters dedicated to celebrating Earth as a sacred community. Inspired by mentor and co-founder Thomas Berry, the sisters engage their ancient monastic lineage with the emerging "planetary phase" of religion that understands the Earth as the immediate place in which the Divine is revealed. Kalliopeia provides project support for Monastic Wisdom: Sharing the Gift, which invites diverse groups of lay women to participate in the monastic wisdom of prayer, silence, simplicity, labor, farming, and arts within this expanded sense of the sacred.
Read "Discovering the Divine Within the Universe," an article by Gail Worcelo, CP, in EarthLight: The Magazine of Spiritual Ecology.
Watch a video about the Green Mountain Monastery: The Evolving Nuns.
Hawthorne Valley Associationwww.farmscapeecology.org
Hawthorne Valley Association is a unique fusion of agriculture, education, economic and ecological research, and artistic endeavors, all of which are anchored by an extraordinary Biodynamic farm and community. Kalliopeia provides support for the Farmscape Ecology Program, which is dedicated to increasing love and knowledge of place by telling the stories of human activity on the local landscape, and understanding the effects humans and land have on one another. Kalliopeia also provides support for the Farm Learning Center, which is dedicated to bringing about a new paradigm for sustainable agriculture. The Center teaches sustainable farming, offers apprenticeships, conducts research, networks with sustainable farmers, and is developing a pilot project called The Institute for Contemplative Agriculture. The Institute will offer training in practical as well as inner skills of farming, and seeks to bring forward the dimensions of deep ecology, cosmology, and contemplative practice in the emerging narrative around the future of farming.
Institute for Jewish Spiritualitywww.ijs-online.org
Through retreat-based leadership programs, the Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS) works with rabbis, cantors, educators, and lay leaders to nurture and disseminate through mainstream Jewish institutions the stream of contemplative Judaism. The IJS uses a participatory model to teach Torah study, prayer, yoga, meditation, spiritual direction, and retreat, with the goal of enriching the inner lives of Jewish leaders, revitalizing the Jewish wisdom tradition, and connecting the search for inner wholeness with social and environmental activism.
Listen to "Spirituality in Daily Life," a series of IJS podcasts.
Joanna Macy Intensives: The Work That Reconnectswww.workthatreconnects.org
(Fiscal sponsor: Canticle Farm)
The Work That Reconnects (WTR) is a powerful set of community practices developed by eco-philosopher Joanna Macy. WTR provides a structure and skillful process for groups to engage with the emotions of grief, despair, and anger that accompany these difficult times, even as it awakens and enlivens our innate connections with one another and with the self-healing powers in the web of life. WTR experiential trainings teach a series of contemplative exercises and rituals that stir gratitude for life, honor felt pain for the present state of the world, and reconnect hearts to the Earth community with a deeper and impassioned commitment to healing. Kalliopeia provides scholarship support for young leaders of diverse backgrounds to attend WTR trainings.
Watch the Bioneers talk by Joanna Macy on the gifts of uncertainty.
Watch the Global Oneness Project interview with Joanna Macy.
Journey of the Universe Projectwww.journeyoftheuniverse.org
(Fiscal sponsor: Thomas Berry Foundation)
Kalliopeia provides support for the Journey of the Universe educational project which tells the 14-billion-year story of cosmic, planetary, biological, and cultural emergence. By integrating humanity's best scientific understanding of the universe's birth with narrative form, Journey of the Universe contextualizes life on earth in an awe-inspiring cosmic process — bridging the divide between sacred and secular and providing an inspiring, scientific, and humanistic context to respond to the current environmental crisis.
Read "Singing to the Dawn: Thomas Berry on our Broken Connection to the Natural World," an article by Derrick Jensen in The Sun, Issue 317.
Karina Filmswww.karinafilms.us
(Fiscal Sponsor: Center for Independent Documentary)
Kalliopeia provided support for the feature film Finding the Gold Within, which follows six young African-American men who are alumni of Alchemy, Inc., a mythologically-based mentoring program in Akron, OH. Through the profoundly intimate portraits of the young men, Finding the Gold Within shows the creativity, resiliency, and deep wisdom that has been cultivated through a 10-year process of mentorship. The film highlights how myth, mentorship, and culturally-specific rites of passage can strengthen underserved youth to face the myriad challenges, inequities, and injustices of our world with self-knowledge, rootedness in spirit, and soulful creativity.
Watch the trailer for Finding the Gold Within.
Kosmos Journalwww.kosmosjournal.org
Kosmos is an international journal and forum committed to tracking the birth of a "new planetary culture" that is aware of our intrinsic interdependence. Featuring dynamic new leaders who embrace a comprehensive approach to change, the bi-annual journal addresses multiple facets of individual, cultural, and global transformation, including diversity of cultural values, new spirituality, and global activism. In design and content, Kosmos is a true celebration of beauty.
Read "Emergence: Kalliopeia Gathering," by Steve Nation, in Kosmos Journal, Spring/Summer 2010 (pdf).
Krista Tippett Public Productionswww.onbeing.org
(Fiscal sponsor: The Minneapolis Foundation)
KTPP produces the public radio show On Being, a series of soulful conversations dedicated to the ancient, animating questions of human experience: What does it mean to be human? What matters in a life? What matters in a death? How to love? How to be of service to each other and to the world? Through interviews with sages in a wide range of fields, from the newest scientific frontiers to the most ancient traditions of the human spirit, On Being explores the big questions of life as they manifest in the ecological, political, cultural, technological, and economic dynamics of the 21st century. Conversations that draw forth meaning, moral imagination, and problem-solving across the spectrum of human inquiry make On Being an illuminating exploration of the spiritual and intellectual wisdom that can nourish our common life.
Visit the On Being Blog.
La Plazita Institutewww.laplazitainstitute.org
La Cultura Cura (Culture Heals) is the core principle underlying La Plazita's holistic and diverse programming. La Plazita engages New Mexico's Indigenous, Chicano, and other hybrid communities to draw from their ancestral roots and unique histories and express traditional values of respect, honor, love, and family. Programs range from spiritual care for incarcerated Native Americans, a living school of traditional Mexican curanderismo healing, pro bono social and legal services, job training, rites of passage and mentorship for youth at risk, and an organic farm and CSA enterprise. A combination of spiritual rootedness, commitment to service, and BTDT ("been there done that") leadership makes La Plazita an extraordinary example of how struggling communities can mobilize deep cultural forces to re-weave the social fabric.
Watch a video of ED Albino Garcia facilitating a T-MAC (Thugs Making a Change) meeting.
Metta Center for Nonviolencewww.mettacenter.org
The Metta Center for Nonviolence (MCN) is dedicated to inspiring, educating, and supporting the practice of nonviolence. By offering resources, research fellowships, internships, and mentorship programs for young people, MCN aims to support those who have opportunities to model nonviolence but are not yet comfortable using it safely and effectively in their situation. With a core commitment to the principles of service, compassion, and wisdom, MCN works with educators, activists, media agents, and others to shift the prevailing cultural paradigm to one of nonviolence.
Nature Institutewww.natureinstitute.org
The Nature Institute serves as a local, national, and international forum for research, education, and the exchange of ideas about the re-visioning of science and technology in an effort to realign humanity with nature. Inspired by integrative scientists such as Johann Goethe and Rudolf Steiner, The Nature Institute is dedicated to developing qualitative and holistic approaches to understanding nature and technology. Through research, publications, and educational programs, The Nature Institute works to create a new paradigm that embraces nature's wisdom in shaping a sustainable and healthy future.
Read "Learning to See Life," and "Seeing Nature Whole – A Goethean Approach" by Craig Holdrege.
Nehirim (Hebrew for "lights") is the leading national provider of community programming for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Jews, partners, and allies. Their weekend spiritual retreats and multi-faith advocacy efforts regarding LGBT inclusion transform lives and engage participants to be agents for change in their home communities. "Our activism is spiritual – we do not focus on policies and procedures, but on opening hearts." In both their immediate communities and in their national advocacy work, Nehirim is helping heal the powerful splits in Western culture between body and spirit, sexuality and spirituality.
New School at Commonwealwww.commonweal.org/new-school/index.html
The New School (TNS) is a growing community dedicated to dialogue on a range of issues "for people committed to lives of service." A part of Commonweal — a health, environmental, and educational center in Bolinas, California — TNS focuses on emergent values, ideas, and movements across a range of fields. Through an eclectic and carefully-chosen variety of live conversations, art, music, and theatre, as well as audio podcasts, TNS is building a resilient community that is global in reach. TNS is dedicated to the creation and nourishment of sustainable ways of living that are grounded in deep wisdom, ethical responsibility, and a connection to the heart across cultures.
Occidental Arts and Ecology Centerwww.oaec.org
For over 35 years, the bio-intensive organic gardens and orchards of Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC) have been a source of inspiration and training for thousands of gardeners, farmers, and landscapers, many of whom have themselves gone on to train dozens of others. In keeping with their holistic values, OAEC provides thriving programs in biodiversity, arts, and intentional community, as well as community-centered programs around ecological agriculture and food systems, watersheds, and school gardens. Kalliopeia appreciates OAEC's deeply-rooted understanding of the interdependence and interconnectedness of these many living systems and their role in contributing to the education of our local bioregion.
Watch the short video An Introduction to OAEC.
Open Democracy USA Inc.www.opendemocracy.net/transformation
Kalliopeia provided support for the Transformations section of Open Democracy, an online forum dedicated to the emergence of boundary-breaking solutions in politics, economics and social activism that bring personal and social change together into one, integrated process. Identifying the absence of the qualities of love and compassion from the public sphere as a destructive, defining characteristic of contemporary society, Transformations' core conviction is that love, equality, and social justice are the necessary foundations for new forms of politics, economics, and social activism. The site tells the stories of people who are combining personal and social change in order to re-imagine their societies, explores the interdependence of inner and outer transformation, and provides a forum to explore how to put these principles into practice.
Pachamama Alliancewww.pachamama.org
The Pachamama Alliance's twofold mission is to preserve the earth's tropical rainforests by empowering the Indigenous Peoples who are its natural custodians, and to contribute to a new global vision of equality and sustainability for all. The Pachamama Alliance believes that our ability to meet the challenges of the new millennium depends on our ability to successfully combine the best elements of modern and Indigenous worldviews into a single global vision, an alloy that blends the intellectual and scientific prowess of the modern world with the deep and ancient wisdom of traditional cultures. Initiated at the request of the Achuar people of Ecuador, the Alliance works in the Amazon to support tribal leaders in strengthening their culture and empowering their ability to stand for and represent their own interests, and in the North to change the collective "dream" from one of exploitation and separation to one of respect and interconnection.
Watch the short video Awakening the Dreamer.
People's Grocerywww.peoplesgrocery.org
People's Grocery works in the underserved neighborhood of West Oakland, CA, to build a local food system that improves health, provides opportunity, and supports community. Through urban gardens, local farms, low-cost food distribution, educational outreach, youth programs, cooking classes, and a variety of community-building activities, People's Grocery supports a regenerative culture based on connection to the land and sustainable agricultural practices. Whether through ancestral trauma of being forced to work on land or simple lack of opportunity to leave the neighborhood, many marginalized urban residents have a diminished connection to nature, made worse by an unjust food system that does not provide fresh, healthy foods to poorer communities. People's Grocery uses food and community to redress these basic human needs and reconnect people to the ecological cycles that sustain us all.
Pickards Mountain Eco-Institutewww.pickardsmountain.org
(Fiscal sponsor: Abundance Foundation)
Pickards Mountain Eco-Institute (PMEI) is an educational farm and sustainability learning center dedicated to healing the human-Earth relationship through Earth literacy and local economy based on the teachings of Thomas Berry, E.F. Schumacher, Richard Louv, and Joanna Macy. Rooted in the belief that the fate of future generations will depend on their connections with the land, the Institute offers educational programs for children, teachers, interns, policymakers, and clergy that focus on economic, social, and agricultural innovations. Kalliopeia provides project support for the Odyssey Internship Program, an intensive immersion in organic farming and leadership skills based on mutually enhancing relationships between humans and the Earth.
Watch Introduction to PMEI (video) and Summer 2013 (video).
Read the article "PMEI: A Learning Model for Green Living."
Planting Justicewww.plantingjustice.org
Planting Justice (PJ) is a community-based permaculture organization innovating a vibrant and regenerative model of social change in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. PJ creates green jobs operating a self-sustaining edible landscaping business and uses the profits from these full-paying projects to transform private lawns and public spaces at low or no cost. The transformed garden spaces provide a focal point for community gatherings, access to healthy food, and environmental education. PJ's style of holistic community building through transformation of space, creating economic opportunity, and empowering neighborhoods to grow healthy food—all in the spirit of service—make it a uniquely effective and inspiring organization.
Presencing Institutewww.presencing.com
The Presencing Institute's work emerged from interdisciplinary research demonstrating that the structure of awareness determines the quality and the outcome of a change process in individuals, organizations, and societies. With this core insight, the Presencing Institute was founded to co-create awareness-based social technologies that create deep innovation and profound change across cultures. The Presencing Institute offers resources, education, an international network of changemakers in government, business and civil society, as well as a variety of working groups engaged in applying deeper structures of awareness to critical social and environmental issues.
Red Shoeswww.theredshoes.org
The Red Shoes is a women's center that seeks to promote "the recognition of the sacred unity of life" by celebrating and nurturing the inner lives of women. Created as a space for women to gather to share their hopes, spiritual journeys, and personal challenges, the center offers opportunities for spiritual enrichment and personal growth through classes, weekend retreats, and workshops ranging from art to yoga to business management. Programs are designed to connect women's creativity, spirituality, and authenticity in an atmosphere of empowerment and healing.
Regenerative Design Institutewww.regenerativedesign.org
The Regenerative Design Institute (RDI) holds a vision of a world in which people, inspired by nature, enhance fertility and biodiversity on the planet. Rooted in permaculture and wilderness awareness, RDI offers a variety of courses and programs with the conviction that humans can be a positive, healing presence on Earth, and serves as an inspiration of possibility for how people can live in a mutually enhancing relationship with our diverse bioregions.
Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the Southwww.rcwms.org
Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South offers a wide variety of programs that approach creativity, spirituality, and social justice with a skillful and feminine approach. Kalliopeia provides general support and has also supported the Elder Women's Spirituality Project and the documentary film Meinrad Craighead: Praying with Images. This film offers an introduction to the lifelong pilgrimage of visionary artist Meinrad Craighead and her mystical encounters with the Divine Feminine. Inspired by her own dreams and inner journeys, Craighead's work is characterized by unusual depth, mystery, and beauty, with a focus on images of the Divine Mother and animals as emissaries of the divine.
Restorative Justice on the Risewww.restorativejusticeontherise.org
(Fiscal Sponsor: Peace Alliance Educational Institute)
Restorative Justice on the Rise (RJR) is a weekly radio show and media platform dedicated to highlighting the most successful examples of restorative justice in the United States. RJR's podcast archive is a treasure trove of the wisest and most experienced innovators of restorative justice in every field from education to criminal justice to prison rehabilitation, and the website includes a variety of resources and a state-by-state directory of restorative justice projects.
RSF Social Financewww.peterkingsley.org
Kalliopeia's grant to RSF Social Finance is used to support The Primordial Foundations's "Primordial Wisdom Project." Through lectures, publications, and experiential workshops, the work of The Primordial Foundation is "to bring back to life, and make accessible again, the extraordinary mystical tradition that lies forgotten right at the roots of the western world." Using the groundbreaking research of scholar Peter Kingsley, the Primordial Wisdom Project works with the forgotten but immensely powerful tradition that underlies western civilization and has the power to bring the human being to a direct and immediate experience of life in its depths.
Watch a Global Oneness Project interview with Peter Kingsley.
View the trailer for the film "Finding Our Ancient Wisdom."
Satyana Institutewww.satyana.org
Kalliopeia provides project support for Satyana Institute's Gender Reconciliation program, which fosters transformational healing and reconciliation between women and men based on the premise that both are afflicted by gender injustice, and each needs the other for a true and complete healing. Satyana Institute's core conviction is that the gender crisis is a collective spiritual crisis, and that transforming relations between feminine and masculine dimensions of human society is fundamental to creating lasting, positive social change. Through workshops, retreats, and publications, Satyana has developed skillful and transformative ways for women and men to work together to confront gender injustice and foster deep healing.
Read Kosmos Journal's article on Satyana Institute's gender reconciliation work, "Divine Duality: Reconciliation between Women and Men."
ServiceSpace (formerly CharityFocus)www.servicespace.org
(Grant to RSF Social Finance's "Gift Economy Fund")
Kalliopeia provides funds in support of the Trust-Driven Philanthropy Project, an experimental pay-it-forward model of micro-grantmaking based on trust and the "viral power of the small." The project aims to help catalyze a new kind of philanthropy in which donors and recipients co-create the change they wish to see in the world. By participating equally in the transformative joy of giving, this model breaks down the barriers of grantor and grantee, facilitating a new model of giving based on oneness and trust.
Watch a Global Oneness Project interview with Nipun Mehta, cofounder of CharityFocus and co-creator of the Trust-Driven Philanthropy Project.
Seven Pillars House of Wisdomwww.sevenpillarshouse.org
Kalliopeia provides support for Seven Pillars House of Wisdom, a forum inspired by the tradition of ancient wisdom schools to support the advancement of wisdom in global culture. Through dialogues, seminars, courses of study, and special projects, Seven Pillars aims to galvanize momentum for the emergence of wisdom in such forms as interfaith solidarity, spiritual growth, ecological awareness, and moral culture.
Shalem Center: Abwoon Resource Centerwww.abwoon.com
Inspired by native Middle Eastern wisdom traditions, Shalem Center is dedicated to religious understanding and peace. The center publishes and distributes the work of Dr. Neil Douglas-Klotz, whose acclaimed translations of the Lord's Prayer and Beatitudes from the original Aramaic language highlight the message of universality, interdependence, and care for the cosmos at the heart of Christian and other native Middle Eastern spiritualities. The center organizes outreach and study in the Aramaic prayers, native Middle Eastern spirituality, and interspiritual leadership through retreats, workshops, and seminars.
Dr. Neil Douglas-Klotz reciting The Lord's Prayer in Aramaic (video)
Sojourners is a magazine, forum, and community working toward social, cultural, and spiritual transformation deeply rooted in Christian values of love and justice. Kalliopeia supports Sojourners' Women and Girls Leading on Faith and Justice Initiative, which seeks to redress theology and church practices that are harmful to women — including distorted theological aspersions — by developing resources for preaching, teaching, and training. The initiative also aims to address root social, cultural, and economic inequalities that make girls and women vulnerable to sexual exploitation and violence, and engage a faith-based response rooted in the understanding of girls and women as imago dei — made in the image of God.
Sophia Institutewww.thesophiainstitute.org
The Sophia Institute provides a wide range of programs, retreats, and conferences addressing the needs of people engaged in personal and interpersonal transformation. A forum for leading-edge thinkers and teachers in wisdom and spiritual growth, the Sophia Institute is distinguished by its model of spiritual partnership and integration between feminine and masculine values, and its devotion to the "radical wisdom of the heart" that arises from such integration. Kalliopeia provides support for programming and scholarships.
Spirituality & Practicewww.spiritualityandpractice.com
Spirituality & Practice is an interspiritual website devoted to collecting and creating quality online resources for sincere spiritual exploration. The site's name reflects a basic understanding: spirituality and practice are the two places where all the world's religions and spiritual paths come together. While respecting the differences among traditions, S&P celebrates what they share in common and curates some of the finest readings, media, and commentary in a diverse, reliable virtual library. S&P also offers online educational platforms for leading teachers of spirituality to create courses and reach wider circles.
Sustainability Leaders Networkwww.sustainabilityleadersnetwork.org
(Fiscal Sponsor: Buckminster Fuller Institute)
Sustainability Leaders Network (SLN) works to develop leadership across business, nonprofit, and government sectors that recognizes and engages with the mutual interdependence of all beings, elements, and actions. Drawing from the principles of systems thinking that align personal and professional roles of leaders, deepen relationships across sectors, countries, and networks, and provide a foundation for meaningful action, SLN cultivates a close-knit network of fellows leading from a consciousness of the sacred interconnectedness of life. SLN builds leadership capacity through a fellowship program, public workshops and trainings, and mentoring to talented young leaders.
Transition USwww.transitionus.org
Transition US is a resource and catalyst for building resilient communities across the United States that are able to withstand severe energy, climate, or economic shocks while creating a better quality of life in the process. Transition US aims to: raise awareness of the need to work together to build resilience in the face of fossil fuel depletion, climate change, and economic crises; support the emergence and growth of Transition Initiatives and leaders across the US; support Transition Initiatives in mirroring the cultural and demographic diversity of their communities; and continue developing and delivering high quality education, training, and consulting to advance the Transition Movement in the United States.
Urban Adamahwww.urbanadamah.org
Urban Adamah (Adamah means "Earth" in Hebrew) is a community organic farm and Jewish environmental education center. Each spring, summer, and fall, the organization selects twelve Urban Adamah Fellows to operate the farm and participate in a three-month residential leadership program. The fellowship integrates organic farming, direct social justice work, and a deep immersion in Jewish spirituality that revitalizes ancient agrarian teachings in a modern context of progressive Jewish learning. As an alternative rite of passage for young Jews, fellows live together, work in internships with local anti-poverty and food security organizations, and teach visitors to the farm about sustainable agriculture. All produce grown on the farm is distributed to communities in need, primarily through local food banks and Urban Adamah's own Free Food Farm Stand.
Wake Forest Divinity Schoolwww.divinity.wfu.edu/food-and-faith
Kalliopeia provided project support for the Food, Faith, and Religious Leadership Initiative, which supports faith leaders in developing a unifying vision of how their communities can engage with the spiritual, social, and ecological crises of our broken food system. Rooted in the understanding of soil as a physical manifestation of Divine grace, with food being intimately connected to spiritual well-being, the initiative supports the deep desire among people of faith to reconnect with the sources of their daily bread, and experience the biblical state of shalom, "that graced state of being that results from a right relationship between God, people, and land." The initiative works with seminarians, congregations, and faith-based nonprofits to engage hearts and hands with crucial issues of food insecurity, food deserts, and the attendant health disparities that confront North Carolina, all in answer to the spiritual call to reconcile with creation.
Read an interview with Fred Bahnson, Director of Food, Faith, and Religious Leadership Initiative.
Water Culture Institutewww.waterculture.org
The Water-Culture Institute (WCI) promotes the sustainable management of rivers, lakes, springs, and groundwater by: applying indigenous wisdom and cultural traditions that respect the rights of nature; studying ethics and value systems related to water management; and encouraging broad-based stakeholder involvement in water decisions. WCI's premise is that the sustainability of water ecosystems requires an ethic that recognizes our sacred responsibility to the Earth. WCI's work includes research, training, activism, and mediation to achieve water management practices that support the health of our planet. Kalliopeia provides support for WCI's Water Ethics Initiative, which applies a "values lens" to water issues and promotes critical dialogue about the values that are guiding behavioral practices.
Water Research Institutewww.waterresearch.org
Through research and education, the Water Research Institute (WRI) works to transform attitudes toward water and develop new criteria for the management of water quality based not on the absence of pollutants, but rather upon the positive nature of water itself. WRI's innovative research and observation of water's natural behavior and the conditions it needs to serve life goes beyond the mechanistic notion of water as an inanimate, inert, and commodifiable substance. WRI contributes to the growing awareness that by studying the intelligence within nature we can learn to evolve efficient, sustainable, and respectful systems of living that serve all of life.
Wilderness Torahwww.wildernesstorah.org
(Fiscal Sponsor: Hazon)
Wilderness Torah is devoted to awakening and celebrating the earth-based traditions of Judaism to nourish the connections between self, community, earth, and Spirit. Through nature-based children's programs, a two-year mentoring program that complements the Bar/Bat Mitzvah rite of passage, wilderness rites of passage for adults, and seasonal festivals, Wilderness Torah cultivates understanding of Judaism's earth-based roots, facilitates spiritual growth, and builds multi-generational community around the sacredness of creation.
Wildflowers Institutewww.wildflowers.org
Through a dynamic combination of cultural study, social investment, and grassroots leadership training, Wildflowers is dedicated to "unleashing the inherent power in communities." Wildflowers works with community leaders to uncover the implicit core values within a culture that lead toward greatest social health, unity, and sense of meaning; to make those principles explicit; and to help mobilize them toward effective social change.
Read "Making Visible the Invisible Power of Community," an article by Hanmin Liu and Jennifer Mei of the Wildflowers Institute.
Women's Earth Alliancewww.womensearthalliance.org
(Fiscal sponsor: Earth Island Institute)
Women's Earth Alliance (WEA) is a global organization that unites women working on the frontlines of environmental causes through the coordination of resources, training, and technology based on the premise that "when women thrive, communities thrive." WEA's method of networking women around the world at the grassroots level models oneness in action: by joining the technical, social, and spiritual resources of individual women in a dynamic collective, the Alliance empowers each member's local efforts toward sustainability with the power of the whole.
Works & Conversationswww.conversations.org
Works & Conversations (WC) is a print and online magazine with the goal of exploring artists' experiences and reflections about their own art making. Each issue is a collection of deeply thoughtful interviews with a wide range of social artists, presented in a remarkably beautiful and ad-free format. Besides creating a magazine of rare quality, WC is exceptional in its commitment to the values of the gift economy; since 2007 the magazine and archives have been offered entirely as an experiment in unconditional giving. Embodying the featured artists' passion for a world of transformative beauty, WC's pay-it-forward model is "a whisper in the ear of the collective, a whisper insisting against the odds that there's another way of encountering this world and each other: generosity."
Indigenous Cultures
Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survivalwww.aicls.org
The Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival is an organization devoted to implementing and supporting the revitalization of Indigenous Californian languages. Its mission is to assist Native Californians in Indigenous language restoration, renewal, and maintenance in order to secure these languages as a permanent part of the living cultures of Native California. Kalliopeia provides general support and support for the Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program, an innovative model that pairs a fluent Elder with a younger tribal member committed to learning the language, and which trains the pair in intensive immersion techniques.
Alaska Conservation Foundationwww.alaskaconservation.org
Founded in 1980, Alaska Conservation Foundation (ACF) acts as a funder, fiscal sponsor, and supportive community resource to take care of wild lands, waters, and wildlife, which sustain diverse cultures, healthy communities, and prosperous economies. ACF and an Alaska Native Steering Committee recently launched the Alaska Native Fund, whose goals include supporting Alaska Native self-determination in environmental issues, strategies, and solutions. Through its support of high quality Indigenous re-grants programs such as the Alaska Native Fund, Kalliopeia affirms its belief in the capacity for Native peoples to heal their communities and culture on their own terms and draw upon their ancient wisdom and resources to protect and revitalize their culture and worldview.
American Indian College Fundwww.collegefund.org
The American Indian College Fund supports Indian higher education by funding and raising awareness about Tribal Colleges and Universities, which offer students access to knowledge, skills, and cultural values that enhance their communities and the country as a whole. Kalliopeia supported scholarship funds for Native-language teacher training programs, including the Ojibwe-based Gekinoo'imaagejig ("the ones who teach") at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, a culturally-based teacher education curriculum.
American Indian Institutewww.twocircles.org
Kalliopeia provided support for the 2007, 2008, and 2009 Ancient Voices Cross-Cultural Forum, created in response to the desire of Indigenous Elders to "get the Elder voice out." This forum gathers Native spiritual leaders to share cultural and spiritual wisdom to address contemporary social and environmental problems with both Native and non-Native people. The Elders' message offers new ground from which to address these issues, revealing that "the current environmental crisis is, in fact, a spiritual crisis, stemming from our forgetfulness of who we are, and from our disconnection from the sacred quality of the earth," and that "the uncertainties brought by global climate change reinforce the reality that a spiritual connection is the path to survival of humankind."
View a video clip of: Pauline Whitesinger's keynote to the Flathead Ancient Voices Forum.
Cante Sica Foundationwww.facebook.com/TheCanteSicaFoundation
The Cante Sica Foundation emerged from a 2012 PBS documentary, The Thick Dark Fog, which tells the story of Walter Littlemoon's journey of healing from his childhood boarding school experiences on a Lakota reservation. After screenings in several Native communities, elders who have never told their stories began to open up about their own boarding school experiences, and younger Native Americans gained a better understanding of what their parents and grandparents went through. Kalliopeia supports the follow-up Boarding School Stories project, which films the oral histories of boarding school alumni, shares the stories through a forthcoming website and archive, and provides education and opportunities for healing.
Watch the video series Cante Sica Boarding School Stories.
Read an article from the Autry Institute about Boarding School Stories.
Watch the trailer for The Thick Dark Fog.
Cultural Conservancywww.nativeland.org
The Cultural Conservancy's mission is to protect and restore Indigenous cultures, empowering them in the direct application of their traditional knowledge and practices on their ancestral lands. Through research, education, media, and advocacy The Cultural Conservancy offers a variety of projects and programs to support Indigenous communities in the protection and revitalization of Native lands and cultures. A Native-led organization, The Cultural Conservancy has a special focus on protecting and restoring Native earth-based cultural traditions and ways of knowing – especially songs, stories, and languages related to ancestral land. The Cultural Conservancy's core values include:
- Respect for all life, indigenous rights, and environmental and social justice
- Remembering the ancestors by honoring oral traditions and life affirming practices
- Health and Healing from historical trauma and oppression
- Reciprocity with each other and native lands and waters
- Intercultural dialogue and cultural respect
- Ecoliteracy and nurturing ecological awareness
- Imagination and creativity for health, renewal, and community transformation
Eyak Preservation Councilwww.redzone.org
Eyak Preservation Council is recognized as a leading Native-founded and -led conservation organization, working to foster truly sustainable communities in which culture, economics, and education all reinforce preservation of the environment. Located in Cordova, Alaska, the Eyak Preservation Council (EPC) was founded following the Exxon Valdez oil spill "to preserve, restore, and celebrate wild salmon culture and habitat through awareness, education, and promotion of sustainable livelihoods within the communities of the Copper River and Prince William Sound Watersheds." Emphasizing the connection between people and preservation, EPC is a unique collaboration of First Nations with non-native fishermen and environmentalists dedicated to the permanent protection of wild salmon, and therefore the Eyak culture and "salmon way of life."
Watch founder Dune Lankard at the 2008 Bioneers Conference.
First Nations Development Institutewww.firstnations.org
The First Nations Development Institute works to support Native Peoples in claiming ownership and developing culturally compatible management of Native resources – be they land, human potential, cultural heritage, or natural resources – in order to ensure the sustainable economic, spiritual, and cultural well-being of their communities. Kalliopeia provides support for The Native Youth and Culture Fund, which is dedicated to projects organized by or for Native youth in order to ensure bright and capable future leaders with a sense of place and tradition in their communities.
View a short video of First Nation's president Mike Roberts describing their work.
Four Bridges Traveling Permaculture Institutewww.4bridges.org
Four Bridges is an educational organization and demonstration farm established to address the needs of Indigenous and other communities to address poverty and lack of sustainability. Through a skillful cross-pollination of traditional Indigenous agriculture and innovative permaculture techniques, Four Bridges seeks to support the revitalization of traditional agriculture for Indigenous communities as well as generally promote an agricultural paradigm rooted in the sacredness of earth and aligned with place, cultural restoration, and healing. Kalliopeia provides general operating support as well as project support for the annual Traditional Agriculture and Sustainable Living Conference.
Friends of the Akwesasne Freedom Schoolwww.freedom-school.org
Akwesasne Freedom School is an independent elementary school run by the Mohawk Nation that operates a pre-K to 8th grade language immersion program conducted entirely in the Kanien'keha (Mohawk) language. The Akwesasne Freedom School combines solid academics with a strong foundation in Mohawk culture, rooting the curriculum in the Haudenosaunee "Thanksgiving Address," which teaches gratitude to the earth and everything on it. On this basis and the guiding principles of Peace, Power, and Good Mind, students study reading, writing, math, science, history, and the Mohawk ceremonial cycle.
Read The Iroquois Thanksgiving Address, "Ohenton Kariwahtekwen," a beautiful prayer of gratitude.
Gedakina is an innovative, multigenerational collaborative among First Nations in the New England region dedicated to conservation of Native lands and the strengthening of cultural knowledge and identity of Native youth. Gedakina seeks to reconnect Native people from across the region, from family bands to tribal nations, deconstructing lateral oppression and healing violence. Kalliopeia supports the History, Language, and Environmental Justice Initiative, which works with Native youth and elders to revitalize connections to place, language, and tradition through cultural immersion.
Honor the Earthwww.honorearth.org
(Grant to Headwaters Foundation for Justice)
Honor the Earth's mission is to create awareness and support for Indigenous environmental issues and to leverage needed financial and political resources for the survival of sustainable Native communities. By providing financial and organizational support for grassroots Native environmental groups, Honor the Earth supports Indigenous struggles to protect land, water, communities, and ways of life. Kalliopeia provides support for The Building Resilience in Indigenous Communities Program, which focuses on developing culturally-based food and energy solutions in Indigenous communities facing daunting environmental and social realities.
Hopi Foundationwww.hopifoundation.org
Kalliopeia provides general support to The Hopi Foundation, whose mission is "to help people help themselves." Established by the Hopi to promote self-sufficiency, pro-active community participation in the Hopi destiny, and local self-determination, the Hopi Foundation serves a population of 12,000 Hopi across twelve villages on the Hopi Reservation as well as other Indian tribes and Indigenous societies. The Hopi Foundation's programs mobilize local talent to provide broad-based social support for the Hopi community.
International Funders for Indigenous Peopleswww.internationalfunders.org
The mission of International Funders for Indigenous Peoples (IFIP) is to expand, enrich, and increase the effectiveness and commitment of grantmaking for international Indigenous development by improving networking opportunities, enhancing collaboration, building capacity, and promoting advancement of philanthropic leadership. IFIP and its members work to increase knowledge and understanding of the unique issues related to funding Indigenous projects, encourage innovation and increase effectiveness within the grantmaking community, foster an interdisciplinary understanding of Indigenous Peoples and the holistic contexts in which they live and work, and to mobilize and coordinate philanthropic resources for the nuanced, often-overlooked, and severe challenges faced by First Nations around the globe.
"International Funders for Indigenous Peoples celebrates 10 years of growing philanthropy"—an article in Mother Earth Journal.
"Indigenous Peoples Funding and Resource Guide," available from their site as a pdf download.
Native American Academywww.silverbuffalo.org
(Fiscal sponsor: Silver Buffalo Consulting)
The Native American Academy (NAA) was founded by a circle of Native scholars and Traditional Knowledge Holders with the goal of preserving and protecting Indigenous knowledge as well as fostering partnerships between Native and Western worldviews. NAA brings together Native and non-Native scientists, scholars, educators, and knowledge holders to explore parallels, differences, and possibilities for meaningful innovation and societal benefit. Ceremonial dialogue, traditional learning circles, and informal conversation create "ethical space" for generative change arising from people sharing their common concerns and aspirations, and finding creative potential in their differences. By making Indigenous learning processes visible in local, national, and international forums, NAA fosters trans-cultural collaboration and encourages the opening of education to include systems of knowledge that are attuned to the deep interdependence of a relational universe.
Native Arts and Cultures Foundationwww.nativeartsandcultures.org
Recognizing that flourishing Native arts and cultures are essential to the integrity of the cultural landscape, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation is dedicated to the revitalization, appreciation, and perpetuation of Indigenous arts and cultures. Through grantmaking, capacity-building, convening, advocacy, and research, this Native-led foundation provides support to the field and fosters creativity amongst American Indian, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native artists and communities.
Pollen Circles, Inc.www.pollencircles.org
Pollen Circles, Inc. is a community resource in Navajo Nation that offers culturally relevant wellness activities to local schools, youth homes, adolescents under psychiatric care, elders, and other groups who lack opportunities to learn and practice traditional ways. Kalliopeia provides project support for Preserve the Tradition, a special project that exposes youth on the Navajo Nation to traditional knowledge and skills taught by local elders through workshops, presentations, and weeklong intensive Diné cultural camps.
Potlach Fundwww.potlatchfund.org
Potlatch Fund is a Native-led community foundation that provides capacity building training, leadership training and other services to Tribal leaderships, Native communities, nonprofit leaders, and Native artists throughout their service area of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. Potlatch Fund's mission is to inspire and build upon the Native tradition of sharing wealth and building community, using education, advocacy, and re-granting to help revitalize Native communities. Kalliopeia provides project support for Potlatch Fund's re-granting program.
Sacred Land Film Projectwww.sacredland.org
(Fiscal sponsor: Earth Island Institute)
The Sacred Land Film Project produces a variety of media and educational materials to rekindle reverence for land, deepen understanding of Indigenous cultures, stimulate dialogue about connections between nature and culture, and protect sacred lands and diverse spiritual practices. Kalliopeia provides project support for Standing on Sacred Ground, a film series that tells eight distinct stories from the viewpoints of diverse Indigenous communities — stories that evoke ancient and contemporary spiritual connections to earth, while exploring how the health of our global environment can be sustained through respectful understanding of the sacred lands and traditions of these native peoples.
Watch the Standing on Sacred Ground film trailer.
Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Developmentwww.7genfund.org
The Seventh Generation Fund is an Indigenous capacity-building and grantmaking organization dedicated to promoting and maintaining the culture of Native Peoples throughout the Americas. The Seventh Generation Fund lends support and extensive expertise to Indigenous grassroots communities through advocacy, small grants, training and technical assistance, media experience, and fiscal management. Kalliopeia supports grantmaking in four areas: language recovery, sacred sites protection, women's healing and leadership, and youth and culture.
Terralingua is dedicated to protecting biocultural diversity: i.e., the languages and cultural traditions around the planet that help sustain the whole web of life. Recognizing that biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity are co-evolved, interdependent, and mutually reinforcing, Terralingua documents and supports the revitalization of Indigenous oral traditions; creates maps, indicators, and toolkits to make biocultural diversity visible to policymakers; and hosts a community of practice connecting scholars and researchers across the globe. Terralingua honors the ancestral wisdom and ecological lifeways of cultures around the world as "humanity's life insurance," and strives to strengthen and support them amidst converging crises of natural and cultural extinction.
Tierra Madre Fundwww.tierramadrefund.org
Tierra Madre is an Indigenous women's fund in the Pacific Northwest dedicated to building leadership and supporting innovative projects that honor and sustain Traditional Knowledge. With the conviction that Indigenous knowledge can, should, and will play an invaluable role in the re-aligning of systems to move our societies toward sustainable ways of living with all of creation, Tierra Madre seeks to catalyze intergenerational arts and cultural projects, women's giving circles, and the reinvigoration and contemporary applications of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). "By honoring Indigenous women's brilliance and bridging TEK developed over thousands of years with innovative technologies, we can chart a path towards intergenerational unity that honors our interdependence and engages the talents of our exciting, diverse, and collective energies today and for the future."
Yubulyawan Dreaming Projectwww.wardamandreamingproject.com
(Fiscal sponsor: Western Rock Art Research)
Kalliopeia supports the effort by the Yubulyawan clan of the Wardaman people in Northern Territory of Australia to preserve the language, oral culture, and traditions associated with the sandstone rock art across Wardaman country that represents Dreamtime Stories. Through archives and a documentary film project, the Yubulyawan Dreaming Project documents the oral tradition associated with the rock art at a new level of depth. Struggling against the near-complete loss of native language speakers and overwhelming threats to their culture, the Yubulyawan Dreaming Project aims to assure the availability of these critical stories, traditions, and ceremonies for future generations.
Nurturing the Inner Life
Alchemy, Inc.www.alchemyinc.net
Alchemy, Inc. provides holistic leadership development for men in urban settings using mythological traditions, themes, and motifs to integrate ancient wisdom in a contemporary context. Alchemy, Inc. works with teenagers, fathers, university students, parolees, and others, blending West African and Jungian psychological methods that can connect men with "each other, society, human life across generations, and all life upon the planet."
Alchemy, Inc. wins a 2012 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award.
Read "Counselor hopes to 'extract the gold within' boys," an article in the Akron Beacon Journal about the work of Alchemy, Inc.
ArtSpring's mission is to support self-growth and effective life skills through artmaking for institutionalized women and girls. Through interdisciplinary programs that incorporate movement, theater, writing, drawing, music, storytelling, music, meditation, guided imagery, and performance, ArtSpring teaches tools of personal transformation to women in juvenile and adult correctional institutions as well as other underserved social programs. ArtSpring is widely acclaimed for the successful outcomes of its programs, and for its positive influence on the corrections system in the state of Florida.
At the Crossroadswww.atthecrossroads.org
At the Crossroads (ATC) meets homeless youth and young adults—no matter how troubled—with deep conviction in their dignity, humanity, and ability to create healthy and fulfilling lives. ATC is particularly dedicated to offering unconditional supportive relationship to young people who have fallen through systemic cracks. In offering consistent and unconditional relationship with no time limit, ATC counselors gradually rebuild the often-broken capacity to form healthy relationships in homeless youth, building their capacity to hold onto housing, employment, and other basics, as well as restoring their foundation for authentic well-being.
Buddhist Pathways Prison Projectwww.buddhistpathways.org
The mission of Buddhist Pathways Prison Project (BPPP) is to bring the core Buddhist teachings of non-violence, meditation, and wisdom into Northern California prisons, organizing dedicated volunteers to offer Buddhist philosophy, religious services, mindful movement, and meditation instruction. As a community-based response to the current crisis of corrections, BPPP is a model of how committed practitioners on the outside can offer the incarcerated tools and resources to cultivate durable self-transformation, insight into the inner conditions that led to incarceration, and reduced recidivism.
Center for Contemplative Mind in Societywww.contemplativemind.org
The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society works to integrate contemplative awareness into modern life in order to help create a more just, compassionate, and reflective society. Focusing in program areas like business, law, academia, and social justice, the center uses retreats, workshops, publications, and networking to promote a stronger web of people working to bring contemplative practice into their lives and professional cultures.
Center for Councilwww.centerforcouncilpractice.org
(Fiscal sponsor: Community Partners)
Center for Council Practice (CCP) is dedicated to the timeless yet simple practice of council, a technique of deep listening and speaking from the heart in groups that promotes empathy, creates space for authentic healing, and dissolves barriers to understanding and community. CCP offers training, coaching, and support to individuals and organizations using council practice in a variety of different fields — from health care to youth mentoring to business. Kalliopeia provides project support for CCP's development and customization of council for community and correctional settings.
Center for Courage and Renewalwww.couragerenewal.org
The Center for Courage and Renewal (CCR) is dedicated to the understanding that when we rejoin soul and role, we approach our lives and our work with renewed passion, commitment, and integrity. With this premise, CCR works to foster personal and professional renewal through retreats and programs that facilitate deep reflection on life, work, and calling. Kalliopeia supports the Courage to Lead for Young Leaders & Activists program, which helps young people in service professions "reconnect who we are with what we do."
Center for Court Innovation's Red Hook Peacemaking Programwww.courtinnovation.org/project/peacemaking-program
The Center for Court Innovation (CCI) is an incubator for creative research and program development to improve criminal justice. The Red Hook Peacemaking Program emerged out of an exchange of knowledge and best practices between Native American tribal courts and the CCI, in which tribal justice experts provided encouragement and mentorship to implement Peacemaking within the Brooklyn Court system. In contrast to conventional criminal justice that isolates and punishes, Peacemaking uses traditional Native practices to focus on connection and repair by gathering disputants along with family members, friends, and other members of the community to heal relationships and restore balance to the community. The Red Hook program has had important early success integrating Peacemaking into the court system, and has become a model for other community justice programs.
Center for Education, Imagination and the Natural Worldwww.beholdnature.org
Kalliopeia provides project support for The Inner Life of the Child in Nature: Presence and Practice, a "co-research" program among educators that focuses upon the development of inner capacities in both children and adults that "enable us to form a bond of intimacy with the natural world," (presence) and the "development of new ways of working in the world" (practice.) Rooted in the inspiration of eco-theologian Thomas Berry, the program aims to provide children the opportunity to know the natural world as a sacred reality to be venerated, and to facilitate "a shift in consciousness within the educational realm" that comes from the creation of a community of educators who support and inspire one another to "imagine a new way of being in the world on behalf of the children and the Earth."
Chicago Wisdom Projectwww.chicagowisdomproject.org
Chicago Wisdom Project (CWP) is a mentoring organization founded on the belief that wisdom is an inherent quality of every being. While young people have the particular gift of giving wisdom novel expression, elders have the particular role of guiding this process. With this understanding, CWP partners with area youth organizations to offer holistic mentoring programs that include creative expression, contemplative practice, nature immersion, and rites of passage. By matching volunteer mentors with at-risk youth, CWP empowers young people to kindle their innate creative abundance to transform themselves and their communities toward a more meaningful and compassionate world.
Comienzos is an educational and therapeutic collaborative of instructors and learners serving incarcerated men and women in New Mexico, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. As a "School of the Sacred Heart," Comienzos supports learners first in connecting to their own heart's longings, and secondly in developing the skills of listening to the hearts of others. Using tools like nonviolent communication and an atmosphere of shared learning and commitment to transformation, Comienzos skillfully works with the deep-seated issues of trauma and abuse, inviting participants to an authentic reclamation of the intrinsic human longings for respect, love, and freedom.
Watch a video featuring Comienzos' Nonviolent Communication class
Courage to Teach at Dominican University of Californiawww.dominican.edu/academics/education/department-of-education/couragetoteach
Kalliopeia provides support for the Northern California Courage to Teach program, a series of quarterly retreats for the personal and professional renewal of teachers and administrators in public schools. Courage To Teach is based upon the groundbreaking work of Parker Palmer and the unmet need to nourish the inner lives of young people and educators in our school systems. Focusing particularly on teachers, Courage To Teach retreats provide a trusting and reflective space for this devoted but underappreciated group of professionals, and are designed to rekindle the passion, commitment, and integrity that come from "reconnecting who we are with what we do."
Cranaleith Spiritual Centerwww.cranaleith.org
Kalliopeia provides project support for Coming Home, Becoming Whole program, hosted by the Sisters of Mercy at Cranaleith Spiritual Center. The program offers retreat opportunities for returning Veterans and their families, engaging the gifts of the Veteran community itself along with the contemplative expertise of the Sisters to address the spiritual dimension of healing from the trauma of war. Sourcing from the spirituality of Mercy, the program's deepest goals are to unmask the wound and contagion of violence in our society and reveal streams of transforming grace through the experience of Veterans and their community.
Dovetail Learningwww.dovetaillearning.org
Dovetail Learning's The Toolbox Project (TTP) is an innovative Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum for grades K-6 that provides children 12 practical "tools" for self-understanding and self-regulation. By managing their own resilience and fostering empathy for others, children enhance their experience of the dynamic relationship between self and other – as well as their ability to learn. Building upon the basic goodness and resilience within all children, TTP's accessible inner practices address the root causes of many of the issues facing today's youth, giving children, teachers, parents, and their communities a common language and the necessary skills to form a more cohesive, collaborative, and caring community.
Faithful Fools Street Ministrywww.faithfulfools.org
Faithful Fools is a group of volunteers and religious leaders called to "a ministry of presence that acknowledges each human's incredible worth" through the arts, education, advocacy, and accompaniment. By organizing "street retreats" in which retreatants spend a day in the streets with mindful reflection on their own judgments and attitudes, Faithful Fools helps shatter myths about those living in poverty, and allows participants to see the light, courage, intelligence, strength, and creativity of the people they meet. These unscripted experiences of our common humanity give rise to transformative encounters of celebration, community, and healing.
Watch a Global Oneness Project interview with Sister Carmen Barsody.
Honoring the Path of the Warriorwww.honoringthepath.org
(Fiscal sponsor: San Francisco Zen Center)
Born out of concern for post-9/11 Veterans, Honoring the Path of the Warrior (HPW) is a response of the San Francisco Zen Center, offering connection, community, and tools that support Veterans in finding a meaningful and healing return to civilian life. HPW is deeply committed to Thich Nhat Hanh's vision that "Veterans are the light at the tip of the candle, illuminating the way for the whole nation. If Veterans can achieve awareness, transformation, understanding, and peace, they can share with the rest of society the realities of war. And they can teach us how to make peace with ourselves and each other." Through retreats and programs that combine nature connection, engaging physical activity, sensory awareness and mindfulness meditation practices, HPW brings forward Veterans' stories of spirit, compassion, and tenacity for their own healing and our culture's transformation. Kalliopeia provides project support for HPW's work with women Veterans.
Insight Garden Programwww.insightgardenprogram.org
Insight Garden Program (IGP) is dedicated to helping transform prisoners' lives through connection to nature. IGP's unique, collaborative, and evidence-based model of "inner" and "outer" gardening integrates transformative tools such as meditation, emotional process work, and eco-therapy with vocational and social skills that allow participants to flourish as individuals and community members upon release. A pioneer in the prison garden movement, IGP is responding to national demand by expanding its partnerships with nonprofits, community based organizations, and new correctional facilities to replicate their curriculum and reach greater numbers.
Insight Prison Projectwww.insightprisonproject.org
A pioneering organization in the movement for restorative justice, the Insight Prison Project conducts a variety of in-prison rehabilitation programs that provide prisoners with the tools and life skills necessary to create enduring change. Using an intentional group process of "radical accountability," IPP provides transformational programs that aim to shift ingrained patterns of destructive behavior into conscious, life-enhancing choices. Programming includes violence prevention, substance abuse counseling, mindfulness meditation, and facilitated encounters between victims and offenders.
Watch several short ABC News videos about the work of the Insight Prison Project.
(Fiscal sponsor: Peace Development Fund)
Guided by the maxim that "hurt people hurt people, while healed people heal people," Insight Out's programs serve prisoners willing to reject violence and become emotionally intelligent, mindful leaders who give back to the communities they once took from. Insight-Out runs the Guiding Rage Into Power (GRIP) program, a year-long, transformative, peer-led program focused on taking responsibility and honoring victims, healing the pain from which prisoners lashed out, and providing the tools that enable them to "turn the stigma of being a violent offender into a badge of being a non-violent Peacekeeper."
A second program on "the outside" matches formerly incarcerated men who have been deeply transformed through the GRIP process with young people at risk, mentoring and modeling the power of healing and deep change from someone who has "been there, done that." By promoting change "from inside out" through contemplative practice, holistic education, building a community of peacemakers, and rites of passage, Insight-Out serves a broader vision of incarceration as an opportunity to create dedicated agents of healing and change.
Watch the Insight-Out introductory video
Institute for Poetic Medicinewww.poeticmedicine.com
The Institute of Poetic Medicine (IPM) is dedicated to healing body, mind, and spirit through the therapeutic process of hearing and writing poetry. Based on the belief that the creative and healing process of poetry strengthens the human capacity to reconnect to what has been severed, IPM offers collaborative workshops, retreats, and programs to a variety of populations including youth, veterans, prisoners, the terminally ill, refugees, and the professionals who serve them. IPM uses poetry to encourage us to discover how vulnerabilities and strengths can co-exist, allowing a deeper authenticity and "awakening soulfulness in the Human Voice."
Healing Words, Poetry & Medicine Filmed at a large teaching hospital in Florida, "Healing Words: Poetry & Medicine" tells the stories of patients whose lives have been dramatically changed by the incorporation of poetry into their recovery process. The film follows Dr. John Graham-Pole and poet John Fox as they enter hospital rooms and help patients write poems as part of the healing process.
Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Commonwealwww.ishiprograms.org
The Institute for the Study of Health and Illness (ISHI) provides education and support for health professionals who aspire to bring their hearts to their work and who are dedicated to practicing a medicine of service, human connection, and compassionate healing. ISHI's mission is to contribute to healing the culture of health care through innovative educational programs and the formation of communities that support health care professionals to sustain their humanity and passion for their work. Kalliopeia provides support for ISHI's Residents Program, which integrates deep reflection on the values of service, human connection, and compassionate healing for medical students during the vulnerable and stressful time of residency.
Listen to founder Dr. Rachel Remen's personal 5-minute story of striving to maintain humanity in medical residency.
Read the recent NY Times article "Medicine's Search for Meaning" by David Bornstein.
Inward Bound Mindfulness Educationwww.ibme.info
The mission of Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (IBME) is to improve the lives of teens, parents, and professionals through mindfulness retreats and outreach programs that help participants cultivate awareness and compassion for themselves, others, and the environment. They do this by combining training in mindfulness, social-emotional and ecological intelligence, transformative healing, and creative expression. By providing intensive two to five day retreats, IBME offers important opportunities for deep reflection rarely available to young people today. IBME also facilitates retreats for parents and professionals working with teens to address the particular stresses adults face in meeting the needs of youth.
Watch a video introduction about: Inward Bound Mindfulness Education.
John Main Centerwww.johnmaincenter.georgetown.edu
Dedicated to the form of silent Christian meditation developed by Benedictine monk Fr. John Main, the Center's aim is to encourage daily personal practice of meditation and offer a sacred space for contemplative community and inter-religious dialogue in the heart of Georgetown University's campus. The center also supports practitioners in integrating meditation with other aspects of academic and scholarly life, and works with other universities to help develop meditation practice within their student bodies and faculties.
Mind and Life Institutewww.mindandlife.org
Mind and Life Institute's (MLI) mission is to promote rigorous, multi-disciplinary scientific investigation of the mind in support of contemplative practices that cultivate the mental qualities of attention, emotional balance, kindness, compassion, confidence and happiness. MLI seeks to understand the human mind and the benefit of these practices through an integrated way of knowing that combines first-person knowledge from the world's contemplative traditions with the findings of contemporary neuroscience, psychology, social sciences, and humanities. The resulting body of best practices and interdisciplinary research has helped establish the credibility of mindfulness as a powerfully transformative tool for education, healthcare, veteran care, corrections, and other fields of service.
Watch highlights from MLI's International Symposium for Contemplative Studies, held October 2014.
Mind Body Awareness Projectwww.mbaproject.org
The Mind Body Awareness Project (MBA) is dedicated to teaching essential skills of violence prevention, stress reduction, and anger management to at-risk youth through the practices of meditation and yoga. Founded with the mission to teach life-saving skills that youth are not learning at school or in their homes, MBA classes and curricula use instruction, practice, and dialogue to help youth become aware of the destructive emotions and habitual behaviors that lead to alienation, substance abuse, crime, and violence. Classes have helped institutionalized and at-risk youth develop the confidence necessary to overcome negative patterns and promote self-awareness and empathy toward others.
Read "The Heartful Dodger," an article about the MBA Project from Tricycle Magazine.
Mindful Schoolswww.mindfulschools.org
Mindful Schools is a pioneer in supporting mindfulness training in educational settings. Mindful Schools uses a research based curriculum of techniques for concentration, attention, conflict resolution, and empathy, reaching over 8,500 children and 450 teachers in 34 schools, 74% of which serve low-income children, as well as a complete training program for adults. Developed as a response to turmoil in Oakland elementary schools, Mindful Schools brings mindfulness programs to public schools in California, supports teachers and administration in their own understanding and practice of mindfulness, and contributes to the movement toward creating calmer, kinder, more peaceful, and more effective learning environments throughout the country.
Watch a video introduction of the: Mindful Schools Program.
Mosaic Projectwww.mosaicproject.org
Inspired by Gandhi's adage that to teach real peace in the world we must start with the children, The Mosaic Project aims to provide nine to eleven year olds a lived experience of a just and inclusive world where interactions are guided by listening, empathy, and respect. Mosaic's core program is a five-day outdoor school that brings together fourth and fifth graders from Bay Area schools of markedly different socio-economic, racial, and ethnic make-up. Mosaic's staff and high-school-aged mentors skillfully combine age-appropriate teaching on diversity, inclusion, and empathy with listening circles and other exercises that cultivate authentic expression and witness. With this unique pedagogy, Mosaic teaches young children how to tell their own stories and listen to the stories of others with an extraordinary level of respect and care. The deep sense of connectedness within diversity provides the children—many of whom may never have met under ordinary social circumstances—an indelible early experience of beloved community.
See Peace is Possible, a short video narrated by young participants of the program.
Mosaic Voices Multicultural Foundationwww.mosaicvoices.org
Mosaic Voices Multicultural Foundation uses mythic imagination and traditional knowledge to develop transformative mentoring relationships and innovative forms of community healing. Applying a rare and masterful blend of storytelling, mentorship, and ceremony, Mosaic works intensively with a variety of populations including homeless and gang youth, combat veterans, refugees, and communities in crisis. Grounded in a mythic perspective, Mosaic seeks to find dynamic remedies for the alienation, spiritual dislocation, and personal isolation that increasingly characterize modern life, and to combine traditional thinking with fresh insights to develop wiser and more soulful cultural forms.
Watch Myth is the Ongoing Creation
Read Michael Meade's Blog
Nature Connection Mentoring Foundationwww.natureconnection.org
Nature Connection Mentoring Foundation (NCMF) provides nature-based mentoring and educational curricula rooted in the understanding that deep connection to nature changes and rewires us, igniting a deep desire to care for our planet and each other. Techniques like bird language, tracking, and other timeless but often-forgotten skills incorporate ancient traditions of mentoring and awaken innate human capacities to experience the dynamic interconnection of the web of life. NCMF partners with major wildlife and conservation organizations to distribute curricula and provide training, toward a vision of society that is deeply attuned to the natural world and able to repair the increasingly destructive rupture of nature and culture.
New York Writers Coalitionwww.nywriterscoalition.org
The New York Writers Coalition (NYWC) provides free and low-cost creative writing workshops, publication support, and performance opportunities throughout New York City for people who have historically been deprived of voice in American society. The Coalition believes that by writing with others in an atmosphere of respect and acceptance, participants discover the value of their own stories, gain confidence and a stronger sense of self, and become less isolated from themselves and from society: "By creating a community of writers and leaders from diverse backgrounds, we galvanize the voices of the marginalized and create opportunities for all writers to connect with the larger community. NYWC's goal is to create an inclusive city, one that is aware of the diversity of voices within it and honors the lives of all of its citizens."
Nourishing Networks Centralwww.nourishingnetworks.net
Nourishing Networks Central (NNC) is an innovative experiment in applying network theory to the problem of hunger in King County, WA. NNC emerged out of the realization that despite many quality organizations working to reduce hunger, a lack of connectedness between them as well as the community at large led to major gaps or unnecessary barriers to access food. NNC responded with a whole systems approach rooted in relationship-building and creating dynamic cross-sector networks. For example, rather than trying to conduct a formal needs assessment that leads to a strategic plan, NNC convenes knowledgeable people from many different sectors of the community to share what they know about the need and the work that is underway. As this network strengthens, participants identify leverage points, opportunities for collaboration, and gaps that need to be filled. In this way hundreds of people from diverse sectors and cultures bring forward their ideas, experience, and resources, resulting in self-organized, self-sustaining opportunities for the community to contribute their knowledge, expertise, and efforts to fill the gaps.
Nova Institutewww.novainstitute.org/ctt
Kalliopeia provides support for the Washington, DC area Courage to Teach program, a series of quarterly retreats for the personal and professional renewal of teachers and administrators in public schools. Courage To Teach is based upon the groundbreaking work of Parker Palmer and the unmet need to nourish the inner lives of young people and educators in our school systems. Focusing particularly on teachers, Courage To Teach retreats provide a trusting and reflective space for this devoted but underappreciated group of professionals, and are designed to rekindle the passion, commitment, and integrity that come from "reconnecting who we are with what we do."
Listen to "On Parenting," a radio series and podcast with Jack Petrash.
Watch "Educating Children for the Journey" a TEDxRockCreekPark talk by Jack Petrash.
PassageWorks Institutewww.passageworks.org
The PassageWorks Institute is dedicated to transforming the culture of classrooms, schools, and districts so that the inner life of students and teachers is sheltered, nurtured, and welcomed. The institute believes that acknowledging students' yearning for deep connection, engaging with difficult questions about meaning, honoring critical transitions in the cycle of schooling, and supporting the quest for a sense of purpose and genuine self-expression are critical to fostering academic achievement and true safety in schools. Through workshops, curricula, research, and cooperation with government and other groups, Passageworks motivates, prepares, and supports educators to implement its model for nurturing the inner lives of students and teachers.
"The Soul of Education: Helping Students Find Connection, Compassion, and Character at School," an article by Rachael Kessler of PassageWorks Institute.
Prison Communities Internationalwww.p-c-i.org/rta
Kalliopeia provides support for the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program at Sing Sing maximum-security prison in Ossining, NY. RTA uses theater arts to offer prisoners a safe and supportive structure in which to develop leadership, community, positive self-expression, respect for self and others, and a sense of achievement. Weekly workshops with RTA staff and volunteers in reading, writing, public speaking, improvisation, acting, and directing culminate in original plays, monologues, and theater pieces that are performed twice each year for the entire prison population and invited community guests. Research indicates that the program strengthens cognitive abilities of participants and significantly reduces recidivism.
Prison Mindfulness Institute (formerly Prison Dharma Network)www.prisonmindfulness.org
Kalliopeia provides project support for the Path of Freedom Peacemaker Training Program for Incarcerated and At-Risk Youth, an in-depth training that integrates mindfulness-awareness meditation, body-mind synchronization, nonviolent communication, conflict resolution, and leadership skills—all grounded in the experience and context of contemplative spirituality. The program is presented to incarcerated or at-risk youth in a nonsectarian manner that encourages greater self-awareness and impulse control, and builds skills in relationship, communication, and leadership that support youth in developing a new vision for their future. Kalliopeia also provides support for the Prison Chaplaincy program, which provides resources and outreach for contemplative practice to prison chaplains in correctional facilities across the US.
Watch a Global Oneness Project interview with Fleet Maull, former prisoner and founder of PDN.
Link to the very dynamic Prison Dharma Network blog and networking website.
Prison Performing Artswww.prisonartsstl.org
Prison Performing Arts is an interdisciplinary literacy and performing arts program that serves incarcerated adults and youth in the Missouri criminal and juvenile justice systems. Dedicated to enriching the lives of incarcerated adults and youth, Prison Performing Arts fosters individual and social change by providing current and former inmates opportunities to participate in the performing arts as artists, students, and audience members. Through the performing arts, inmates' creative energies are channeled in constructive ways that generate respect, cooperation, and self-discipline, developing skills that positively influence the prison culture and support their successful return to their families and communities.
Reciprocity Foundationwww.reciprocityfoundation.org
The Reciprocity Foundation's work is based on the understanding that long-term, sustainable change is only possible by tapping into the natural talents and gifts of an individual. With a focus on permanently transitioning homeless youth out of shelters, Reciprocity Foundation's holistic program combines higher education, work experience, mentorship, and wellness to guide their re-entry to society from a place of strength and passion. Kalliopeia provides funding for the Personal Transformation Program, which skillfully draws from a range of therapeutic, contemplative, and mentoring techniques to provide transformative healing opportunities to homeless and at-risk youth.
Read the founder's Blog
Rudolph Steiner Collegewww.steinercollege.edu
Kalliopeia provides support for the Rudolph Steiner College's The Waldorf Approach Applied in the Public School Classroom and Native Americans into the Waldorf Experience programs, which provide annual training for public kindergarten and elementary school teachers in integrating the Waldorf approach in public classrooms. Founded as a response to budget cuts that have caused the removal of the arts from public schools and children's lives, these programs work to make the best aspects of Waldorf education available to a broader population.
Kalliopeia supports the Outreach Concerts program of Sarasa, an international group of musicians dedicated to performing quality classical music to incarcerated adolescents. Sarasa bridges cultural, aesthetic, linguistic, and economic barriers through the power of music, and works to bring new experiences of beauty to teens, many of whom have never been exposed to anything but a popular culture infused with toxic messages. Sarasa also performs for incarcerated adults, hospitals, homeless shelters, inner city schools, private homes of the elderly, mental health institutions, and other populations with little access to live classical music.
School of Lost Borderswww.schooloflostborders.org
School of Lost Borders (SOLB) is a pioneer in developing rites of passage for youth and adults that cultivate self-awareness and responsibility, and that bring a deep, ceremonial connection to nature into participants' work, home, relationships, and community. SOLB holds a vision that through such initiatory practices humanity can move beyond "the dark threshold of adolescence and begin acting and making decisions as true stewards of the land, mature lovers of life, and responsible members of the human community." Kalliopeia supports SOLB in developing a network of trained leaders to offer rites of passage in schools, youth leadership initiatives, and community groups.
ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation
(Fiscal sponsor: One Light International)
ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation draws upon Indigenous wisdom and a profound understanding of destiny to mentor the human potential, restore vital wellness, and create intentional communities. ShadeTree is dedicated to providing sanctuary – an agreement of the heart that gives context for the recovery of the true Self. In supporting this most authentic ground of the individual, Shade Tree brings a transformative mentoring process and training to at-risk youth, prisoners, and various civil and cultural agencies.
Watch a short video interview with Orland Bishop, Founder and Director, of ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation (below):
Soldier's Heartwww.soldiersheart.net
Soldier's Heart is a veterans' healing project that addresses the emotional and spiritual needs of veterans, their families, and their communities. Understanding post-traumatic stress disorder as a "soul wound," Soldier's Heart guides community-based efforts to heal the effects of war using strategies presented in director Ed Tick's pioneering book War and the Soul. Kalliopeia provides general support and project support for Return Journeys, a program that brings veterans to former combat zones to seek healing and peace, and that unites former combatants in a profound experience of shared humanity.
Watch this Global Spirit series episode "Forgiveness and Healing" with Ed Tick and his wife Kate Dahlstedt and their work with Vietnam War veterans.
Watch the trailer for the documentary Healing a Soldier's Heart, which features the work of Soldier's Heart.
Stepping Stones Projectwww.steppingstonesproject.org
Stepping Stones Project's (SSP) mission is to guide and support youth and families across the threshold from childhood into healthy adolescence through mentoring and contemporary rites of passage. SSP's model supports parents and communities in addressing the developmental needs of youth by providing extended group mentoring and nature-based experiences, helping youth to develop a strong sense of self, a solid internal compass, and a deep connection with nature. SSP serves the San Francisco Bay Area, and is developing a guidebook and other resources to support other communities in developing authentic passageways and raise dynamic, self-aware young people.
Watch this Program Overview and a piece titled Reflections.
Street Poets Inc.www.streetpoetsinc.com
Street Poets Inc. is a poetry-based peacemaking organization dedicated to using the creative process as a force for individual and community transformation. By providing workshops for youth and young adults at school and juvenile detention sites throughout Los Angeles, their mission is to inspire at-risk youth to discover and develop their voices as writers, artists, and human beings; to empower these young people to use the skills and increased self-awareness engendered through the arts to transcend self-destructive lifestyles; and to create a healing community that unites different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic segments of the city around the transformational power of the creative process.
Listen to "Lullaby"
Watch the video "Street Poets"
Temple University Inside Out Prison Exchangewww.insideoutcenter.org
Temple University's Inside Out Prison Exchange (IOPE) creates opportunities for college students and prisoners to have transformative learning experiences that emphasize dialogue, collaboration, and a lived experience of common humanity beyond social barriers. IOPE brings college students together with incarcerated men and women every week to study as peers in a semester long academic course behind prison walls. IOPE's curricula facilitate peer learning, shared reflection, and community building within a space that embodies the rupture and divisions of our society. In doing so, IOPE students move beyond the literal walls of correctional facilities and the figurative walls of fear, prejudice, and indifference that prevent us from knowing and validating our mutual humanity, to facilitate encounters of healing, connection, and wholeness.
Tides Centerwww.lineageproject.org
Kalliopeia's grant to the Tides Center was used to support The Lineage Project (TLP). Serving the hearts and minds of vulnerable youth, TLP's dedication is "to go inside to keep them out." TLP uses yoga, meditation, and other awareness practices to break the cycle of poverty, violence, and incarceration in New York City. Focusing on youth aged 10 to 24 in juvenile detention centers, alternative-to-incarceration programs, and public schools for struggling students, TLP offers young people contemplative tools to begin healing trauma, connect to their authentic selves, and avoid the school-to-prison pipeline.
Transformative Prison Project
(Fiscal Sponsor: the University of Massachusetts Foundation; a project of the UMASS Boston Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development)
The Transformative Prison Project (TPP) emerged in response to the desire of Massachusetts prisoners to engage in restorative justice processes. TPP first built community by leading educational circles in prison and convening multi-stakeholder gatherings of inmates, academics, corrections officials, and politicians around restorative justice. The broad-based enthusiasm from these gatherings led to a pilot of the Insight Prison Project's Victim Offender Education Group curriculum at Norfolk prison. Following on the tremendously positive response, TPP is currently replicating the program in other correctional facilities in Massachusetts. Kalliopeia provides support for expansion and advanced facilitator training.
Read an article in the New York Times: By Talking, Inmates and Victims Make Things 'More Right'
Tunefoolery Music, Inc.www.tunefoolery.org
Tunefoolery Concert Ensembles is a unique group of over fifty musicians with psychiatric disabilities who play and perform music as a means of healing and recovery. Musicians perform in ensembles and solo acts in diverse musical styles for other consumers of mental health services as well as the general public, bringing education, hope, and inspiration to thousands of other consumers every year. Working against the problem-oriented approach that pervades mental health services and the stigmas of society at large, Tunefoolery's model of recovery empowers mental health consumers to be engaged participants in healing, providing positive life change through creative expression, vocational opportunity, teamwork, and pursuit of meaning.
Wilderness Arts & Literacy Collaborativewww.walcsf.net
Wilderness Arts & Literacy Collaborative (WALC) provides students at two inner-city San Francisco high schools with an interdisciplinary academic program that uses environmental education and stewardship activities to integrate science, literature, writing, technology, art, and history—all with a pedagogical focus on the experiences of people of color. Field experiences such as hiking, camping, habitat restoration, and recycling are woven together with classroom coursework to provide the experiential foundation for a challenging academic curriculum. WALC's vision is that inner-city high school students achieve greater academic success and grow into an interconnected community as a result of engagement in a transformative educational model. WALC's model creates resilient young people with a strong connection to their own heritage and to the need to create sustainable ways of living in harmony with nature, ultimately contributing to diversification within the environmental movement.
Listen and view WALC Stories on their YouTube channel, and poetry on WALC Voices.
Wildlife Associateswww.wildlifeassociates.org
Wildlife Associates (WA) is a unique animal sanctuary and educational program that engages children and at-risk youth with non-releasable wildlife in order to nurture empathy, understanding, and respect for all living things. WA's unique methodology honors the animals as teachers, and cultivates a relational way of seeing in which the student becomes an active participant in the web of life. Kalliopeia contributes to WA's at-risk youth mentorship program, where foster children, incarcerated teens, and other struggling youth spend time at the sanctuary, identify with both the woundedness and resilience of the animals, and develop their own capacities for care and healing.
William James Associationwww.williamjamesassociation.org/prison_arts.html
The William James Association (WJA) promotes transformative arts experiences in nontraditional settings, working with prisoners, high-risk youth, and parolees. Kalliopeia Foundation provides support for the Prison Arts Project, which brings professional visual, literary, and performing artists into state prisons to provide in-depth arts experiences for incarcerated men and women. A pioneer in the field of prison arts, WJA believes that the self-discipline, problem-solving, and concentration skills cultivated in the arts increase the capacity for personal change. WJA continues to be a lead advocate for the efficacy of arts programming in reducing recidivism and improving prison cultures.
Youth Passagewayswww.youthpassageways.org
Youth Passageways is an evolving network of individuals, organizations, and communities dedicated to revitalizing rites of passage as an integral part of human development on both an individual and cultural level. Through mutual support, collaborative learning, resource development, and cross-pollination of practices, this network of practitioners seeks to gain wider visibility for both time-tested and innovative methods and practices, and bring them to bear on the wider work of youth mentorship. In promoting thoughtful, intentional, and community based initiatory experiences, Youth Passageways helps to nurture mature adults who will in turn bring healing to our human and earth communities.
Zen Hospice Projectwww.zenhospice.org
Rooted in a founding commitment to bring mindfulness and compassion to care for the dying, their caregivers, and the bereaved, Zen Hospice Project (ZHP) is a pioneer in reminding the modern world of the grace-filled and spiritual dimensions of the end of life. As an innovative educational center, ZHP trains a growing community of volunteers in contemplative practice and spiritual accompaniment, and deploys these volunteers to sit with underserved San Francisco residents at Laguna Honda county hospice. In doing so, ZHP connects students of meditation with the dying for mutual enrichment, two-way learning, and sharing the enhanced understanding of life that arises from meeting death with equanimity and kindness.
Read Tricycle Magazine's article about Zen Hospice Project's work.