Dear Enso Community,

Happy New Year! I am excited to let you know about some of the many changes this year has brought. We are working more closely with the international martial arts community as well as those closer to home. A special thank you to our board of directors: Susan, Bill, Sharon, Jessica, Tim, Galina, Lucas, Sheri, Max, Jennifer, Thien, Kristen and Linda. Your help, perspective and hard work make Enso Center possible.

If you are interested in being more involved in any of our programs please send us a message at [email protected] .

Our Hapkido, TaiChi and Tongjido (weapons arts) programs are back at full speed. During COVID and the slow return toward normal Matthew, Chuck, Jonathan and Dominik were instrumental in helping me keep things on track and even expanding our offerings. Archery and Yoga are ramping up and improving with the help of Tim and Sheri, their efforts to systematize and add support material is very exciting. The instructors at Enso Center have been truly dedicated to teaching here in person, remotely over Zoom as well as traveling to reestablish the martial arts community and promoting Hapkido as an art dedicated to peace in the face of adversity. Sharon, Susan and Jessica were instrumental in finding grants and organizing new opportunities. Thank you.

Our Adaptive Hapkido class is expanding and inspiring other teachers and organizations to build similar programs with our help. We have added an additional weekly class to deal with the demand. We are working on systems for teaching people with special needs (Adaptive) that can be reproduced by other organizations. Thank you to Chuck, Galina and Robyn for all of your dedication, hard work and insight.

We are excited to be developing PACS (Personal and Community Safety) an online and in person self defense and bystander training organization. We are doing this to help address community needs for addressing peaceful resolution of conflict. With increasing coverage of violence and polarization the need for conflict management and resolution is more important than ever. We are working on a program that equips people with the tools to adapt life, career and martial arts skills for use in self preservation and self defense situations. Sharon is organizing this, if you would like to be involved in this please send a message to [email protected] and [email protected]

We have transitioned into a donation based system for most of our classes.

Archery, summer camps and third party programs are not in this group. Need based scholarships are available upon request for these classes as well.

This means if you or your friends are interested in Hapkido, Weapons (Tongjido), Tai Chi or Yoga please come and train with no cost. Please check the website to register and for age restrictions. Registration is required.

So how does this work and why are we set up this way?

We rely on donations to cover our costs. These are set up in three ways. Check out the link at the top of each page on the website. https://ensocenter.org/memberships-donations/

Tiered auto-renew memberships- There are several levels of support available that are recurring charges to allow us to operate and serve the community. They are not and cannot be tied to services we provide to individuals.

Custom recurring donations- These are recurring donations set up to your personal choice that you can arrange through email in case our tiered packages do not appeal to you.

One time donations- Just like they sound, this is for one time donations on the occasions you would like to make an additional or one time donation but don’t want to commit to a recurring charge.

We have always had the policy that no one is turned away for lack of funds and have been offering scholarships for classes and events from our inception as a nonprofit in 1999. It wasn’t until COVID that we really started to see a need for this beyond a case by case consideration. During this time a few things became apparent.

One is that the people who needed the assistance were hesitant to ask.

Two is that people’s generosity for supporting the center and our community was greater than we had hoped.

Three is that by moving to a donation based system we hope that time and effort on administration could be simplified and more of our efforts could go to helping people through teaching and community building.

Donations pay for our expenses such as: insurance, utilities, teachers, and general use of the facilities. In 2023 this worked well. In 2025 we need some more help. If you are thinking of donating now is an ideal time. This will allow us to keep our programs running.

With rising costs we find that covering our expenses means raising our suggested donations by $10 a tier in February. We are also looking for groups we can partner with to raise money for other good causes.

We have been very fortunate in the past to receive end of the year donations if you would like to donate in this way please see the website www.ensocenter.org/memberships-donations/

We are so grateful to all of you. Enso Center would not function without your support. Your generosity inspires us.
Thank you,

Posted in Newsletters