Empowering our community to live in the present.
“I think you should know that mindfulness has changed my life.”
— 4th grade student Ramos Elementary
The Pratyush Sinha Foundation’s Mindful Child Initiative (MCI) is a community non-profit (501c3) providing high-quality mindfulness programs to promote the mental and emotional health of children and the adults who support them in the Lehigh Valley.
Our Mission.
What does mindfulness
look like in our schools?
In schools we teach students and staff how to mindfully listen, see, and move, which supports them with paying attention, learning and handling their emotions. We teach a variety of science-based exercises that support stress reduction as well as the above-mentioned goals.
Health, according to the World Health Organization, is not simply the absence of disease but the state of physical, mental, and social well-being. So, to achieve a thriving state of health, our mental health needs must be met.
MCI follows a trauma-informed approach to teaching Mindfulness. Our curriculum is adapted from Mindful Schools providing the building blocks of mindfulness that can be used daily by students and staff once introduced through our modeling. The Mindful Child Initiative believes all children deserve equal access to programs that fully support their overall health.
What do we consider a healthy community?
We base our mindfulness education tools in science. These tools can be wielded daily as powerful aids in regulating emotions while simultaneously decreasing the effects of stress. Children and adults start introducing short snippets of our practices into their daily routines. Over time, and with consistent and repetitive practice, mindfulness evolves into a mindset. Therein lies the potential to change the culture in schools and, thus, our community.
Practices of mindfulness can build a collaborative and inclusive school culture. And that’s precisely how we can disrupt the cycle of systemic inequalities while supporting social-emotional wellness. But this doesn’t lie with children alone. Children depend on the active participation of the adults who influence their environments every day. Without proper adult support, we leave children unable to benefit from mindfulness for their own well-being.
How many people we’ve helped in the Allentown School District & beyond:
We started as a small after-school yoga program supporting 500 students in the Allentown School District in the spring of 2013 and have grown to supporting over 10,000 students and staff per year through our in classroom mindfulness education, Trauma Informed Mindfulness Education trainings, an instant pivot to a virtual based mindfulness support system during the COVID 19 lockdown and a return to in-person mindfulness education in 2022.
Let’s create a more mindful community together.
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