World Yoga Day 2023: Assessing Our Impact With Yoga Alliance Foundation
Last year, RefuSHE launched a trauma-informed yoga program on our Nairobi campus in partnership with Yoga Alliance Foundation. Our goal was to help alleviate psychological distress and provide young refugee women and RefuSHE staff members with a set of tools to cope with trauma. Yoga Alliance Foundation has since helped us gather feedback from participants and assess the impact of the pilot program.
The toolkit was meant to help inform our understanding of how the yoga program impacts the lives of our students and staff and how we can improve the program moving forward. Evaluation is an important aspect of program implementation, and we strive to provide services that meet the unique needs of the refugee girls and young women we serve. Questionnaires were built through a research-backed process and applied in a community setting. The measures used to collect data included a demographic questionnaire, a perceptions of yoga questionnaire, a perceived stress survey, and a scale to measure overall health. By collecting this type of data, RefuSHE and Yoga Alliance can better fine-tune future yoga programs to increase the mental and physical health of priority populations. The results collected by the evaluation tool showed positive feedback on the impact our trauma-informed yoga program has had on the well-being of our staff and students.
“Yoga gives you the ability to appreciate and work on your body without necessarily feeling the pressure of meeting a certain goal,” said Stephanie Kibaara, RefuSHE’s Digital Education & Innovation Manager and a participant in the trauma-informed yoga program with Yoga Alliance Foundation. “I had previously been experiencing back aches and unexplained fatigue that significantly improved once I started yoga. This was a great motivation to make my commitment to the sessions intentional and explore exercises that help you learn, experiment, and adjust as you go.”
Participants reported that they felt more in control of themselves and were better able to manage their stress responses and deal with hardships in a calm way. In addition, others shared that their self-esteem had increased and that they had an increase in confidence. As for the staff members, they mentioned that the skills helped to improve their well-being and thereby enabled them to focus better on their work. Both participants and staff stated that they shared the exercises they learned in the program with other members of their households.
“Yoga has positively impacted my mental health,” said Jasmine, a 19-year-old IT student at RefuSHE and trauma-informed yoga participant. “I never understood why people used to say, “Take deep breaths before making any big decisions” until I began doing the breathing exercises in this yoga program. Breathing exercises have become a habit that I’ve developed. I am proud to say that I am getting better at it with time."
Other key findings included:
100% of respondents agreed that their sleep, energy levels, and health were better because of yoga
Participants reported a 35% decrease in stress levels after the yoga program
Participants reported improvements in emotional problems, such as anxiety, depression, and irritability, after participating in the yoga program
Participants’ overall mental health improved by 20%
Participants’ overall physical health improved by 19%
We are so grateful to our partners at Yoga Alliance Foundation for creating this toolkit to assess our trauma-informed yoga program! We are eager to continue evolving and making a positive impact on the health and well-being of refugee women. Our team looks forward to continuing this collaboration and providing a space for holistic healing on our Nairobi campus.