Awakin.org

Our Forest Call guest this week will be: Sandy and Ranganath from Boston!  From traveling across India on third-class train tickets, and opening up their homes to generations of strangers-turned-family and serving up countless gourmet meals to helping preserve...

Nimesh "Nimo" Patel, rapper from Karmacy, music director, and animation studio owner in another life, has been living and volunteering in India with Manav Sadhna for the past two years. He went there with no agenda, just looking to serve, and ended up becoming the mentor,...

Every week, we have a "Forest Call" to share insights and inspiration from various corners of the ServiceSpace ecosystem.  Typically, the call opens with a circle of sharing, then features a guest speaker and is followed by dynamic Q&A around the emergent themes. Our...

Born at the Gandhi Ashram, in India, Jayesh Patel's journey of service is exemplary in every imaginable way. His father, Ishwar Patel, revolutionized the face of sanitation in the country, building 400 thousand toilets for the underprivileged communities and igniting more than a 100...

Our guest this week is the peaceartist, who goal is to run 10,000 miles for love, art and peace!! He has been running all over the US for peace and giving away paintings that he creates for the people he meets. He relies solely on Providence and the kindness of people along the...

An Educator, Giver, and Seeker of Kindness, Vinya Vasu embodies a heart of love.    A special educator, former principal and founding teacher for students with severe trauma, abuse, and emotional challenges, Vinya finds herself drawn to work with kids who need it...

Anjali Desai is a polymath. Originally from Houston, Texas, she came to India in 2003 as an Indicorps Fellow. Her two-year fellowship on community development and women's empowerment turned into nine years and counting in India. She has worked on earthquake relief projects, been a...

Christopher and his daughter Aubrey's mission is to generate altruism in others. They do this through their labor of love project, lovelist.org In their own words, "There are many people who need things. While we help people based on situational need, we primarily focus on people...

Nearly five years ago, Sara was facing an unwanted divorce, taking care of her 18-month old daughter, and looking for a job during the economic fallout.  As she says, "I was depressed, and quite frankly, I was a mess."  Her picture-perfect life had been turned upside down, so...

Born at the Gandhi Ashram, in India, Jayesh Patel's journey of service is exemplary in every imaginable way. His father, Ishwar Patel, revolutionized the face of sanitation in the country, building 400 thousand toilets for the underprivileged communities and igniting more than a 100...

Suresh Parmar is a mega-Renaissance man of the Gandhi Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. A village child at heart, he received his Masters of Social Work from Gujarat Vidyapith and has devoted the last decade of his life to service and sanitation work in both rural and urban...

Emma Seppala speaks 5 languages: French, German, Spanish, English & Mandarin.   She's got three degrees, from Yale, Columbia and Stanford. And she's got many awards for her research on meditation, happiness, social connection and compassion -- and yoga-based interventions for war...

Amit Dungarani is many things to many people.  To a valedictorian friend who grew up in his Arizona neighborhood, Amit is "one of the smartest guys I know."  To a six-year-old friend, he is the one who drives 4 hours to make the birthday cake celebration.  To his...

KindSpring has created a series of 21-Day Challenges designed to help individuals and groups grow in values that help create positive change. Irrespective of profession, age, culture or geography, when we commit to cultivating certain values we unleash a ripple effect that has the power to...

Every year, ServiceSpace hosts a ten week internship for high school and college students.  Through the course of the summer, they are assigned weekly homeworks, reflections and unique practices -- all of them designed to nurture conditions for an inner transformation to arise naturally...

Mia Tagano is an actress whose devotion to caring for her 95-year-old grandmother has touched many hearts.  "My grandmother is my best friend," Mia says. "She teaches me to be in the moment." She visits almost daily and cares for her grandmother, who...

Thomas Ponce is a 14-year-old animal rights advocate and a citizen lobbyist from Casselberry, Florida.  Thomas is the founder of Lobby For Animals, the Coordinator for Fin Free FL, and founder of Harley’s Home, which is used as his school-based animal rights club. Thomas became...

Aditi Chokshi is a remarkable "love warrior" of depth and character in the ServiceSpace ecosystem.  A management consultant at Bain & Company in San Francisco, where she advises a number of social sector and retail clients​, Aditi has spent eight years working on grassroots...

Having lived across the globe-- in places like London, Stockholm, California, Montreal, Oman, and now Dubai, Natasha Rockstrom is a global citizen with a passion to ignite generosity in all around her. It all began from the seeds of a business school social experiment,...

Join us for a special call this Saturday with Michaele Rosen ("Mish") and Mindy Weber, "sisters" in kindness who are volunteers and coordinators for KindSpring.org, ​a digital portal with over 75,000 members worldwide that is generating a global movement for...

Ann Sieben, the "Winter Pilgrim," has been a life-dedicated mendicant pilgrim since 2007.  A mendicant pilgrim is one who travels on foot along ancient paths to significant destinations. She carries nothing of material value; no money, cell phone, camera, GPS unit, nothing anyone...

Ferial Pearson is an instructor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha in the College of Education and a former teacher in the Omaha Public Schools. She is the founder of The Secret Kindness Agents project. Ferial was a teacher at Ralston High School in Nebraska in 2012 when the news came from...

Liam Chai carries a depth of presence that transcends his 23 years. In 2011, while on track to study medicine, he began reading the writings of visionaries like Gandhi, Lao Tzu, Thoreau, and Fukuoka -- and found himself grappling with questions and new perspectives that...

Makala Kozo Hattori is a healer, counselor, host and writer who was diagnosed with stage 2 colorectal cancer in July 2015. Rather than pursue traditional Western medicine’s allopathic treatments, he chose a path of natural medicine, diet, spiritual practices, and relational healing....

When you consider its synchronicities and various plot twists, Luc Reynaud’s life seems stage directed by the universe.  Perhaps it all started when at 6 years old he announced to his teacher Rayma Hayes that he was going to paint the moon.  “And what about the Earth,...

"I'm here to help make the world more beautiful, inside and out." San Francisco Bay Area artist, Robert Bengtson, expresses his love for beauty through the mediums of photography, interactive art, wood, metal, plaster... and puts his creativity into inspiring the human spirit....

Meredith May is a storyteller, award-winning journalist, author, and third-generation beekeeper. For much of her career, Meredith was (until 2015) a feature writer at The San Francisco Chronicle.  Her 2004 newspaper series “Operation Lion Heart,” about a war-wounded...

What would happen if schools focused on kindness and gratitude before achievement and academics? This is a question that Andy Smallman not only entertained, but also acted upon. In 1994, Andy with a group of dedicated parents and their children started Puget Sound Community School [PSCS]...

"Getting sober, 18 years ago, was the most important catalyst and spiritual change in my life. I remember looking down at my dogs and seeing their utter dependency and need for me to be present, and without hesitation, I got up and poured my drink down the sink and never looked back."...

As a diamond merchant and savvy businessman in Surat, India, Parag Shah used to look for R.O.E. -- return on equity. While running one of the most successful companies in the industry at its peak, Parag felt that his cup of gratitude overflowed, and so he started doing lots of...

“By birth, education and experience, my identity is shaped by a life spent at the crossroads - the place where cultures, ideas and beliefs collide and find both dissonance and resonance. I am most comfortable with those explorers and cartographers whose passion and life is the...

We live in a world where news stories are riddled with negativity; wars, crashes, political and social strife fill our living rooms and enter our most personal of space, our homes.  What are the implications for our neurological and physical health to be exposed to such negative news, and...

Once again this summer Service Space hosted a 10-week internship for students, with ages ranging from beginning high school to upperclass-persons in college! Each week, the interns were given readings and reflections, opportunities for silence, and experiments involving various personal...

Shamash Alidina, one of the UK’s most well-known mindfulness experts, is an accomplished mindfulness teacher, coach, speaker and author.  He is author of the international bestseller Mindfulness For Dummies, and more recently, of The Mindful Way through...

Anne Veh and Rajesh Krishnan are filmmakers and co-producers of Teach Me to Be WILD, a documentary film that explores the work of a wildlife sanctuary in Northern California where a team of injured, non-releasable wild animals become wild teachers helping to heal generations of hurt children...

“Holiness is everywhere. It abides hidden in the infinite ordinary and seeks expression through our intimate recognition of it.” -- Bonnie Rose   As a former registered nurse, actress, and opera singer, Bonnie Rose's career trajectory has been anything but...

Everyone is an invited guest of the universe. Lobsang Phunstock tells the children of his community this frequently. But the message he received at a young age was the opposite: he was an uninvited guest of the universe. His mother was very young when she gave birth to him in the state of...

Around the age of twenty-two, a near death experience transformed Dr. Michael Penn into a seeker. Following this profound encounter with his own mortality, he began an extensive study of sacred texts and the works of the founders of the world’s religions. Today Professor Penn is a...

Melissa Stephens is a spirited elementary and middle school teacher with 24 years of classroom experience, a wife, and mother of three children. A woman of many talents, she currently serves as Student Activities Director, 5th grade Enrichment Teacher, 8th grade Leadership Coordinator, and 7th...

Jane Murray, a former commercial lawyer qualified in the UK, Ireland and New York, and now a start-up entrepreneur in the United Kingdom, has shifted both in her life and in her career from inhabiting the head-space to the heart-space. As she's sought connection and belonging in a...

Ashima Goyal is an "ordinary" heroine who channels her talents and wide-ranging training to serve extra-ordinarily in small and large ways. A writer, an editor, a socio-emotional learning educator, an artist, a community-builder (and visionary behind Romania's first Karma...

Kevin F. Adler is a social entrepreneur dedicated to a world where everyone is seen as invaluable and interconnected. Adler is the Founder and CEO of Miracle Messages, a nonprofit that is working to end homelessness by rebuilding social support systems. Miracle Messages has been featured...

Shelly Ehler may be best known for her appearance on Shark Tank, but her lesser-known story of inner transformation that followed its airing is deeply enriching. On the surface, Shelly is an inspiring entrepreneur who took a simple idea, believed it with all her heart, and brought it to life. If...

Pavithra Sundareshan was 22 years old when, together with her husband and business partner, she started Vindhya, a business process outsourcing organization in Bangalore, India, which may be the first and only for-profit enterprise in which the majority of employees are people with disabilities...