The Sweetwater Zen Center is developing youth outreach programs in the South Bay area of San Diego. We are bringing meditation, council practice and art projects to local youth groups helping at risk teens, teen pregnancy programs and gang intervention, just to name a few.

Currently we serve over 75 kids in over 5 different groups. We hope to bring these numbers into the hundreds by this time next year with more volunteers, more programs and more staff trained to help bring kids together for healing and connection through mediation, council
and art.

SWZC is committed to offering council practice as a powerful tool to promote communication among people. We are facilitating council with children at risk and for people in prison.

We are also training those who would like to use council with their groups. Our style of council comes from years of doing council together within the Zen Center.

We have also been profoundly influenced by the Twelve Step Movement as well as the form of council taught by the Ojai Foundation and the Satyana Institute.

We have created several murals in our community.

These projects have involved the neighborhood and been a lot of fun.
So far only one mural is still standing. However, we are always glad to see the impermanence of life effect our art.

Roshi Seisen is one of the founders of the Prison Meditation Project that serves prison populations by bringing meditation and council into the prison. Several members of SWZC give time each month to share the dharma with those who are incarcerated.

This drawing was made by one of the members of the prison community. Read about the story of this drawing.

Sweetwater Zen Center supports the Friends of Friendship Park. Friendship Park is a unique venue of great historical significance to both Mexico and the United States, and has served as the centerpiece of California's Border Field State Park since its inauguration by then-First Lady Pat Nixon in 1971.

Our government should continue to embrace its regular public use to promote the kind of friendship on which the true security of both nations depends. We support the park as a symbol of the possibility of friendship among people of all nations.

SWZC supports San Diego Pride. Last year we volunteered for picking up moop (matter out of place). Our intentions are to be in the parade someday although doesn't look like we will get it together this year.