(Registered charity no. 1169251)
TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT AND RECEIPTS AND PAYMENTS ACCOUNTS
FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2024
CONTENTS
| Legal and Administrative information | 1 |
|---|---|
| Trustees' Report | 2 |
| Independent Examiner's Report | 9 |
| Receipts and Payments Accounts | 10 |
| Statement of Assets and Liabilities | 11 |
| TOOLS FOR INNER PEACE | |
|---|---|
TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT |
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| FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2024 | |
| Trustees | Minna Maaria Jarvenpaa (Chair) |
| Kristina Hemon | |
| Susan Meirion Owen | |
| Charity Reg. No. | 1169251 |
| Working name | TIP |
| Registered Office | Wilding Way |
| Birkenhead | |
| Prenton | |
| Merseyside | |
| CH43 7RA | |
| Webstie | www.tools4innerpeace.org |
| Independent Examiner | Charles Ssempijja, FCA |
| NfP Accountants Ltd | |
| 3rdFloor, 86-90 Paul Street | |
| London | |
| EC2A 4NE | |
| Bankers | Barclays Bank Plc |
| 1 Churchill Place | |
| London | |
| E14 5HP |
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TOOLS FOR INNER PEACE
TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT
FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2024
The trustees present their annual report and financial statements of the charity for the year ended 31 December 2024. Reference and administrative information set out on page 1 forms part of this report. The financial statements have been prepared on a Receipts and Payments basis, and they comply with current statutory requirements and the charity's governing document. The Trustees’ Annual Report has been prepared in compliance with the Statement of Recommended Practice: Accounting and Reporting by Charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102). The financial statements have been prepared on a Receipts and Payments basis, taking advantage of provisions available for smaller charities.
OBJECTIVES AND ACTIVITIES FOR THE PUBLIC BENEFIT
Charitable objects
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To promote, develop, nurture and protect mental, physical and emotional health of individuals, for the public benefit, focusing in particular but not exclusively and without limitation, on people working in conflict zones around the world, as well as civilian victims of war, and children and youth suffering from transgenerational trauma, by the provision of yoga and associated or other services such as, without any limitation whatsoever, training, counselling and support.
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To provide public education and training in the therapeutic use of yoga to alleviate trauma and mental suffering.
Activities
The charity offers yoga as a means of coping with stress and trauma. The charity's primary beneficiaries include refugees and other disadvantaged and marginalised people, such as homeless street youth.
Statement of public benefit
The Trustees confirm that they have complied with their duty to have due regard to the guidance on public benefit published by the Charity Commission in exercising their powers or duties.
The Trustees have referred to the guidance contained in the Charity Commission’s general guidance on public benefit when reviewing the charity’s aims and objectives and in planning its future activities. The Trustees consider how planned activities will contribute to the aims and objectives that have been set.
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FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2024
ACHIEVEMENTS AND PERFORMANCE: REVIEW OF ACTIVITIES FOR THE YEAR
In dark times and forgotten corners of the earth, Tools for Inner Peace -trained community yoga teachers are creating safe spaces for trauma recovery.
In 2024, Tools for Inner Peace continued to seek out ways to expand our reach in making trauma-informed yoga available to refugees, conflict survivors, homeless street youth and vulnerable populations in the UK, Lebanon, Sierra Leone and Finland. We want to empower trauma survivors to manage their own healing and wellbeing. Ultimately, our aim is to train members of these marginalised communities themselves to share the tools and techniques of yoga for the wellbeing of others in their community. To this end, we focused our efforts on 1. offering free weekly yoga classes in communities where yoga is otherwise not accessible, 2. further training and immersion opportunities for community yoga teacher trainees, and 3. joining forces with wider mental health focused initiatives to demonstrate the benefits of yoga as a modality for trauma healing.
United Kingdom
In the UK, our free refugee yoga classes in deprived areas in Merseyside and at refugee hotels in the greater Liverpool area continue for the seventh year running. In 2024, we also started offering sessions for refugees in Coventry, delivered by Caroline Prichard (Satyadhara). The Eastbourne Sanctuary have found funding to continue the weekly yoga classes that were originally offered by Tools for Inner Peace. These regular yoga sessions in Liverpool, Eastbourne and Coventry offer a safe space throughout the year.
The value of these safe spaces became particularly clear in July-August 2024 when far-right racist groups, determined to spread hate, mobilised to threaten those seeking sanctuary in the UK. Over several days of rioting, refugee hotels were attacked around the country and an attempt was made to set a refugee hotel in the Liverpool area on fire. In the aftermath, Lynn Mooney (Lalitatirth), our yoga teacher in Liverpool was called on to offer additional wellbeing sessions for refugees traumatised by the rioting. Here is how one participant spoke of her experience:
“I am really enjoying the yoga class. It helps me to relax and keep myself active. Living at a hotel is very stressful but this yoga class is making it bearable.” - Refugee yoga participant, Liverpool
In June 2024, a team of experienced yoga teachers came together to offer our annual Yoga for Trauma weekend workshop at Lockerbrook Farm in the Peak District. The workshop was attended by a diverse group of 15 yoga teachers, refugee advocates, asylum seekers and refugees. They came together to practice, share and support one another. During this weekend workshop, participants
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came to understand the neuroscience behind trauma and learned about the wisdom of the body and heart in helping to resolve it.
The 15 participants who attended our Yoga for Trauma weekend in June 2024 had a deeply nourishing experience. They are still actively connecting with each other, and have asked for further opportunities to come together and to experience the simple, powerful practices of yoga that we teach. Here is how one participant summed up his experience:
“I always go back to the weekend when I am feeling stressed or upset. It was such an uplifting weekend, full of goodness. The healthy eating, getting up early, and learning new practices filled my soul. I continue to practice every day.” - Refugee yoga participant, Eastbourne
Classes and training in the UK in 2024 were funded by the Eleanor Rathbone Trust, John Younger Trust and the National Lottery Community Fund. Refugee Women Connect continued as our key partner in Liverpool.
Lebanon
Tools for Inner Peace started a year-long Going Deeper into Classical Yoga training in January 2024. This was primarily intended for those who had completed our first Community Yoga Teacher Training in Lebanon in 2023, and included Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese-Armenian trainees from different parts of Lebanon, including Tripoli in the north, Arsel in the east, Beirut at the centre and Nabatiye in the south. In January and June 2024, we also completed our final reassessments and certification of those Community Yoga Teacher trainees who had not been certified at the end of the original training.
The Going Deeper into Classical Yoga training was intended to be offered over four residential weekends in January, June and a final one at the end of the year, with daily home practice in between weekend modules. However, as hostilities in Lebanon ramped up and the Israeli army forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee southern Lebanon, our retreat space at Mariapoli was also converted into a shelter for displaced families. This meant that we were not able to complete the last one of our cycle of weekend retreats. Tools for Inner Peace will be looking for opportunities to offer additional training in 2025.
To help alleviate the suffering of at-risk communities, our Tools for Inner Peace -trained community yoga teachers became active in giving yoga classes in vulnerable and marginalised communities across Lebanon. Natali Massoud (Nadagiri) and Maria Holler (Bhaktagiri) followed up our training of 15 teenagers who share yoga with 800 other teenagers within the informal education centres run by Alsama; they convened the trainees and offered a space for peer-to-peer support and teaching practice. Amani Abd Al Rahman and Roza Khalaf gave classes to refugee women in the Bekaa Valley. Zeina Alhoujeyri (Atmatattwa)
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taught community yoga classes in Arsel at the Syrian border. Roula Darwish opened up Houna Centre, the yoga space she manages, in the Hamra district of Beirut to women and children displaced by bombings in southern Lebanon. She recruited Rima Hammoud, herself displaced from Nabatiye, to offer sessions for them.
“It has been a disastrous period, but we have managed to be there for our community, to help in the ways we can, as much as we can. The tools we learned from you served us well.” - Roula Darwish, Community Yoga Teacher, Manager of Houna Centre, Beirut
Our team in Lebanon are also looking after their own needs and finding ways to go deeper with their practice. Five members of our team of teachers and trainees in Lebanon travelled to India in August-October for two months of in-depth yoga experience and took part in a number of yoga trainings at the Bihar School of Yoga ashram and Rikhiapeeth ashram in India. They will be sharing what they have learned through community yoga classes over the coming months and years.
Our classes and training in Lebanon, as well as scholarships for trainees who traveled to India in 2024 were financed out of community contributions, as well as generous individual donations from yoga teachers and practitioners outside of Lebanon.
Sierra Leone
In Sierra Leone, Tools for Inner Peace expanded the support given to the YAMA group of yoga facilitators whom we have been training and who have been offering free yoga classes for vulnerable street youth. These street youth, many of whom are narcotics addicts and street workers, are some of the most vulnerable members of Sierra Leone society; they sleep rough, smoke kush, a highly addictive street drug, and then neglect their hygiene and nutritional needs. In 2024, the classes reached about 300 street youth a month in five different slums and ghettos. After each class, participants were offered a warm nutritious meal, often the only square meal that they would eat that day.
Once a month, we provided a health check-up for all participants; the nurse dispensed medicines for the most typical ailments that include malaria, typhoid, various skin and respiratory conditions. We also experimented with bringing nurses from the HIV unit of a local hospital to offer HIV testing. Eight out of 50 participants tested HIV positive in the first testing session. The challenge was that those testing positive were reluctant to acknowledge their status and avail themselves of free anti-retrovirals. With generous support from our Italian yoga teacher and practitioner friends, we also distributed hygiene packs with underwear and toiletries at the end of the year.
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Tools for Inner Peace continued to pay the YAMA facilitators a small stipend that covers transport and a teaching allowance. We also provided further training to the facilitators, in the form of one-day and two-day workshops, sharing the methods and sequences that Swami Pragyamurti had developed for teaching in South African townships and prisons. Training sessions were offered by Minna Jarvenpaa (Mantramala). Grant funding for 2024 activities in Sierra Leone was received from the Souter Charitable Trust, the MPM Charitable Trust and the Big Give Trust.
To make the outreach work to Freetown slums and ghettos sustainable, Tools for Inner Peace partnered with a more established Sierra Leonean youth organisation, the Global Youth Network for Empowerment and Development (GYNED). Together, we launched a successful bid for more significant funds in the framework of a mental health support initiative. With support from these funds, YAMA work is set to expand to additional slum communities in 2025, with funding coming through GYNED, the lead organisation for the project.
Finland
Tools for Inner Peace was invited to give a series of short Yoga for Trauma workshops and sessions in Finland in June 2024. Our host and initiator of the workshops was Nadiya, a community well-being, integration and education platform that supports Ukrainian refugees in Finland. The participants, already part of a community working to heal together, were very open to the practices. There was a sense of safety and containment in working together, and for many participants this resulted in the release of traces of trauma; the sense of joy and relief at the end of the sessions was palpable:
“Wow! What a beautiful healing journey we have had.” - Viktoriya Kovalenko, co-founder, Nadiya
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TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT
FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2024
Organisational matters
At the end of 2024, trustees of Tools for Inner Peace were Kristina Hemon (secretary), Minna Jarvenpaa (chair) and Susan Owen (treasurer). Kerry Gallagher took on the role of Safeguarding Lead to ensure implementation and monitoring of our Children and Vulnerable Adults Safeguarding Policy, with Minna Jarvenpaa as the trustee focal point for safeguarding.
Our trustee meetings are enriched by the lived experience of Zena Takieddine from Syria and Joan Nambumgu, who is an asylum seeker from Uganda. They have not yet been fully onboarded as trustees due to complications related to documentation from their places of origin. A key aim for the coming year is to continue to bring on board other trustees and volunteers with personal experience of the UK asylum system, as well as people who originate from the communities for which Tools for Inner Peace is providing training.
FINANCIAL REVIEW
The Charity achieved net receipts for the year of £34,010 (2023 - £34,572), details of which are shown in the Receipts and Payments Accounts below.
Total receipts in 2024 included a total of £5,945 in contributions from individual donors around the world, £1,000 in payments for trainings, as well as £26,800 in new grant funds from the National Lottery Community Fund, Souter Charitable Trust, John Younger Trust and Big Give Trust, with £266 in Gift Aid.
The total value of payments amounted to £29,742 (2023 - £29,086). These included payments of yoga teachers’ and retreat facilitators’ stipends, travel costs, purchase of yoga mats, accommodation, food and transport expenses for retreats, as well as web hosting costs and other administrative expenses.
Cash at bank at the end of the financial year was £26,750 (2023 – £22,481), of which £16,161 were unrestricted funds.
Reserves policy
In its May 2024 meeting, the board of trustees agreed to put in place a reserves policy. The aim is to maintain 2-6 months of unrestricted reserves, to ensure that Tools for Inner Peace can continue to carry on its activities in the event of financial difficulties.
Going concern
The Trustees have a reasonable expectation that the charity has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future. For this
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reason, they continue to adopt the going concern basis in preparing the financial statements.
STRUCTURE, GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT
Constitution and governing document
Tools for Inner Peace is a registered charity, number 1169251, constituted as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) and was registered with the Charity Commission on 19 September 2016. The charity is also referred to by its working name, TIP.
The charity is governed under its Constitution logged with the Charity Commission on 19 September 2016. The governance of the charity is the responsibility of the Trustees.
The charity currently has no staff. The day-to-day management of the charity is delegated to one trustee who acts as a managing trustee.
Method of appointment or election of Board of Trustees
Trustees are elected and co-opted under the terms of the charity’s constitution. Regular reviews are held to identify gaps within the knowledge and expertise of the Board of Trustees and appointments are made where required to strengthen the Board.
When it is necessary to appoint new Trustees, due to either a Trustee stepping down or a gap of expertise in the board is identified, recruitment will initially begin through the networks of the board and management team. Applicants will be reviewed by Trustees and the successful applicant will be invited to attend a Trustee meeting. Following this, on the provision that the board are satisfied and the applicant still wishes to join the Trustee board, they will be appointed. No other person or external organisation is entitled to appoint any Trustees of the charity. The Trustees who served during the period and after the year end are shown on page 1.
Policies adopted for the induction and training of Trustees
The charity provides new trustees with an induction pack and mentoring from the Chair. The charity has limited resources for formal training of the trustee body. However, on-going training opportunities are announced to Trustees when these become available pro bono.
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TRUSTEES, ANNUAL REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2024 Related party relationships The charity has no related party connections with other organisations. The Trustees consider that members of the board and their close connections to be the only related parties of the charity. During 2024, one trustee received payments amouniing to £1,521 in reimbursement for out-of-pocket expenses made on behalf of (he charity and another received £87 (2023 - one trustee was reimbursed a total of1,699). Reinuneration policy for key managemeiii personnel The Trustees consider the Board of Trustees and the managing trnstee as comprising the key management personnel of the charity in charge of directing and controlling the charity and running and operating the charity on a day-to- day basis. All Trustees give of their tiine freely and no Irusiee remuneration was paid in the year. Trustees are required to disclose all relevant interests and to withdraw from decisions where a conflict of interest arises. Risk management The Trustees fully accept their responsibilities for ensuring thaL the major risks to which the Charity is exposed are identified, and that there are systems and procedures in place to mitigate Ihose risks. APPROVAL OF THE REPORT This report was approved by the Board of Trusiees on Ilth April 2025 and signed on its behalf by: Susan M Owen Trustee
TOOLS FOR INNER PEACE
RECEIPTS AND PAYMENTS ACCOUNTS
FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2024
Section A Independent Examiner’s Report
Report to the trustees/ Charity Name members of Tools for Inner Peace On accounts for the year 31 December 2024 Charity no 1169251 ended (if any) Set out on pages appended (remember to include the page numbers of additional sheets)
I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the above charity (“the Trust”) for the year ended 31 December 2024 .
Responsibilities and basis of As the charity trustees of the Trust, you are responsible for the preparation of the report accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (“the Act”).
I report in respect of my examination of the Trust’s accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carrying out my examination, I have followed the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the Act.
I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come to my INDEPENDENT EXAMINER'S attention ( ~~other than that disclosed below )~~ in connection with the examination which _STATEMENT*_ gives me cause to believe that in, any material respect:
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accounting records were not kept in accordance with section 130 of the Act or
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● the accounts do not accord with the accounting records
I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.
- Please delete the words in the brackets if they do not apply.
Signed: Date: 22 April 2025 Name: Charles Ssempijja ~~[I~~ Relevant professional FCA, ICAEW qualification(s) or body (if any): Address: NfP Accountants Ltd, 3[rd] Floor, 86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE ~~[I~~
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TOOLS FOR INNER PEACE
RECEIPTS AND PAYMENTS ACCOUNTS
FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2024
Address: NfP Accountants Ltd 3[rd] Floor, 86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE
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