The Seed for Mindful Littles
Parenting young children is challenging — let alone knowing how to bring volunteerism into our every day, not as another to-do but as a way of life. It was in early 2016 that our founder, Tanuka Gordon, began experiencing critical gaps in family community service, leading to the creation of our nonprofit. Here are her words on the founding of Mindful Littles.
“When my older daughter was almost 5 years-old, I made a commitment to engage in regular volunteerism with my children. I found a family volunteering opportunity at a local crisis center. Once a month after my workday, she and I would head to the center to pack rice and beans for those in need. I remember feeling stressed sitting in traffic trying to make it to the nonprofit site in time for the service project. Often we were already exhausted when we arrived. Further, the nonprofit staff was overwhelmed having to organize an age-appropriate event for young families and understandably so. For a crisis center distributing thousands of pounds of food each month to feed hungry community members, it felt more burdensome than helpful to bring our families to serve. But what stood out to me most was leaving the service project without a full understanding who we were helping or the meaning behind our work. After having spent my entire career designing customer experiences that deeply engage and delight humans, I realized this disconnection meant we were missing a major opportunity in community service: we were not engaging perhaps the most important audience in compassion — our children. It was then that I decided to take matters into my own hands and thus began the Mindful Littles journey.”
—Tanuka Gordon, Founder
“When my older daughter was almost 5 years-old, I made a commitment to engage in regular volunteerism with my children. I found a family volunteering opportunity at a local crisis center. Once a month after my workday, she and I would head to the center to pack rice and beans for those in need. I remember feeling stressed sitting in traffic trying to make it to the nonprofit site in time for the service project. Often we were already exhausted when we arrived. Further, the nonprofit staff was overwhelmed having to organize an age-appropriate event for young families and understandably so. For a crisis center distributing thousands of pounds of food each month to feed hungry community members, it felt more burdensome than helpful to bring our families to serve. But what stood out to me most was leaving the service project without a full understanding who we were helping or the meaning behind our work. After having spent my entire career designing customer experiences that deeply engage and delight humans, I realized this disconnection meant we were missing a major opportunity in community service: we were not engaging perhaps the most important audience in compassion — our children. It was then that I decided to take matters into my own hands and thus began the Mindful Littles journey.”
—Tanuka Gordon, Founder
PLANTING THE SEEDS OF COMPASSION
Our Inaugural Mindful Service Experience
With the help of local parent volunteers, the first Mindful Littles Service Experience was organized on October 2, 2016, as a grassroots initiative in our founder’s backyard. Fifteen neighborhood families in the Bay Area, gathered to mindfully engage in service — making heart-felt hygiene kits for foster care youth in need. The first project deeply impacted on the group, and it was clear the event had planted the seeds for our compassion movement.
GROWING OUR ROOTS
Our First 4 Years
The first 4 years of our nonprofit’s journey established the roots for our long-term growth.
2017 From family experiences into schools
With parent volunteer support, the first service events launched in the California Bay Area, helping us build our initial local community presence. In parallel, our founder launched the Mindful Littles blog initiating our digital presence with over 100+ blog posts on everyday compassion practices for families. In May we became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and by the fall had entered into local schools with the launch of our first district-wide platform for mindful service.
2018 Strengthening community partnerships
Community partnerships continued to flourish as libraries, youth groups, churches, and synagogues, began requesting our compassion experiences. 2018 saw many firsts including the start of our compassion training programs, our first national conference, our first paid staff member and our first Annual Peace & Kindness Carnival.
2019 Branching into new demographics
In 2019 we expanded into new communities. Moved deeply by our Peace Kits for Paradise service project, the Paradise Unified School District hired Mindful Littles to bring our compassion training programs to all elementary schools to help children in Butte County cope with the aftermath of a devastating wildfire. Our Journey into Paradise not only reinforced the transformative impact of our mindful service experiences, but also highlighted how our work can successfully serve demographics facing multiple adversities.
Listen to our Founders’ 2019 Podcast Interview about the Journey into Paradise
2020 Launching the workplace channel
As the world faced COVID-19 and racial justice movements galvanized, the need for Mindful Littles compassion programs grew stronger than ever. After experiencing the Mindful Littles impact in the Bay Area and Butte County, Starbucks Northern California hired Mindful Littles to bring deep listening skills to its regional director team. This collaboration seeded the Mindful Littles workplace channel, which has grown into a critical cornerstone of our sustainability model while amplifying social impact for schools, work and home.
Check out our Powerful Journey of Community Collaboration with Starbucks.
RISING TALL TO NATIONAL PRESENCE
Our Vision is Bold. Our Vision is Big.
As we continue to grow our presence in schools, workplaces and community organizations and activate a strong digital presence, we continue to build a strong, sustainable foundation to help us reach our goal of national growth.
By 2030, our vision is to bring mindful service experiences to every TK-8th grade school district in the country.
To reach our bold vision, we need your support.
“Mindful Littles is the seed that we need to plant everywhere. We must water this precious seed, give it oxygen and sunlight and let it GROW. It’s like chicken soup for the modern day soul; we (adults and children alike) all just need a daily dose of it in order to build our habitual practices. Mindful Littles belongs everywhere — in every city, every town, every school, every classroom, every household.”
-Eliza Becker, Mother of 3 children, Former Teacher
