Editor’s note: This week’s featured nonprofit is the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace. Check back every Monday for a new nonprofit that is taking part through innovative and inspirational work.

On April 4, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr reunited onstage for an exhilarating musical performance in New York to headline “Change Begins Within,” a benefit concert for the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace. Sheryl Crow, Donovan, Eddie Vedder, Ben Harper, Moby, Paul Horn, Angelo Badalamenti, Bettye LaVette, and Jim James joined the two remaining Beatles to thrill the crowd as well, as did Jerry Seinfeld in a brilliant guest performance. The global press responded with thousands of headlines and front-page stories and hundreds of television and radio shows.

(Above photo: Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr perform together at the “Change Begins Within” benefit concert for the David Lynch Foundation.)

What inspired these legendary musicians and celebrities to come together? The answer is the David Lynch Foundation—and its global initiative to teach one million at-risk kids to meditate and thereby change their lives from within.

Founded in 2005 by award-winning filmmaker David Lynch (Twin Peaks, The Elephant Man, Mulholland Drive), the Foundation provides scholarship funds for students and teachers around the world to learn to meditate. In the past few years, the Foundation has brought the Transcendental Meditation program to over 70,000 children in schools throughout the United States, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

Now the Foundation’s immediate goal is to expand this global initiative to include a million youth, especially those who are at risk or are socioeconomically disadvantaged. Half a million young people in 60 countries are already waiting to begin the Transcendental Meditation practice.

(Left photo: David Lynch greets 3,500 meditating children in Brazil. These at-risk kids from the Belo Horizonte shantytowns all learned Transcendental Meditation thanks to Foundation funding.)

Extensive published research has found that the simple, scientifically validated TM program, introduced 50 years ago by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, reduces stress and stress-related disorders, improves health, optimizes brain functioning, increases creativity and intelligence (IQ), improves academic performance, and reduces anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and symptoms of ADHD and other learning disorders.

The TM technique, a nonreligious mental practice endorsed by leaders of all religious faiths, has been learned worldwide by 6 million people from all cultures, races, and backgrounds. The National Institutes of Health has awarded $24 million to research the benefits of the TM practice for improving health, reducing cardiovascular disease, and improving brain functioning.

In recent years, the alarming rise of classroom stress has fueled widespread problems in education, including poor academic achievement, anxiety, depression, school violence, and teacher burnout. To help neutralize this stress, the David Lynch Foundation currently provides funding for schoolwide Transcendental Meditation programs in public, charter, private, and Native American schools throughout the U.S. and around the world, as well as funding for universities and research institutions to assess the effects of the program. Instruction is voluntary and is provided to a child with parental permission and at no cost to the family, organization or school. Meditation instruction is offered through school-sponsored Quiet Time programs, before- and after-school programs, hospital-sponsored wellness programs, Boys and Girls clubs, and TM teaching centers.

The Foundation and its programs enjoy strong support from school administrators, teachers, parents, and students. Jim Dierke, the 2008 Middle School Principal of the Year of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, commented, “The TM/Quiet Time Program is the most powerful, effective program that I have come across in my 37 years as a public school educator for addressing the problem of stress.  It is working. It is nourishing these children and providing them an immensely valuable tool for life. It is saving lives.”

Foundation chair David Lynch agreed, saying, “I have had the pleasure of meeting many students who are ‘diving within’ through Transcendental Meditation. They are amazing, self-sufficient, wide-awake, energetic, blissful, creative, powerfully intelligent and peaceful human beings.”

And Paul McCartney commented, “It’s a lifelong gift. It’s something you can call on at any time…. Allowing children to experience something they wouldn’t have been able to experience otherwise is a great thing.”

Get involved. The best way to get involved in David Lynch Foundation activities is to learn the Transcendental Meditation technique yourself and begin to expand your own creativity, intelligence, and happiness by diving within. Just visit www.TM.org to find the TM teaching center nearest you.

For more information about the Foundation and its activities, visit our website. Click here to get involved creatively. To introduce the Quiet Time/TM program into your school and qualify for Foundation funding—or provide funding for such a program—please contact Chris or Julia Busch at 866-962-0108 or email Development@DavidLynchFoundation.org.

Contribute. Your generous support will help the Foundation provide meditation instruction to one million at-risk youth around the world, as well as to their parents and teachers. You can make a donation here.

We look forward to meeting and working with many TakePart.com readers in the near future!

In the spring of 2003, we were three young filmmakers traveling to Africa in search of a story. We soon discovered a tragedy that disgusted and inspired us, a tragedy where children are both the weapons and the victims.

For the past 23 years, thousands of children in northern Uganda have been abducted and forced to fight in the ranks of a rebel army called the ‘Lord’s Resistance Army’ (LRA). The effects of this war devastated the region, leaving millions displaced from their homes. Upon returning to the US, we created the Invisible Children: Rough Cut, a documentary film that exposes the tragic realities of northern Uganda’s night commuters and child soldiers. The film was originally shown to friends and family, but has since been seen by millions of people. We created the non-profit Invisible Children, Inc., giving compassionate individuals an effective way to respond to the situation.

Our organization of ambitious twenty-somethings has a mission to transform apathy into activism on behalf of a neglected crisis in central east Africa. By documenting the lives of those living in regions of conflict and injustice, we hope to educate and inspire individuals in the Western world to use their unique voice for change. With a widely successful awareness campaign, a catalog of acclaimed documentary films and the most innovative development programs in Uganda—we just might be on to something.

Meanwhile, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) continues to terrorize the region, murdering and displacing thousands in Congo, southern Sudan and Central African Republic. A war originally contained within Uganda’s borders has now evolved into a widespread regional crisis, prompting massive international attention.

It’s frightening that this war has now grown into an international crisis. We need to respond with an international body of activists to increase the visibility of this conflict and end Joseph Kony’s reign of terror.

We are responding with our most ambitious and controversial event to date, THE RESCUE, a worldwide rally on April 25th in 100 cities across 10 countries. Participants will ‘abduct themselves’ on behalf of abducted child soldiers. Each city will be ‘rescued’ by a prominent political or cultural figure who attends the event and makes a statement on behalf of the child soldiers. Confirmed rescuers include Pete Wentz, Kirsten Dunst, Kristen Bell, Switchfoot, Paramore and Paris Hilton among others.

In February, we launched a world tour to screen our latest documentary, The Rescue of Joseph Kony’s Child Soldiers, which profiles the elusive rebel leader, Joseph Kony, who has terrorized northern Uganda and surrounding areas igniting a new urgency for global attention. It also shares groundbreaking testimonies from child soldiers themselves. This powerful 35-minute piece of media serves as a worldwide catalyst to combat apathy and empower a generation to take action towards a forgotten war, culminating in THE RESCUE event on April 25th. This event succeeds Invisible Children’s previous awareness events—the Global Night Commute’ in 2006 and Displace Me in 2007—that drew 150,000 collectively to peacefully demonstrate on behalf of northern Uganda. The attention generated from Invisible Children’s previous events widely contributed to the start of the peace talks and appointment of a senior level diplomat to oversee the process. The political impact of this event is anticipated to be historical not only for northern Uganda and surrounding areas, but for a new generation of activists in bringing about change through a simple, unified act.

Ten countries. 100 cities. One collective voice: bring the child soldiers home.

You can TakePart with Invisible Children by watching the film and signing up for your RESCUE city.

Jason Russell, Bobby Bailey and Laren Poole are the founders of Invisible Children and filmmakers of the award-winning documentary Invisible Children: Rough Cut, which has been seen worldwide by more than 5 million people.

Editor’s note: TakePart is publishing a weekly series from friends, colleagues and family members living and traveling outside the United States. This week’s dispatch comes from Victoria Cho, a writer and teacher currently in Southeast Asia. She writes to us this week from Hue, Vietnam.

Google Maps

I ate at the Mandarin Cafe in Hue, Vietnam, a small town that is the cultural and historical center of Vietnam, and offers citadels, tombs, and temples. I recently finished Junot Diaz’s spectacular Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and asked the owner of the popular cafe, the charming and caring Mr. Cu, about local English language book stores. He pointed me in the direction of a couple stores, which I checked out and found unsatisfactory.

I returned to the cafe and asked Mr. Cu of any other bookstores. He said no others existed in the city. I told him that in Ho Chi Minh, sellers approached customers in restaurants with huge stacks of books. English books were available on every street corner, both originals and photocopies. He said, “the government is crazy!” and explained he used to sell books at the front of his cafe, but the government came and confiscated them. He says people are scared of selling foreign language materials here.

The internet is also filtered in Vietnam. In my discovery of an anti-internet filtering program Psiphon, I have learned that the technology used to filter the internet in many countries of the world including Vietnam, China, and Burma, was designed by the US. I imagine certain movies, magazines, and newspapers are banned as well.

I cannot live without books, and I am truly sorry Mr. Cu’s were confiscated.

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To read more about Victoria’s travels, you can visit her blog. To submit an International Dispatch, please email internationaldispatch [at] gmail.com.