Our mission is to provide in-depth, highly relational mindfulness programming for youth and the parents and professionals who support them. iBme’s programs guide participants in developing self-awareness, compassion, and ethical decision making, and empowers them to apply these skills in improving their lives and communities.

Our vision is to support future generations of heart-centered, diverse leaders who are prepared to respond to the challenges of their time with focus, resiliency, and compassion for themselves, their communities and the global environment.

Source: Nonprofit submitted responses

Goal One: Expand access to in-depth secular mindfulness programs for to youth and the adults who support them through existing retreat models, affinity programming, and mutually beneficial partnerships.

Goal Type: Grow, expand, scale or increase access to the existing programs and services.

Goal Two: Expand and strengthen existing programming models through ongoing community engagement, youth-centered outreach, and strategic regional partnerships in all communities we have the capacity to serve.

Goal Type: Grow, expand, scale or increase access to the existing programs and services.

Goal Three: Leverage operational excellence and financial vitality to live into our ambitious future while embodying, protecting, and strengthening the heart and whole of iBme (e.g., mission, vision, values).

Goal Type: Invest in the capacity of our organization (financial, management, technical, etc.).

Describe an investment in leadership

Our program success requires an ongoing and thoughtful evaluation of our internal organizational culture. In 2020, iBme launched a Collaborative Leadership model and began implementing several initiatives to expand our collaborative consciousness and capacity. These policies are one step towards achieving our vision of accountable, transparent, diverse leadership and governance. Within our Collaborative Leadership system, decisions are distributed based on each person’s and committee’s roles and responsibilities, willingness, and resources. Designing and implementing internal frameworks rooted in inclusive and shared power paradigms will prepare us to serve more youth from vulnerable communities and to work with more diverse teachers and staff. The five core systems outlined in the Bay Nonviolent Communication Collaboration in the Workplace model include (1) distributed decision making, (2) feedback flow, (3) information flow, (4) resource flow, and (5) conflict engagement.

This organization mobilizes for mission in the following ways:

• Strategic Partnerships

• Networks of Collective Impact Efforts

• Thought Leadership

• Raising Awareness

• Community Building

What are this organization’s external mobilizaton efforts?

iBme seeks to strengthen the movement of bringing mindfulness to youth by deepening our awareness of and skills related to accessibility, equity, and justice. In 2019, iBme hosted A Community Workshop on the Intersection of Mindfulness, Youth, and Justice in partnership with the Ford Foundation. It was a national convening of organizations and educators who teach mindfulness to youth and who are committed to equity and justice. Since our founding, iBme has become a leading organization for in-depth, secular mindfulness programs for youth and the parents and professionals who support them. Our teen retreats were featured as a cover story in Mindful Magazine in 2016 and our Collaborative Leadership System was featured in 2020. We are also regularly invited to offer workshops and keynotes at the leading mindfulness and education conferences and contribute articles and content to publications such as the New York Times, 10% Happier podcast with Dan Harris, and the Insight Timer app.

- Holding Trust in Our Hands - It is often the case that the questions we ask are more revealing than the answers we give. For within the question, a need is already present. iBme, along with the rest of the world, asked many questions in 2020 and 2021. We share two of them here, along with some of the answers we discovered together. What does our community do when the world we know changes so suddenly and dramatically? We hold the hands of people we trust and greet the unknown together. March 11, 2020. For many of us, this was the day we realized how severe COVID-19 might be. For iBme, it meant our core programs—residential retreats—were in jeopardy. With school closings, the loss of critical support systems, and the cancellation of so many precious milestone experiences for teens and young adults, it also meant that our primary audience would be the heaviest impacted by the pandemic. We responded quickly, and after five days of prep, we held our first online retreat for 62 teens and young adults. A week later, we held our second retreat for 107 participants. And with that, our online programs were off and running. In addition to retreats, we now offer online programming including retreats, affinity groups, and drop-in classes, which play a critical role in building new skills and interest for teens pre-retreat and supporting teens in sustaining their practice post-retreat. Since March 2020, we have served 3,600 participants across 260 online program offerings.