A letter from our founder, Tanuka Gordon on Giving Tuesday. Whether it’s of your time, a donation, or the power of your voice in your local community, we are grateful for your gift.

Sometimes it feels as though there is an endless barrage of difficult news to digest, from ongoing mass shootings to unstoppable fires to personal family tragedies. As parents, while we may recognize not everything in life is in our control, the prospect of raising our children in uncertain times can feel scary. What I’m learning — and it is a practice each and every day — is that the most powerful gift we can give our children is to teach them to believe in themselves as courageous, compassionate beings.

No matter what life brings, the most important tool they have is how they respond in a given situation: with perspective, with relentless faith in their own capacity to be loved and share love and to stand for who they are authentically with courage.   

Guiding our children in this way is not a perfect science nor a perfect process. I believe if we can collectively help each other as a community to create more resilient, compassionate children we have a better chance for a more peaceful future. To begin this process, we must start small. We must learn to nurture peace within ourselves, our homes, our neighborhoods. This is my work as a parent, a wife, a daughter, a sister and a friend — and it is our work as a nonprofit. It is why I so passionately believe in spreading our mission as far and as wide as it is meant to be.

Mindful Littles is still a startup organization. We are only two years old, but in this short time we have accomplished so much. Our programs have touched over 3000 children in the East Bay Area region. We have launched partnerships with over 50 nonprofits, schools, religious institutions, youth groups and many more. We have published over 100 blog posts on the topics of mindfulness, kindness and service. We have a Mindful Littles crew of 18 volunteers and staff, and more than 70 youth leaders and adult volunteers who have helped support our programs.

Our work has helped children across the world, from pen-pal exchanges in Haiti to helping orphans at a Gandhi Ashram in India. We have established close partnerships with programs for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs) through wonderful nonprofits such as Las Trampas School in Lafayette, California and larger organizations such as Best Buddies. We are committed to deepening the impact we can have on many diverse populations.

Even more exciting is the incredible future ahead. In the coming year, we are expanding our reach with additional service learning and yoga and mindfulness programs with more schools, including low-income programs, more libraries, yoga studios and beautiful nonprofits such as CoachArt. To support the extensive demand for our work, we are developing curriculum and a training program to onboard new Mindful Littles facilitators. We are building our digital content platform to create a hub for positive parenting tools and practices. We continue to collaborate with mindfulness and social-emotional learning (SEL) experts to provide innovative digital and physical parenting resources. 

As we continue building and growing, it is your support and belief in what we do as an organization that fuels our work. Our work is about elevating each other so that we can collectively bring our unique strengths to create a more peaceful world for our children. So as we approach #GivingTuesday, I ask that you join our Mindful Littles mission, to be a part of our cause, and recognize that when we discover and nurture the mindful little spark that is inside each and everyone of us, that all our children — and the world — will have a brighter future ahead.

With best wishes for a peaceful Thanksgiving and much love,

Tanuka

Our goal is to bring peace, love, kindness and compassion to ourselves, our community and the world. It is an immeasurable intention with infinite possibilities. Thank you for being a part of it!