Yoga For Good Launches On International Women’s Day

By Rachel Nichols

Yoga For Good, a new campaign created by OneProsper that empowers women to break the cycle of poverty in India, launches today Wednesday, March 8 on International Women’s Day, and a number of yoga studios in San Francisco are participating.

Raju Agarwal, who founded OneProsper in 2010, has been passionate about making a difference since his childhood when he first visited India and hopes to engage people in rewarding prosocial activity. There is research in psychology that shows that people who engage in prosocial activities experience increased happiness—but only when they believe that their giving will have a meaningful impact. As many of us yogis know, research also shows that yoga and meditation increase happiness; so combining yoga and meditation with prosocial activity seemed like a natural fit for Raju.

“Several years ago I read a book by John Wood: Leaving Microsoft to Change the World. That inspired me to take action by starting a nonprofit,” he said. “I did research on high impact solutions to poverty and read an article about an innovative irrigation technology for small farmers in India.” Raju then contacted the founder of the company and asked how he could help, and OneProsper was born shortly thereafter. To date, OneProsper has already empowered 120 women in the Thar Desert of Rajasthan, India to grow vegetables with drip irrigation.

How It Works
The mission of Yoga for Good is to use yoga as a vehicle for helping others. Funds generated by Yoga for Good will help fund a drip irrigation system for women in India, enabling them to plantand cultivate pomegranate saplings. These women beneficiaries will be able to grow organic pomegranate for international markets with the drip irrigation system and, as a result, will be able to increase spending on their children's nutrition and education. In addition, donors will be given a volunteer opportunity to travel to India on a yoga service trip. Donors will begin their day with yoga and then meet their beneficiary and help her to sow crops.

How to Participate
You can contribute to Yoga for Good by attending a donation-based yoga class this week at one of these participating Bay Area yoga studios. There will also be several tech companies in San Francisco, including AdRoll, Box Inc, LinkedIn, Pandora Music, StubHub and Yelp, that are offering donation-based yoga classes to employees to raise funds for Yoga for Change. In addition, OneProsper will launch a crowd-funding website for empowering women around the world on International Women's Day.

Yoga for Good will be an annual event on International Women's Day with an additional event being held on International Yoga Day in late June. After June, there are plans to hold monthly Yoga for Good classes.

For more information or to donate, visit www.oneprosper.org. Any yoga studios that are interesting in participating in future events, contact Raju: raju@oneprosper.org.

We hope to see you this week at one of the Yoga for Change events!