Tuff Love’s 2024 Year-End Fundraiser
“Anyone who’s interested in making change in the world also has to learn how to take care of herself, himself, theirselves.” – Angela Davis
2024 has been a hard year for so many of us. Political tensions, war, and environmental cris e s have escalated , both at home and across the globe. Rising food and housing costs have made it challenging to meet our basic physical needs. Youth and parents face unprecedented mental health challenges, while women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people experience ongoing threats to our safety and wellness.
Yet during these difficult times, there have been moments of incredible joy, wellness, and togetherness. Over the last year at Tuff Love, we have seen the delight on children’s faces as they learned how to escape from a bully or attacker. Students in our LGBTQ+ workshop beamed with enthusiasm while practicing boundary setting and spatial awareness. Elders in our new Senior Self-Defense Series stood up straighter and walked with greater confidence as they learned how to stay safe from attackers. One even deflected a mugger using the methods we taught her! We collaborated with community organizations including the Center for Empowering Immigrants and Refugees, Westlake Christian Terrace, Lincoln Square Recreation Center, and our longtime partner Compassion in Oakland to bring new training opportunities to seniors, youth, and everyone in-between.
Tuff Love was honored this year with incredible community recognitions. AAPI Women Lead presented us with their Solidarity Award for supporting their mission to empower Asian American and Pacific Islander women. Berkeley Women for Good chose us as their Grapevine community giving recipient. Local CBS affiliate KPIX recognized Tuff Love with their Jefferson Award for community service and featured us in a beautiful news story about our work with senior refugees.
These precious moments of learning, connection, and appreciation keep us going no matter what hardships or setbacks we face. The satisfaction of helping create safety and wellbeing in our own community–whether as an instructor, student, or community donor–makes all the struggles worthwhile.
Radical Resilience
Reflecting on the year 2024 and our work ahead, the word resilience came up for us again and again. Resilience is the way we stand up for ourselves, our loved ones, our community, and our planet. In times that deplete our mental and physical wellbeing, developing inner strength and capacity to care for ourselves and others is in itself a radical act.
Our mission at Tuff Love is to teach resilience through self-defense, martial arts, and fitness in a manner that promotes personal wellness, community responsibility, and social justice, with a focus on underserved communities. Tools of resilience–including physical wellness, safety techniques, and self-defense skills–should not be luxuries available to only a few, which is why all of our public self-defense workshops are offered free of charge. Your donation makes these life-changing elements of resilience possible for everyone, especially those most vulnerable in our community.
Let's Do This Together
Please consider supporting our work by contributing during our year-end fundraising drive from December 2–December 31. Your donation supports:
- FREE self-defense training open to all members of our community
- Dedicated FREE trainings for AAPI people, LGBTQ+ people, women, youth, and elders
- Low-cost martial arts and fitness training at our inclusive gym
- Scholarships for people facing financial hardship
- Scholarships for kids and teens
All donations are 100% secure and tax-deductible. Ongoing monthly donations are extremely helpful. Please contact us at info@tufflove.org to donate by check or another payment option.
Raffle!
Each person who donates, no matter the amount, will be entered in our Radical Resilience Raffle! Raffle winners will be announced at a drawing on January 1, 2025. Please email us if you do not want to be included in the raffle. RAFFLE PRIZES
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JEFFERSON AWARD NEWS SEGMENT
Highlights
See all activity852024 Achievements
Tuff Love Fitness was founded by longtime martial arts practitioners Mollii Khangsengsing and Karin Spirn, who were inspired to share their knowledge and skills with a larger audience, particularly underserved populations outside of the traditional martial arts community. Based on the belief that people of all sizes, ages, physical abilities, gender identities, and cultural and economic backgrounds have the right, and therefore should have the capability, to defend themselves effectively and to feel safe in the world, we began a free women's self-defense class in 2019.
Since then, we have expanded our offerings to provide free weekly training open to participants of all genders and ages over 10. We hold regular free workshops for underserved and at-risk groups including AAPI people and other people of color, LGBTQ+ people, youth and elders, as well as operating Four Elements Gym in Oakland, CA.
Over the past four years we have helped over 6,000 people in our community develop a sense of personal safety, connectedness, confidence, and well-being.
We have partnered with other organizations including Compassion in Oakland, Downtown Oakland Senior Center, UC Berkeley Jiu-Jitsu Club, AAPI Women Lead, Chinatown Volunteer Coalition, Protect Oakland Chinatown, Oakland LGBTQ Community Center, Oakland Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce, Center for Empowering Refugees & Immigrants, East Bay Municipal Utilities District, Alameda County District Attorney's Office, Through Peace, Lincoln Square Recreation Center, Oakland Central,YMCA of San Francisco, San Mateo High School, Las Positas College, UC Berkeley, Asians are Strong, and UC Berkeley Queer Alliance and Resource Center.
In 2024, we were awarded the and the Jefferson Award for community service by KPIX/CBS.
Tuff Love is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. All donations are fully tax-deductible. EIN: 85-1005571
2024 Achievements
AWARDS
- KPIX/CBS Jefferson Award winner
- Recipient of Solidarity Award from AAPI Women Lead
- Berkeley Women For Good donation recipient
WORKSHOPS
- NEW Senior Self-Defense Series at the Center for Empowering Refugees & Immigrants (CERI)
- NEW 8-Week Intermediate Self-Defense Workshop Series
- 8-Week Intro to Self-Defense Workshop Series (13th-17th edition)
- 2-Week Seniors Safety and Self-Defense Workshop series at Westlake Christian Terrace
- Wellness Wednesdays Kickboxing in Frank Ogawa Plaza
- Intro to Self-Defense and Women's Self-Defense at Las Positas College
- Youth Workshops for Lincoln Square Recreation Center
- Self-defense lesson at “Hate Crime Safety & Self-Defense Workshop” at the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs Association hosted by Through Peace.
- Safety and Self-Defense workshops at AAPI Women Lead's "I'm Ready" and "Healing, Wellness and Power Building" events
- Free AAPI Safety and Self-Defense Workshop
- Free LGBTQ+ Safety and Self-Defense Workshop
OTHER ACCOMPLISHMENTS
- Cofounder Mollii Khansengsing interviewed in Everyday Martial Artists podcast
- Belt test and promotions for Brazilian Jiujitsu Students
- Expanded youth scholarships with support from Compassion in Oakland
GYM FLOOD 2024
On November 22, as the Bay Area was hit by a bomb cyclone causing flash flooding throughout the region, a pump in our gym space failed under the force of the downpour. Water began draining unchecked from our roof into our back storage room, spilling out into our main training area.
Luckily Mollii was at the gym when the flooding started, and Karin came to join her. With help from our friend and teacher Adam, we secured the area with sandbags, directing the water away from our training mats and towards a drain in the floor. Mollii and Karin stayed at the gym all day and into the evening, sweeping water with brooms and removing it with buckets to keep it from overflowing the sandbags.
We tried to get help from a plumber; several told us they could come but then were not able to fulfill their scheduled visits due to the immense need and traffic issues throughout the region. A kind local plumber finally came to help us in the evening, letting us know that there was nothing that could be done until the pump was replaced, which we were able to arrange the following day when the rain let up a bit.
All in all, we are incredibly lucky that we caught the flood early and were able to keep it away from much of our training space and equipment. However, the damage and expenses have still been significant. We purchased close to a thousand dollars of equipment just to manage the flooding and clean the resulting mess. We need to replace the flooring where the water seeped in, and increase our insurance to cover incidents like this in the future. We lost three days of work while we spent twelve-hour days handling the flood and its aftermath.
All of this makes your donation to this year's fundraiser extra special. You know we put our full hearts, bodies, and spirits into running Tuff Love, which is a labor of love. During the flood, our physical presence was the only thing that stood between safety and disaster. Knowing that our community has our backs, and that everything we do is in service of our students, makes all the struggle worthwhile.
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