The Africa Yoga Project
Yoga is a powerful and transformative practice that will most certainly change your life if you dedicate yourself to it.
It will change your physical being – bringing you to a deeper awareness of your physical body, your muscles – making you aware of some you didn’t even know you had and your energy – teaching you to direct its flow around your body. Through this your emotions, your thoughts and your experience in the outer world will be transformed. Changing yourself, your change the world.
But have you ever wondered about how you can take your yoga off the mat and make a wider impact on the lives of others who may not normally have the chance to experience the benefits of yoga.
The Africa Yoga Project began when Paige Elenson – a student of North American yoga teacher Baron Baptiste – was volunteering in Kenya as a yoga teacher for two months. When a civil war broke out in the country, she realized she wanted to stay and make a difference. She told her teacher Baptiste about her plans, and he then offered his support to the program, and thus in 2007 the Africa Yoga Project was born.
Initially Elenson, Baptiste and a group of volunteer yoga teachers from around the world started teaching young Kenyans, many of them from the slums of Nairobi. The students that attended the community classes were between the ages of sixteen and thirty, came from impoverished backgrounds and lived on less than $2 a day. Many had been personally affected by HIV/AIDS and were living or had lived on the streets.
The program grew, and with the generous assistance of the Baptiste Power Yoga Institute community, AYP sponsored Moses Mbajah, a Kenyan from the Nairobi slums, to attend a two week Teacher Training with Baptiste in Mexico in October 2008.
The Africa Yoga Project has now introduced hundreds of students in Kenya to yoga, and has also provided educational scholarships, job training, food stipends, temporary health and housing services to many Kenyans. Amongst other things the project has also financed the construction and opening of two new schools and an adult education program for Masaai women.
There are now 38 yoga teachers supported by AYP teaching yoga throughout the communities of Nairobi. The program also facilitates international exchanges where yogis and movement teachers from many different countries can come and teach beside the Kenyans and experience Kenya through the eyes of a teacher.
The AYP is a great example of Seva in action – taking yoga off the mat and into the wider world to make a positive impact on hundreds of lives. To donate to AYP or find out more information, visit the Africa Yoga Project website.
