Budo Accelerator
PROGRAMS
Martial Arts and Leadership Development for Underprivileged Youth
Our program takes an uncommon approach to addressing a common challenge - equipping young people from backgrounds of adversity with essential life, leadership, and career skills so they can become thriving members of society. We deliver several distinct services: Martial Arts Training: Students engage in weekly, year-round martial arts training, including Aikido, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Kali, self-defense, and more. This provides a unique platform to integrate physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual development for our students. Expert-Designed Leadership Program: Our Leadership curriculum is designed by experts in education, psychology, and martial arts and offered for academic credit at UCI or transferable to UC, CSU, community colleges, and many other universities across the country. Weekly classes include lessons and workshops on life and leadership skills, mental health strategies, and career readiness. Women’s Self-Defense Intensives: Led by female instructors, these sexual assault prevention workshops are designed to protect young women ages 14-24, who are at the highest statistical risk of sexual assault. Mental Health Support: We provide a safe environment for students to learn and practice positive mental health strategies, such as breathwork and trust-based touch, while under pressure. In-Person and Online Communities: Students are welcomed into a diverse, multi-generational community at our dojo and partner sites, connect with peers nationwide on our Discord server, access online curriculum, and for those over 18, engage with professionals through our mentor portal. Services are delivered on a year-round basis at our facility and partner sites. Students are grouped into cohorts of 12-20 in size and meet for two hours weekly for our martial arts-integrated leadership and mentoring programs. Students are also encouraged to practice martial arts and engage with the community up to 6 days / week. We currently serve over 250 high school and college students annually. Our partnerships with UC Irvine, Simon Scholars, Project Hope Alliance, and the Irvine Public Schools Foundation provide us the opportunity to extend our impact by reaching more youth from underserved and underrepresented communities. UCI alone has over 15,000 first-generation undergrads who we are able to reach directly through targeted emails as well as through UCI's social media channels.
Our program’s desired outcomes include:
Developing life, career, and leadership skills that support workforce readiness, independence, and self-sufficiency. We aim for 80%+ of our students improving in communication, critical thinking, and collaboration skills as assessed through pre- and post-program surveys.
Creating economic mobility and opportunity through development of social capital, mentorship, and career knowledge. We aim for connecting 100% of our college students with mentors and having 90% of students leave our program with good or great career knowledge.
Academic persistence (reducing dropout rates for college students): We aim for a 95% graduation rate.
Improving mental health and resilience, equipping students to face their unique challenges more effectively. Preliminary results of a study run by UCI’s Stress Health and Emotion Lab shows our students experience a decrease in loneliness and depression and an increase in self-efficacy and mastery.
We measure impact across all of our programs. Following is a link to see our outcomes / impact for our program for First-gen / low-income college students at UCI: https://firstgen.naspa.org/blog/uc-irvine-launches-innovative-martial-arts-course-for-incoming-first-gen-students
Student testimonials and other impact metrics can be found here: https://www.budoaccelerator.org/impact