Teaching yoga inside Jamaica's juvenile centers
How the Wellness And Mindfulness program reached young people in three juvenile facilities, and why it trained local teachers as well as running classes.
Between 2015 and 2018, Yoga Angels took its Wellness And Mindfulness program, WAM, into three of Jamaica’s juvenile centers: South Camp, Rio Cobre and Metcalfe Street.
The work happened inside “A New Path”, a project of the Organization of American States and the Trust for the Americas, funded by USAID. A New Path set out to give young people in conflict with the law support with the emotional, social, educational and economic problems that brought them there, and better options when they left.
Why yoga, in a place like that
Subhadra Griffiths, who founded Yoga Angels, has described the need plainly. Young people growing up around crime and violence carry a lot. Many have never been taught how to resolve a conflict, slow down a decision, or connect what they do today with the life they will have tomorrow.
WAM works on exactly those things. A class might be breath and movement one day and a conversation about choices the next. The physical practice gives people a way to settle their body. The life skills sessions give them words and tools for what comes after.
Training the people who stay
Outside instructors come and go. Staff stay. So WAM trained people in the centers to teach the practice themselves. At Rio Cobre in Spanish Town, where the program ran in 2017 and 2018, that meant eleven certified teachers.
At Metcalfe Street, the three-month introductory phase was completed in 2018.
What came next
A New Path ended. The next part of this story is about what the Foundation did when the money stopped.
