New stretch target
- £9,600 more will enable us to refund the cost of travel for our THREE other weekly classes, in South Kensington and Newington Green. One of those classes is part of our Refugee Mums & Babies Day where we now have 65 women and their littles on the register. Up to 16 people in each class.
- £13,600 means we can do this and pay our office worker for two days a week. Our model minimises the cost of running classes by making sure wherever possible, equipment is donated and the venue hire is given in-kind with no cost to Ourmala.
- £13,600 means we can do all this and pay our office worker for TWO days a week. Our model minimises the cost of running classes by making sure, wherever possible, equipment is donated, venue hire is given 'in-kind' with no cost to Ourmala and much of our work (actualy 100% at the moment!) is delivered by volunteers. However, a small paid team of people in the office is essential for our work to be sustainable - especially if we want to put on more classes to reach more people.
- £18,400 means we can do all this plus TWO NEW yoga classes in addition to the 4 we already run:
New class 1 will be for young refugees and people seeking asylum (aged 15-25) in collaboration with the British Red Cross in central London at Ashtanga Yoga London, which will be donating 50% of the travel refunds.
New class 2 will be for another of the organisations on our waiting list. We will let you know if we raise the money to do it!
- £20,000 means we can do all this plus give the women refugees at Hackney City Farm a hot healthy lunch after yoga. We would love to do this. Many we work with are malnourished and this is the only hot meal they get in a week. It's also great for building community, sitting around the table together and chatting. So normal for most of us. So rare for many of the people we work with.
Each of classes is a specialist yoga class and involves at least 1/2 hour social time afterwards to help build community. At each class we have a yoga teacher plus an assistant.
OUR DREAM is to run 20 yoga classes a week by the end of 2017 to meet current demand:
- With 10 classes a week by the end of March 2017 (we currently run 4 a week)
- 15 a week by the end of June 2017
- 20 by end of November 2017
20 classes a week would mean we were helping 320 refugee and asylum seekers each week turn their suffering into strength so they are better equipped to move on with their lives + the 130 refugee and asylum-seeking mums and babies in our weekly Mums and Babies Group.
This would cost £130,000 a year to run which we felt was far too large a sum for our first ever crowdfunder so I'm writing it here just in case you know any philanthropist who might like to enable this.