Shakti School is committed to being a support to the BIPOC community and ameliorating the vestiges of racism and white supremacy in our world. We deeply care about equality with all of our heart. We offer this support through means that feel authentic, not coercive and divisive, through investing time, research and money into making our platform a more loving and diverse environment.

In this light, we are happy to have offered over 70 diversity scholarships since 2019. We have also invested deep time and money into crafting a program that values our collective humanity and deep equality.

We also believe in returning financial resources to India and beyond. We are honored to announce that in addition to our regular scholarship program, Shakti School is collaborating with one of the world’s foremost organizations for supporting women in education and gender equality – She’s the First. It is our hope to advance the cause of educating girls of South Asian heritage specifically, given our love and respect for ancient Indian medicine and our longing to give back to a culture whose rich history has given so much to humanity.

As an organization, we are well aware of this polarizing time and the current political and culture war. Precisely because of this, Shakti School seeks to be a home that prioritizes the parasympathetic nervous system (rest, digest, tend and befriend) over the sympathetic nervous system (fight, flight, freeze). It is not to say that there are not times and places for fight and flight, but this is not our mission at this time. Our mission is to offer a place for women to rest in a world that is constantly triggering the opposite.

In this light, and given our deep listening to the needs of past and current students, we will not be a place for politicized identity politics debate, spurred forward by the echo chambers of social media. We are not a school that will teach a particular brand of social justice theory, language policing or cancel culture. We expect that our staff and students have the wherewithal to act and speak in good faith in a way that respects the personhood and unique individual perspective of others, even those we may at times disagree with.

This in no way detracts from our insistence that Shakti School be a home that values all human beings, irrespective of skin color or identity. It also takes nothing away from our expectation that our staff will personally decide what their form of activism will look like. We respect the spiritual and political sovereignty of our staff and students and do not discriminate as such. And we welcome all women, of all backgrounds, political orientations, races and religions, including women who identify as trans, with open arms, to a place
of rest.