prAna: Sustainable Clothing

Street Yoga is a Portland based non-profit that gives youth and their caregivers the tools to overcome early life trauma, through the sharing of life-building mindfulness and wellness practices grounded in the ancient healing principles of yoga. They serve by helping youth create a sense of true home in their own bodies, minds and communities.

Our work is an act of service for ourselves. We all gain by offering free yoga, wellness and meditation classes to homeless youth, and youth at-risk of homelessness. A quote we always share in our trainings, from singer/songwriter Neil Young, sums up a big part of our vision: “We were giving, that’s how we kept what we gave away.” Yoga has helped each of us in so many ways, that at Street Yoga, we can’t help but give it away.

To be homeless in America means, in the course of any modern year, a million people or more will live on the streets, in a shelter, in jail or prison, in a motel or other short-term rental, in a treatment center or state facility, in foster care or more likely, a shifting, unpredictable movement from one situation to another.

With such a lack of stability, it is clear why breaking out of homelessness is quite difficult. Aside from the poverty that is almost always a contributing, and reinforcing factor in spanwing homelessness, the lack of a stable structure from which to conduct life’s many tasks makes the efforts needed to step into housing, a job to pay for it, and enough transportation and disposable income to sustain the whole endeavor nearly impossible.

Our programs strive to meet the whole person. We have witnessed in our work the broad needs that homeless youth carry. This complexity is paralleled to the causes and spectrums of homelessness. Check out a complete list of our Partnering sites and Site Descriptions.

We have observed that homelessness is most often associated with one or more of the following:

* Poverty * History of Abuse * Childhood of Homelessness * Time Lived in Foster Care * Drug Addiction of Parents

Our programs try to break the cycle of despair, poverty and extreme situations that cause homelessness. We work with:

* Already Homeless Youth * Youth in Shelter * Youth in Detention * Homeless Schoolchildren * Youth Recovering from Abuse

In so doing, we try to prevent future homelessness- for the youth we serve today, and for the children they may have down the road.

If you would like to support StreetYoga.org or are interested in helping homeless youth in your community click here