[W]e cannot afford to consider inner work to be a choice for those that do social justice work.
— Rev. angel Kyodo williams
2000 Founding
Author/activist Rev. angel Kyodo williams founded what is now Transformative Change as a response to the need for more grounded, sustainable approaches to peace, justice and broad-based social change.
Originally started in New York City, the organization then known as the New Dharma Community held weekly gatherings that offered basic instruction in meditation and helped connect that practice to the daily lives of a diverse group of people. The success of the New York Circle became the inspiration for offering that practice on a larger scale.
December 2003
a few months after co-teaching back-to-back African-American and People of Color meditation retreats at Northern California’s renowned Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Rev. williams was compelled to move to the San Francisco Bay Area to open a center of operations. She saw in the Bay Area’s long-standing twin cultures of social change work and mind-body awareness practices as a unique opportunity to bring these two commonly discrete areas together.
In Oakland, she began the New Dharma Meditation Center for Urban Peace, home to a spirit-centered “transformative practice community” rooted in the practice of meditation. New Dharma supported mainly people of color in meditation, yoga, and inner awareness practices.
2006
The New Dharma community shut its doors to re-vision, and determined that their approach to spiritual practice wasn’t enough to change the world. They decided to invest in changing the WAY change is done by bridging inner awareness and social justice and offering practices such as yoga and meditation to activists, allies, and agents of change.
The new organization, Transformative Change (XC) offered trainings in yoga, meditation and 3|One. The trainings were specifically designed for those active in the social change and social justice movements. XC envisioned people taking the practices they learned out into their organizations and communities and transforming movements for justice and progressive social change.
Present
Today Transformative Change is the umbrella organization for a growing series of programs that offer participants ways of cultivating inner awareness as a foundation for engaging in social justice work — grounding social justice in presence. You will find information about our programs, and links to their separate sites (where applicable) on this website.
We invite you to join us.