an update on the garden...

This is a recent photo of the Garden. Check out the tomato plants!!! Thank you to the CSU student interns who are helping maintain and take care of the garden:)

Sat Naam/CSU Open House - June 27th

Friday, June 27th, 2008, Sat Naam and CSU celebrated the opening of their new space with an open house. The public was welcome and food was prepared using the produce from some of CSU's urban farms. Lots of new and old friends came through to check out the space and see our Community Garden. It was a long exciting day for all of us.

"Changing Lives One Yoga Pose at A Time"

Sat Naam has been working with kids in schools in South Central Los Angeles for the last 3 years. Since then, we've been able to develop a close and meaningful relationship with not only the students we work with, but with their families and the faculty and staff of the schools they attend.
In April, we decided to take the cameras into the schools and document our Yoga In Schools Program that we've created. I think the end result is beautiful! To check it out go and to find more information about the program go to http://www.satnaam.org/yoga/. Thanks to all of the film friends who helped make this such a great movie!

Garden workday #1 - June 2nd 2008

Sat Naam had it's first Community Garden workday Monday, June 2, 2008 from 4-8pm at our new location at MLK & Normandie. We had a humble turnout, but were able to begin planning out the structure of our new community garden and the overall beautification of the outside of the space. The two photos show what we're starting out with. I'm excited to see how things grow and change as we get further into the project! I'll be posting up photos to keep everyone up-to-date.

2007 – 2008 Community Beautification Grant Awardee Ceremony

On Monday, March 10, 2008 in City Hall, the Board of Public Works recognized 88 grant awardees for their dedication in keeping Los Angeles beautiful - Sat Naam was one of them! The President of the Board of Public Works, Cynthia Ruiz, presented certificates to all awarded organizations. After the ceremony, food catered from Porto’s Bakery was served. This was a great opportunity to meet other recipients and exchange ideas.
Thanks to our good friends at Community Services Unlimited, Inc. Sat Naam has found a new home for our project. The Sat Naam Community Garden will be located at 1346 Martin Luther King Blvd. Weekly community Yoga classes will be held there as well! We're so happy and excited to be able to administer this project in a great new location! For more details on dates and times of Yoga classes and garden work days please go to http://www.satnaam.org/community/.

**that's me, mirabelle, and michael espinosa (the grant manger) in the photo**

Some sad news....

After much deliberation we decided to close Sat Naam's doors February 29th, 2008. This was an extremely hard decision for us, but we do feel it is the best thing. On a positive note, we are still planning on continuing sharing Yoga with all of you and will be teaching community classes all of the area. Stay tuned for information on where we'll be having our classes and workshops!
Thank you to everyone who made it possible for us to be in Jefferson Park for 1 1/2 years - it was amazing.
2526 W. Jefferson Blvd. will forever be in our hearts.

WE GOT IT!!!

Back in October, we put a grant proposal together to create a much needed Community Garden at our space in Jefferson Park. Well, this January we found out that we were awarded a Community Beautification Grant from the City of Los Angeles in the amount of $10,000!!! We are so excited to begin this project and to share a new beautiful space with our community. We will keep you all posted on future work days and events in conjunction to this.

Yoga at the 10th Annual California Hunger & Nutrition Polciy Conference

Sat Naam's been very fortunate to be able to meet and work with some really amazing organizations - one of them being Mazon. "Mazon is a nonprofit organization that allocates donations from the Jewish community to prevent and alleviate hunger among people of all faiths and backgrounds."
On January 14th & 15th,I was asked to lead a 45 minute chair Yoga class at Mazon's 10th Annual Hunger & Nutrition Policy Conference at Universal City. It was great to share Yoga and the mission of Sat Naam with the attendees of this event. I'm hoping to be apart of this organization's conference again in 2009!
Thanks Marla!:)

To find out more about Mazon go to www.mazon.org.