Empowered people empower people

In 2015, I began training at Thousand Waves as a birthday present to myself. That present has continued to give me so many gifts in the time since then, and this fundraiser is one way that I can give back.

For most of this year, I've been training as an Advanced Yellow Belt, and I'm about 6 weeks away from promoting to Green Belt. It's been a challenging year, when I could not progress as fast as my training cohort, and the TW teachers have been amazing in encouraging me, and making sure I pace myself appropriately. I also took the full Empowered Self-Defense Workshop, which is a major part of Thousand Wave's mission. As we all think more about how we respond to aggression in the world around us, this is incredibly valuable, and your donations help this work be available to as many people as possible.

This year, during the Spirit Challenge week, I'll be going for some more Board-Breaking (a highlight of last year for me!), and also learning about Joint Locks and Nunchuks! Don't you want to support learning about Nunchuks?

Thousand Waves is a mission-driven not-for-profit in the city of Chicago that has been active in the community for over 33 years with a mission to foster fitness, healing, empowerment, and peacemaking.

Our Spirit Challenge Fundraiser supports Thousand Waves' work in three critical areas:

• Scholarship program, which provides funding for children and adults who wouldn't otherwise be able to study karate or self-defense.
• Adapted Seido Karate program (ASK), which provides karate for youth with disabilities.
• Self-Defense/Violence Prevention program, which provides Self-defense and Bystander Intervention workshops and courses all over the city.

Thousand Waves was named based on the Japanese saying, "One wave sets thousands in motion." Thank you for helping us make waves!