Executive Summary

Nov. 3, 2008

Youth Meditation Initiative

Presented by Maury Cooke, Executive Director of CCDI, Earthsong Division
Prepared by Jeremy Stowell, Grant writer and Administrative Director

-Scope-

To appreciate both the nature of and motivation for our project, the Teen Meditation Initiative, it is important to place aspects of youth development and the environment they experience into perspective. We offer our project as substantial help for challenged adolescents in a troubled world.

-Adolescents are in danger-

Teenagers struggle with their sense of identity, self image, and ways of handling conflicts with parents and peers. Their attempts to become independent often lead to “acting out” in inappropriate ways. The many developmental tasks of adolescence are often so challenging that teens become overwhelmed. This can lead to delinquency, drug and alcohol abuse, academic failure, risky sexual behaviors and emotional disorders. While adolescence is the healthiest, most resilient period of the lifespan, it is the period during which morbidity and mortality rates increase 200-300% as measured from childhood to late adolescence. Clearly, adolescents need help navigating this period in their life. In spite of the best efforts of parents, family units, and social and/or psychological interventions, there is little evidence of a decline in the overall occurrence of troubling behaviors and disorders in our youth.

-The problem is our society-

Adolescent development today in this country is beset with further external obstacles, such as: 1) widespread economic problems and institutional failures, 2) doubt, fear, anger and distrust that government, states, cities, or families can resolve problems facing us locally and nationally, 3) hearing about pervasive problems of an unethical, immoral and often illegal nature on the part of leaders nationally (whether in government, financial institutions, etc.) and in local communities; and hearing little about any extensive investigations or bringing to justice the offending agencies and individuals, 4) family disruptions, decay, and lack of cohesiveness.

-There is a need to reach adolescents at a deeper level-

We know that adolescents are bombarded with society’s teachings that happiness, fulfillment and success come from external sources rather than from within oneself. Youth are taught that they can bolster a sense of “self” through possessions, power, money, status and other external sources. Adolescents, if taught how to access their innermost nature and resources, are more likely to discover an identity accompanied by spiritual features. The result is the improved capacity to negotiate this critical period successfully.

-Trust something that has proved itself-

Meditation is a time-honored way to develop one’s inner resources through practices that involve training and taming the mind. The ultimate result of effective meditation is the development of compassion and wisdom.

The mission of the Youth Meditation Initiative (YMI) is to help youth develop to their full potential through meditation, small group discussions and the wisdom of the larger retreat community.

-The goals of this program-

Our solution and current objectives are: 1) Helping individual teens learn how to meditate skillfully and experience growth. 2) Helping teens develop communication skills through the benefit of small group interactions during the meditation retreat 3) Helping teens benefit from the insights and wisdom of the overall retreat community, including the array of workshops. 4) Helping teens on the path to become teachers, themselves, oriented to helping others as one of their primary life activities. 5) Enlarging and expanding the model utilized at the Earthsong Meditation Retreat Center to multiple physical sites with associated national outreach capabilities. 6) To demonstrate, through research, how these retreats produce measurable changes in adolescent stress levels, coping and communication skills as well as produce a more optimistic life outlook and an improved ability to relate to others. 7) Seeking and obtaining funding for the Youth Meditation Initiative building and expansion project; funding for program development, and support for general operations.

-The Center for Community Development, Inc.-

The Center for Community Development, Inc. (CCDI) was originally formed and incorporated as a non-profit organization {501(c) (3)} in 1990 with the mission of “bringing people and opportunity together.” CCDI received funding through a variety of federal, state and local public resources as well as through sources in the private sector. Its primary functions have been affordable housing opportunities, micro financing and the development of urban arts, all of which were started through volunteer efforts. CCDI, over the years has enjoyed partnerships at the local, state and national levels. This certainly is one of our objectives for the Youth Meditation Initiative.

The Center for Community Development, Inc. has already developed a basic infrastructure for this project which includes over 70 acres of land in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in southwest Virginia. With the help of Maury Cooke and a number of individual investors, 7 cabins have been constructed on the land to date. There has been an outlay of over $300,000.00 for the Youth Meditation Initiative. The primary reason that there has been such initial support is because of individuals seeing the pure value of this project.

-A proven organization.-

The success of this organization can be measured by its many successful loans, jobs created, businesses started, local cultural arts enrichment including school programs and workshops in such areas as ethnic drumming, steel pans, dance and youth development. The original teachers who volunteered their services have now inspired students who volunteer in the same way to the CCDI organization. In 2003, due to the ongoing vision of Maury Cooke, another subdivision of CCDI evolved, the Earthsong Organic Farm and Retreat Center, which now has hosted four teen meditation retreats in the past two years. The details of our teen retreat model are described in the Project Description. The evolution of the Teen Meditation Retreats is a natural progression of CCDI’s mission, as outlined in the CCDI narrative. The mission of the Earthsong Meditation Retreat Center and the Youth Meditation Initiative is to help youth develop to their full potential through intensive meditation and continuous small group work, within a safe and cohesive retreat community.

These teen meditation retreats have been highly successful as noted by participants and their parents as well as reviews in local newspapers. Our volunteer staff helping at the retreats has provided an important model for a number of students who now volunteer at retreats as well.

One of our other goals is to measure subjectively and objectively the progress of each teen involved in the meditation retreats. We plan to expand these measurements to formalized research in collaboration with Radford University, where discussions are already taking place.

Our funding needs for FY 2009 include $137,680.00 of fixed costs, $111, 480.00 of variable costs and $280,000.00 of capital costs. The total annual estimated budget for FY 2009 is $529,160.00. We anticipate sustainability on our own developed resources by FY2013.

We have just formed a national alliance with the primary teen meditation retreat teachers from various parts of the country. Our longer range goal is to reach more than one million adolescents and help them realize their full potential through teen meditation retreats.