Moving the Yoga Community Into a Political Force

With 16 million Americans already coming together in their local communities for a structured group experience (i.e. yoga class), the yoga community was a growing untapped force and a great fit for The Engage Network strategy.  In little over 3 years, deepening the online and offline networks and creating clear trainings and engagement pathways has built effective local leaders.

In 2007, Engage began working with Seane Corn, an internationally recognized yoga teacher.  Seane had been a YouthAIDS Ambassador and a successful fundraiser under the campaign “Off The Mat.”  Seane believed there was a large potential for increased social change in the yoga network.  Launched in 2008, Off The Mat Into The World has become the largest organized social change engagement effort in the world for yoga practitioners.  It is also a program that predominantly funds itself through an innovative combination of a challenge model and business partnership.

A Framework For Movement Building

The Engage Network worked with Seane and two other yoga leaders —Suzanne Sterling and Hala Khouri— to create the Off the Mat, Into the World (“OTM”) program for leadership building and network engagement.  OTM was designed using The Engage Network’s best practices framework to motivate and train yoga practitioners as strong movement leaders.  The program includes:

• a series of distributive small, local groups of 6-12 people called “Yoga in Action”;
• week-long workshops and intensives aimed at building strong leaders;
• and further leadership trainings and regional network building coordination.

OTM also has a fundraising challenge, the Global Seva Challenge, which was designed to both build leadership and raise significant resources.

Small Groups As A Foundation

The Yoga In Action groups use an Engage Network curriculum tailored for people in the yoga demographic. The curriculum excels at helping people new to social change become engaged through taking leaders through a process of building community with others and finding their own calling or purpose.

Advanced trainings for national leaders focus on building out their own projects which includes efforts like a yoga network for people with substance abuse, yoga for women in domestic violence shelters,  and yoga tailored to at-risk youth in schools in LA.

Almost 1,000 people have participated in these groups around the world,.

An innovative model for financial sustainability

The Off the Mat, Into the World “Global Seva Challenge” challenges individuals to raise a total of $20,000 each from their local communities, and then travel to the community where their funds are put to use.  It is part of an Engage Network best practice:  looking for ways to make sure grassroots networks support and sustain themselves while giving to others.

The 2010 Global Seva Challenge was focused on projects in South Africa and raised over $600,000 while also training more than 100 leaders in grassroots engagement and fundraising.

Leaders who join the Seva Challenge feel the confidence to launch their own projects or go deeper into OTM’s leadership pathway.  Many of the leaders who were not successful in making the fundraising challenge (only 10-15 do) still feel success because of their connection to making a real difference on the ground.  Many participants also became small group leaders.

Each year the challenge has increased its particpants and income generation. The Challenge has received national media attention with Seane writing blogs about the process for both Yoga Journal magazine and Oprah.com.

In addition, Off the Mat has developed funding streams that come almost entirely through program revenue and partnerships with co-branded products, and donation-based efforts from companies as diverse as concerts and yoga clothing lines.  The Off The Mat funding model is diverse and one that can weather economic storms.

From Service to Political Power

Off The Mat, Into The World answers a long-standing question in civic engagement: How do we move people from service projects which make a difference to becoming a political force?  As The Engage Network has continued to train the leadership team and vision with OTM leaders, they have also come to understand and create programs to build political power.  In 2010, Off The Mat launched YogaVotes, a voter education and registration effort.  In 2011, the OTM team is having its first national lobby training in DC.  As the community grows in depth, it also grows in its ability to mobilize and take coordinated action.