Orenda Healing International was founded in Santa Fe, NM in 1993 to sponsor our work in teaching Healing Art© to HIV and cancer patients. After several years of this work we were called to devote our efforts to supporting challenged youth. The needs of these young people, and our wish to help them, inspired the YouthSpace Project, which we designed and helped to manage– collaborating with Nevada County Community Network, Silver Springs High School, the 3-R School, and other organizations in Nevada City, CA during the spring, summer and fall of 1996. YouthSpace was an attempt to provide a forum and online meeting ground for homeless children and concerned adults in Nevada County.
Our next project, YouthSpace Santa Fe, included media arts training, computer programming and web page design, permaculture gardening, team-building outdoor activities, boys’ and girls’ support groups, and a weekly public radio talk show for teens and adults, “Millennium.”
We began outreach to homeless families with a Healing Art program at the Elsa Segovia Center in Menlo Park, CA, in January 2005. In 2008, we initiated and completed Phase I of the Four Corners Media Project and began work on Phase II.
In addition to providing services to individuals and communities, our mission has expanded to encourage, develop, and support research in the field of alternative healing. We will soon send out RFPs and Calls for Submissions to the Four Winds Journal, a key source of information and collaborative opportunities for changemakers. The Journal will serve a thriving and growing international readership and create a positive impact on both local and global communities.