Our Story
In 2022, driven by the lack of mental health resources on college campuses and inspired by Lisa D. Miller’s brain research on the protective factors of spirituality, our founder Dori Baker began assessing the needs of student life professionals supporting the wellbeing of students.
She created a volunteer team of young, diverse, faith leaders from across religious and spiritual traditions to begin imagining a social enterprise that would work upstream to provide care and support to young adults.
The mission: help young people tap into their own deep wells of wisdom and soulful practices.
The Pilot
At OODW we teach through practice. In April of 2023, we selectively recruited and gathered 20 people to represent multiple diversities including age, gender, race, career trajectory, and religious tradition.
Our participants included four recent college graduates, six religious professionals, seven student life professionals, and three people who work adjacent to young adult populations.
Over the course of a 24-hour gathering, we engaged fifteen soulful practices from various faith traditions. What we learned is that people are hungry for spiritual practices that provide reliable hope in their own lives and in the lives of young adults they serve.
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We continue to experiment with inviting people to enjoy and lead winsome, evocative, and freshly upcycled soulful practices sourced from religious traditions around the world. These practices, closely tethered to and in consultation with practitioners from originating contexts and cultures, contribute to upstream mental health care by building resilience in individuals and supporting a culture of resilience in communities.
COMING SOON
Guide to Soulful Practices
We are currently developing a Guide to Soulful Practices which features practices that you can lead in your own context as well as a template of how you can create and lead your own soulful practice.
Subscribe below to receive updates on when it’s out in the world!
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