the first Breath-Water-Sound workshop held for street children in Manila, Phillippines. And a new beginning for the group of 12-17 year-olds comprising disadvantaged teenagers, abandoned and abused children, runaways and juvenile delinquents. Gradually, the children looked at the processes from resistance to innocence, from suspicion to love and happiness. The children fully participated in the meditation, yoga and games sessions and many, like the 16-year-old, shared the transformation they experienced in the few days.

Designed by Sri Sri to help rehabilitate street children, the Breath-Water-Sound workshops focus on giving the young minds a chance to release pent-up emotions and look at life from a fresh, optimistic perspective. Lessons in health and hygiene and simple breath tools to release stress and negative emotions, love and care have gone a long way in helping street children across the world pick up their lives and realise their dreams and aspirations.

These courses are taught across the globe: from the ghettos in Argentina to slums in Kenya to correction centres in the United States of America to chawls in India.

In February 2008, the Amit School’s principal invited the Art of Living to conduct trauma-relief programs for students in Sderot, a small town in Israel near the Separation Fence bordering Gaza. The continuous bombing of qasams had increased trauma levels in children which led to learning difficulties. Today, around 250 students in the Amit religious schools have undergone the workshop. Regular workshops have been held ever since which teach yoga, special breathing techniques and interactive processes to calm the mind and release fear and anxiety. Lenoy, a 15-year-old girl, narrates her experience: “I always faint when the bombing starts. My legs shake even at school. When I heard the bomb yesterday, I began practicing the breathing techniques I learnt at the course and taught my mom as well. We calmed down and went outside to check the damage. I saw an unconscious woman. I covered here with a coat and called an ambulance. I feel relieved and strong. Finally, I'm not the one to faint and I'm helping somebody else instead. My mother is very proud of me.”

Children from conflict spots in Iraq, Sri Lanka, Kosovo and the Kashmir Valley have experienced relief and solace.

In keeping with Sri Sri’s philosophy of ensuring holistic growth of children from all sections of society, the Art of Living runs an orphanage in Kashmir for children who are victims of militancy in the state and for the orphans of the devastating earthquake of 2005. It currently houses 250 children who are provided food, clothes, books and formal education. Besides the education centre, the Art of Living runs programmes for children and the youth in the Valley to save them from militancy.

“I remember being buried with my dead classmates around me under the concrete pile and mess. Only three others survived. Please thank those Art of Living teachers for me. After doing the exercises they taught me, I feel less frightened. I feel so much more comfortable now,” shares a 14-year-old girl of Shifang School which was reduced to rubble in the May 2008 Sichuan Earthquake in China. Special workshops were conducted in relief camps across the affected areas to help children cope with the destruction caused by the earthquake.

After the tsunami which hit South East Asia in December 2004, the Art of Living built an orphanage in Sri Lanka for the young victims. In the affected areas in Nagapattinam, India, Sri Sri started a school to educate children whose lives were disturbed in the tsunami.

In the past, the Art of Living has carried out massive rehabilitation measures during times of natural disasters. The welfare of children is a special area of attention: be it at the time of Hurricane Katrina in the United States of America or the Bihar Floods in India (2008) or Cyclone Gonu in Muscat.

Since the last 28 years, a school across the International Art of Living Centre in Bangalore, India, has been driving the aspirations of children from the neighbouring villages. Little girls and boys, mostly first generation learners, have received a holistic education, completely free of cost. Spared from a future that would have been marked by odd jobs in the fields or at local shops, these children now dream of being doctors, engineers or teachers. The Ved Vignan Maha Vidya Peeth school has been the nerve centre of all this change. Started by Sri Sri in 1985, this school is the first among many free schools which have been started for rural and tribal children who would not otherwise have had access to an education.

The Art of Living believes that a good education is to give a firm foundation to an individual for life, and has taken the responsibility of giving as many underprivileged children a good education for free. In Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, located in the Indian city of Mumbai, the Art of Living began the first English school. The Art of Living has set up 86 tribal and rural schools in remotest parts of India. These schools are located in areas where child labour and poverty are widespread. These schools provide free, quality and value-based education to children from the marginalised sections of society, saving thousands of them from being forced into child labour. In all, nearly 10,000 children from economically backward areas where education is beyond the reach of the people benefit from this initiative every year.