MBA December 2011 Training Intensive

Focus of December Training: "Themes, Teaching Stories, & Games: Building a Mindfulness Curriculum That Works for Your Youth"

Do you work with at-risk youth in a school, probation, foster care or community-based context? Do you find yourself reading mindfulness curricula and wondering how you could adapt the material or deliver it to the youth you are working with? Are you already integrating mindfulness, council or other emotional awareness practices into your work with and wanting to develop your material and your facilitation skills?

Unlike our previous trainings, this workshop assumes providers have some grounding in mindfulness practice (a few retreats, a focus on the cultivation of present moment awareness in daily life). The focus of the training will be "talking shop" about how to build a container to deliver mindfulness-based interventions, how to build and refine curriculum modules, and how to develop themes, teaching stories, and games that teach mindfulness in culturally relevant ways to specific youth populations. Our goal is to demystify curriculum planning and creation so that attendees can be "liberated" to try their own experiments.

The weekend training will include periods of mindfulness practice, guided inquiry and discussion, and role-play as well as significant time for participants to bring specific questions and issues from their own work with youth to the MBA teaching staff. Participants will actively engage in the creation of their own curriculum materials with MBA instructors and receive both audio and written curriculum materials from MBA.

MBA will consider a limited number of requests for financial aid from individuals who are actively working with at-risk youth (incarcerated,
gang-involved, homeless, or foster youth, etc.). For more information on financial aid, please contact MBA at info@mbaproject.org.

Instructors: The training will be lead by Vinny Ferraro and Iamani I. Ameni

Vinny Ferraro – MBA Training Director - is a mindfulness meditation instructor and a nationally recognized leader in designing and implementing interventions for at-risk youth. The child of an incarcerated father, Vinny went on to spend the majority of his teenage life hustling and living on the streets. In 2001, he began teaching for Challenge Day, a nationally-recognized transformational change organization that helps adolescents overcome internalized and external oppression and cultivate emotional well-being, eventually becoming Challenge Day’s Director of Training and leading workshops in four different countries to over 100,000 youth. Vinny leads meditation retreats for adults nation-wide and is a graduate of Spirit Rock Mediation Center’s Community Dharma Leader’s Program. He has received national media coverage for his work with at-risk youth; he is the subject of the MTV series “If You Really Knew Me.”

Amani Carey-Simms (Iamani I. Ameni) is a pioneer in bringing meditation, conflict resolution, and creative arts programming to at-risk, gang-involved and incarcerated youth. For the past 5 years Amani has facilitated MBA’s meditation class in the maximum security units of the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center (ACJJC) while running a small, mentor-based aftercare program for youth transitioning from detention back to the community. He is currently MBA's lead teacher in two San Mateo County probation facilities. Amani has worked for many well-known youth programs including Challenge Day, The Mosaic Project, and Youth Together.

About MBA: Founded in 2000 by a group of formerly incarcerated youth, the Mind Body Awareness Project (MBA) is an Oakland-based organization whose core mission is to provide the most at-risk youth in the most difficult environments – probation detention facilities, youth detention camps and at-risk schools – with concrete tools to reduce stress, impulsivity and violent behavior and increase self-esteem, self-regulation and overall well-being. www.mbaproject.org