Programs
Probation Interventions
California has the largest and most expensive prison system in the nation. We pay $71,000 to incarcerate a young person for one year. Youth begin entering the juvenile justice system as early as at 11 years of age and sometimes don’t exit until they are 24. The MBA Project is dedicated to supporting these children by giving them the resources they need to gain impulse control and create healthier lifestyles for themselves and their communities. MBA offers classes in Probation settings, including youth prisons, juvenile halls, and detention camps. In these settings we work with Probation staff, Juvenile judges, and Mental Health staff to integrate our programming into the institutional culture, and to drive institutional change.
MBA’s Probation interventions are designed to be delivered in a classroom setting. If we have access to the outdoors, as at some detention camps, we incorporate nature elements into our programming, as at the Log Cabin program.
Programs
Aftercare
MBA also works with detained youth during the critical post-release period, once they’ve left detention and are transitioning back into the community. Recently, MBA has been partnering with the Oakland Green Youth Arts & Media Center – a joint collaboration between Art in Action, Colored Ink, Grind for the Green, and the Community Rejuvenation Project – on our aftercare efforts. The Center, which was incubated with the help of Van Jones and Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins at Green for All, is one of the first arts and multimedia centers dedicated to both ecological awareness and artistic and professional development for at-risk youth in the nation.
In addition to our partnership with OGYAMC, we also do one-on-one and small group mentoring work with youth transitioning back into the community. Currently, MBA Instructor, musician and producer Iamani I. Ameni is combining mindfulness and emotional intelligence training with hip-hop and beat-based music production in his Oakland studio.
Programs
Education & Medical
MBA is currently partnering with Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland (CHRCO) on one medical and one school-based project. On the medical side, MBA and CHRCO are jointly carrying out a pilot project at Camp Sweeney (Alameda’s long-term youth detention camp) that utilizes MBA’s intervention as a prescription for anxiety and insomnia for youth in detention. To our knowledge, this partnership represents the first instance nationally of adolescent physicians in the probation system writing a prescription for mindfulness training as a way to counteract conditions that have been traditionally treated with pharmaceutical interventions.
MBA is also partnering with CHRCO adolescent medicine physician Dr. Tomás Magaña and the Faces for the Future program to offer mindfulness, wellness, and emotional literacy training to youth in the Oakland and Berkeley Unified School Districts. The three-year FACES internship program introduces underrepresented minority high school students to the health professions, assists them in getting into educational programs of their choice, and equips them with the necessary personal skills to succeed in these and other demanding pursuits.
Programs
Capacity Building & Training
MBA builds capacity among youth service providers to integrate mindfulness and emotional intelligence approaches into their work. We train staff of youth-serving organizations to enhance their effectiveness in serving youth, and to facilitate stress reduction and the development of emotional competence. We can customize trainings for the specific needs of an organization, addressing any of a wide variety of aspects of mindfulness, emotion regulation, well-being, and working with highly at-risk youth. For workshop rates, or with questions about receiving trainings for your organization, please email us at info@mbaproject.org.
Highlights of recent training work include a partnership with the Edgewood Center for Children & Families, San Francisco’s largest direct service nonprofit, on a series of workshops for youth service providers from over 20 different Bay Area agencies. The workshops were geared toward non-clinicians, especially those working with at-risk, gang-involved youth in vocational training, afterschool and community center contexts. The training provided this community with a toolkit to manage their own stress, anxiety and secondary trauma, along with strategies to applying these tools directly to their interactions with youth.
In 2011, pending federal funding from the Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquent Prevention, MBA will offer two weekend mindfulness retreats as well as monthly, three-hour mindfulness-training sessions to a group of 30 young adult mentors working with at-risk youth in East Oakland. The mentors are part of the East Bay Asian Youth Center’s mentorship program.
