Our Story |
iBme is part of a 20-year lineage of teen mindfulness retreats that began in Barre, MA. In 2000, the teen retreats migrated from New England to California where they ran for nearly a decade. In 2007, the leaders of the California teen retreats traveled to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia to run a teen retreat.
Joe Klein, 
iBme’s founder and current program director, was one of the staff members on the first teen retreat in Virginia. Joe was amazed at the transformational power of the teen retreats and quickly left his job to commit full time to bringing this retreat model to as many teens, teachers, counselors, and parents as possible in the DC/Virginia area. From 2007-2009, Joe worked to develop a yearly schedule that included two 5-day and two weekend teen retreats, as well as programming for young adults and adults in the counseling, social work, and education fields.
In the summer of 2010, Inward Bound Mindfulness Education was established (iBme) as an independent nonprofit to run and manage the teen, adult, and in-school programming. In 2010, iBme ran 2 week long and 2 weekend retreats for teens as well as 3 weekend retreats for adults.
Over the past year we have worked with 85 teens and over 100 parents and professionals on retreat in addition to reaching 735 students through in-school programs.
