Farashe Yoga for Healthy Living

Summary of Taking Action

Assessment:
Farashe emerged from the local community; its founders, board members, teachers, and volunteers are representative of Palestinian society, with an intimate understanding of the daily life realities and needs. In Palestine, economic resources are limited, space and movement is restricted, and there are very little public parks and safe recreational spaces due to the political situation. In addition, violence and trauma are a daily reality for most.

Yoga can be an effective tool to manage both physical and mental health difficulties, especially when dealing with the kind of trauma Palestinians face. It is a form of self-care that is accessible to all: it is affordable; anyone---no matter what age or physical constitution---can do it; and it can be done anywhere: at home, at school, outside, in your car. We rely on our members, teachers, and volunteers to spearhead our activities, working with local communities and organizations to design their yoga or healthy lifestyle interventions based on their needs.

Planning:
Farashe continually seeks input and collaboration from the community in setting its goals and defining its activities. For example, we invite community members to our annual strategic planning sessions. We also established volunteer committees to work throughout the year on community outreach activities, social media, continuous education/teacher training, and fundraising. Moreover, whether through our classes and workshops in the Ramallah center, our social media outlets, or our outreach yoga and wellness sessions in villages and refugee camps, we always provide space for our members and stakeholders to voice their opinions, needs, and to suggest new initiatives.

Farashe’s mission is to make yoga accessible for all living in Palestine, with a particular emphasis on underserved communities. Through our work and consultations with the community, we have realized that language is a significant barrier to achieving our goal. Very few resources on yoga exist in Arabic. As such, Farashe refined its strategy in 2015 to include: 1) developing a cadre of Arabic-speaking, Palestinian yoga teachers; (2) developing Arabic-language resources for yoga; (3) supporting community and volunteer work.

Taking Action:
To achieve our mission, Farashe has been training Palestinian, Arabic--‐speaking yoga teachers. Thus far, we have trained 40 teachers, 15 of whom are actively teaching in their communities. We rely on this volunteer teacher base to work within their own communities to address their specific needs. For example, teachers offer yoga, meditation and breathing to various groups including persons with diabetes or cancer, elderly, children, pregnant women, and more.

We also have been developing Arabic--‐language written and video resources on yoga and its benefits related to general health, stress management, trauma, for pregnancy, for children, and more. We aim to further develop these materials into a web--‐based toolkit that could benefit not only Palestinians, but all Arabic--‐speakers throughout the region and world.

We have established partnerships with yoga, nutrition, and wellness organizations worldwide, which has resulted in several joint projects including sending some of our teachers abroad for further development and having yoga teachers come to the Palestine to provide new teacher trainings and development.

Evaluation:
Our current operational capacity has not enabled us to run a systematic evaluation of our efforts. However, we continually track key figures that we use as indicators for our ability to achieve our goals. These are: 1) number of people who attend activities/classes, 2) number of activities/classes offered throughout different interventions, 3) numbers of teachers trained/developed through Farashe activities, and 4) incoming revenue from activity/class fees.

Encouragingly, all these figures have shown sustained growth year on year. Moreover, we have constantly been receiving positive and encouraging feedback from the various communities we worked with and provide yoga classes to; which has been our main motivating spirit helping us reach further to new communities and volunteer work.

Sustaining the work:
To buttress our sustainability efforts, we have registered Farashe as a nonprofit organization both in Palestine and the USA. This allows us the organizational flexibility to operate and fundraise through multiple channels. As Farashe continues to grow, sustainability is the next frontier for us to tackle in order to ensure we remain vibrant and relevant. At our last board meeting, we identified three immediate needs to be addressed by 2015:

1. Enhancing Farashe’s Organizational Capacity: As we seek to expand, we are seeking a part-time executive director who will work along with the part‐time coordinator to take charge of fund raising, coordination of activities, and expand outreach. In the future, we foresee this role becoming full-time.
2. Replenishing Teacher Pipeline: As our volunteer teachers are the cornerstones of our operations, we will continue to develop their capacity, as well as train additional teachers. Located in various cities and villages throughout Palestine, they will provide safe and accessible yoga classes and healthy lifestyles workshops that meet the specific needs of their community, on a continuous basis.
3. Developing resources in Arabic. We will develop a toolkit that will support accessibility of yoga practice among various groups, such as school teachers and students, women and men in villages and refugee camps, psycho‐social counselors and practitioners, and universities. The toolkit will include resources for various needs including yoga for trauma, yoga for kids, prenatal yoga, meditation, breathing, yoga for elderly, and more.