Big Goals, Big Plans . . .  Save the Date!

We will be celebrating this decade milestone throughout the year, with more announcements coming very soon.

To honor this milestone, we are launching a new fundraising campaign. With your support, this funding will seed three vital initiatives:
1. Expanding our proven programs to empower students nationwide.
2. Nurturing Peer Wellness Leaders, building youth-led hubs of care and wellness to reverse the tide of loneliness and distress.
3. Establishing an Endowment Fund to secure Inner Strength’s future for years to come.

Mark your calendars and save these dates, as we host a week of exciting events from May 12-17, 2025. 

We’d love for you to be part of it! Here’s a sneak peek at what’s in store:

• Steal a Moment – (May 12 – 16) An interactive mindfulness experience and public art installation on the streets in Center City. We’ll be creating spaces for our city to pause, reflect, and connect, raising awareness about the power of mindfulness to transform young lives.

• Celebration at Inner Strength Offices (May 17) – An in-person celebration with noted guests, student-led mindfulness activities, music, food, and lots of fun.

  Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Launch – A fun and meaningful way for our supporters to engage their networks in support of this special mission.

As Inner Strength looks ahead, we remain committed to empowering a generation of wise and compassionate leaders. Your involvement is invaluable as we work together to create a brighter future for our youth. Look out for communications on how to give to our campaign. We can’t do this without you!

Our 10 Year Anniversary: Reflecting on our Beginnings
Reflecting on our journey, it’s hard to believe that ten years have passed since I founded Inner Strength in 2014. From the beginning, my goal was to reach a significant number of students year-after-year, imparting skills and perspectives that would enable them to “think about how they think.”

Together, we would explore questions around meaning, purpose, and interconnectedness. They’d learn tools that develop greater kindness for themselves and others, and learn to align themselves with a vision of the possible, of what the would could be when we allow ourselves to live in alignment with what I think of as our human values.

My goal was to support enough young people, over time, so we could begin to transform our shared culture. As each young person actualizes their deeper cares, it brings positivity, centeredness, and strength to their friends and families, and over time that uplifts the quality of interaction in our workplaces, schools, and communities.

Ten Years of Milestones 
There are so many highlight moments along the way, here are just 3 to show you a little bit of our origin story and how far we have come . . .

1. We’ve grown from serving 70 students in 2014 to empowering 30,000 students.

2. We moved from supporting all our work with small (and treasured) individual donations, to securing a 4-year contract totaling over 7-figures from the School District of Philadelphia.

3. Our research, approved by the School District’s Office of Research and IRB, permitted us to conduct multi-year quantitative research which has consistently shown statistically significant improvement in self-compassion, self-regulation, perseverance, and other metrics. We’ve had articles and book chapters published in peer-reviewed academic journals, and presenting the findings at national conferences.