When I was asked recently to share a favourite memory from my time with New Leaf Foundation, my mind became flooded with so many that it simultaneously went blank. There have been far too many moments of impact to recount. But later, as I was walking around the city, an image came back to me that stood out above all the rest.
I recalled a scene back in 2007 of standing and watching a group of young men walking down a long, echoing hallway towards me. I was waiting for them by the doorway of a program room that had been given to us in the school area of the jail where they resided. I remember the squeak of their matching sneakers, the swish of their burgundy tracksuits, their laughs and conversation as they made their way, and the less than inconspicuous blur of green yoga mats, which I’d just gotten permission to give them the week before, hanging at their sides or slung over their shoulders.
This was a facility where months before I had practically begged to give New Leaf’s pilot initiative a shot as the idea was initially met with understandable doubt or disinterest from some administrators. Now these young men paraded proudly down the hall, voluntarily showing up week after week, sometimes despite ridicule from peers, often in the face of skepticism from staff.
When I think about all the efforts put in by so many people over the years to help New Leaf Foundation grow and thrive for close to two decades (and, let’s just be clear, a large number of charitable organizations that start in Canada don’t make it to the three year mark), when I think of all the volunteers, staff, Board Directors, and advisors who often went so above and beyond, I come back to this first group of young men who had the courage to show up and try something so unfamiliar and outside their comfort zone.
I find myself, in these last days of New Leaf, reflecting on the level of willingness and dedication they demonstrated – many participating at minimum for several months and in multiple cases for several years. And how it was this… their dedication, their willingness, their participation and feedback… that allowed those initial pilot programs to thrive and prompted so many other facilities, and then schools and then other community-based youth serving initiatives, to approach New Leaf. It was these first groups of young men who were incarcerated that opened the door for our work to exist and expand over close to 20 years.
As I was sitting with a group of my colleagues recently around a family- style dinner table sharing memories, one of them recounted the “radical roots of New Leaf”, referring to our programs in jails, working with youth in violence-prevention and gang-exit initiatives, holding a silent retreat in a youth custody facilities with both youth and staff; I realized that along with all the amazing experiences we’ve been able to share with our facilitators, staff, community partners, and donors, the heartbeat of this work has always been the young people we’ve been so lucky to have met and gotten to know, and it’s they who have made the work so meaningful and who’ve made all of us better people for having known them.
So, as New Leaf Foundation comes to a close, I trust that the ripple effect lives on not only through the resources that we’ve shared with our amazing community partners, through all of the staff & facilitators who continue to carry some of what we’ve learned in our time with New Leaf into the other ways we work with people, but perhaps most importantly through the youth that we’ve engaged and the incredible gifts that they have to offer to the world.
Thank you to every youth who showed up, and to all of you for helping us water seeds that will continue to grow in limitless ways.
Laura