Inner Strength Foundation Receives Social Innovation Award For Anti-violence Efforts

PHILADELPHIA - April 11, 2019 - PRLog -- The Inner Strength Foundation (ISF) today announced that it has received the 2019 Silver Award for Anti-Violence, conferred by the Greater Philadelphia Social Innovation Awards in recognition of ISF's evidence-based programs supporting mental health and improving academic achievement for youth in the Greater Philadelphia region.

Accepted by ISF Founder and Executive Director Amy Edelstein at ceremony of more than 300 attendees, the award is given to social innovators and initiatives that have incorporated tested solutions alongside new approaches to advance life-changing programs. As a service-oriented and youth-focused organization, ISF has served more than 5,500 area youth since it was founded in 2014.

"ISF is proud to receive this award. It recognizes the positive impact we have had. It also propels us forward to do much more great work as we partner with educators to to cultivate the minds, hearts, and actions of youth through mindful awareness and systems thinking," said Edelstein. "We all know about peer pressure and often wring our hands about the negative influence teens can have on one another. At Inner Strength, we're leveraging that same dynamic to improve environments. Kindness can become a habit."

The Greater Philadelphia Social Innovations Awards were founded in 2009. With a theme of "Innovating Ideas, Revolutionizing Realities," the 10th anniversary program, held this past January, recognized leadership that re-envisions the challenges communities face and enacts innovative solutions that reshape the world.

"Inner Strength has created a most practical and effective approach to building critical social-emotional life skills that all kids need, but especially those that live in poverty and are likely to have experienced trauma," said the Social Innovations Awards jurists in its summary of the Anti-Violence awardees for the 2019 program. "While deep therapeutic work is often necessary, the Inner Strength program is using norming, self-reflection, and skill building to build resilience and promote executive function in adolescence."

In addition to its in-school mindfulness programs, ISF offers comprehensive teacher training and educator professional development sessions focused on learning the foundations of mindful awareness and cultivating a developmental perspective. Through this work, ISF has also developed the Inner Strength System™, an evidence-based program currently used by more than a dozen high schools in Philadelphia. Frameworks for the Inner Strength System™ are in ISF's publication, The Conscious Classroom, which was recognized with an Independent Publisher Book (IPPY) Award in 2018 and is available for purchase on the ISF website (https://www.innerstrengthfoundation.net/books/).

To learn more about Inner Strength foundation and the other 2019 Greater Philadelphia Social Innovation Awards winners, visit https://www.philadelphiainnovationawards.com/2019-nominees.

About the Inner Strength Foundation

The Inner Strength Foundation (ISF) is Philadelphia-based 501(c)(3) organization with a dedicated mission to cultivate the minds, hearts, and actions of youth through mindful awareness and a developmental perspective on life. Established in 2014 on the values of compassion, awareness, respect, and education, ISF has served more than 5,500 youth in the Philadelphia area, partnering with schools and foundations to provide original research, evidence-based education, and customized mindfulness and cultural development programs that broaden teens' perspective on life, enhance their sense of possibility, and ground them in an experiential understanding of higher human potential. ISF is supported in part by the generosity of the Patricia Kind Family Foundation, Children Can Shape the Future, the Union Benevolent Foundation, the Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation, Trust for the Meditation Process, Henrietta Tower Wurts Memorial, the Virginia Batcheldor Foundation, Wapner Newman, Evolving Wisdom, WaWa Foundation, Wells Fargo, First Trust, the Walmart Foundation, Merck Gives Back, Mindful Moments, City Plants, and individual donors. To learn more, visit innerstrengthfoundation.net (https://www.innerstrengthfoundation.net/).