Founder Feature: Camila Alves McConaughey of just keep livin Foundation

As part of our ongoing Founder Feature series, we sit down with leaders of organizations we believe in to learn more about their role in the company, what inspires them and more. Read below for our conversation with just keep livin Foundation co-founder, Camila McConaughey.

Camila talks about what inspired her and her husband to build this foundation, their goals for the future, and the importance of helping shape children’s lives from an early age.

As part of CorePower Yoga's mission to make yoga accessible to all, we are partnering with just keep livin Foundation to help bring mindfulness and yoga education to students at their partner high schools.

How did the just keep livin Foundation come to life? What is the origin story?

When my husband was filming Dazed and Confused, simultaneously he was also struggling with the passing of his father. He was overtaken by a saying, “just keep livin,” and he started to apply the saying to everyday life which helped him navigate through the good times and bad times while staying true to his ideals. In 2008, we founded the just keep livin Foundation, with our mission to empower high school students by providing them with the tools to lead active lives and make healthy choices for a better future. JKL implements after school fitness programs in 45 inner city high schools throughout the US, encouraging students to make positive life choices that improve their physical and mental health through exercise, teamwork, gratitude, nutrition, and community service.

What’s special about running the foundation with your husband?

The most meaningful part, personally for me, is being a vessel to help our students better themselves which in turn influences each of their families and their future. While we provide the tools and encouragement, the students are putting in the work and effort to help themselves improve their physical and mental health through exercise, teamwork, gratitude, nutrition, and community service. Think of it as "preventing before having to cure it." Seeing that growth happen is the most meaningful to me.

What’s one important lesson you’ve learned throughout your journey in building the just keep livin Foundation?

It is hard to pick one important lesson as there are so many, but here I’ll choose the power of community service and gratitude on younger generations. Our students show up on a Sunday morning to do community service feeling inspired and share that they never thought they could help others because of their circumstances but by doing this work, they have learned anyone can make a positive impact. The gratitude effect goes beyond saying, except that I didn't realize how that simple portion of the program helps create such community, fellowship, and ripple effects in the kids’ lives!

Can you tell us more about JKL’s after-school programs for kids?

Think of preventing before having to cure. High school is that fundamental time where kids have a great opportunity to turn it around or to stay on a good path. After high school, they will deal with real consequences that can affect their lives for a long time. We provide a safe place for them to go, exercise, learn how to eat nutritiously on a budget, and access mental health resources. We also organize field trips, with some of the kids having never left their neighborhood, helping to expose them to new things, new possibilities, and facing fears truly helps to open their perspective to what they can do in life. We have guest speakers from all walks of life come and speak to the students, showing them all the diversity there is to learn and build from. We teach them how to take better care of their nutrition, health, and minds. We practice gratitude circles, and we now help students get into college!! With JKL’s educational services, nearly 100% of the students graduate from notoriously high dropout rate schools.

We’re so excited about CorePower’s partnership with just keep livin. Why do you think providing kids with tools in mindfulness and yoga is important?

Kids are under a very different pressure and environment in the times we are living in today. Learning to deal with that in their own way and having the proper tools to use at any time they need is super important. Partnering with CorePower Yoga will help educate our students about the benefits of yoga in an accessible way.

What is your hope for just keep livin in the next 5 years? 10 years?

We want to continue to grow and expand our programming, adding 3 to 5 programs each year while making sure to remain very hands-on in the implementation of our curriculum and the relationships we have with our program instructors. We have been fortunate to have many wonderful like-minded partners come on as sponsors, and we are always looking for new sponsors to fund individual programs. We will continue to grow the mental health component of our program through “Mental Health Mondays,” and we will continue to tweak our curriculum as our students’ needs evolve. With more than 20,000 alums now, we would love to expand our JKL Alumni program and possibly bring more of our graduates back to help mentor kids currently in our program. As always, we want to continue to provide the students we serve with critical life skills and encourage them to take what they learn into their own homes and share it with their families and their communities.

I am so grateful for everyone on our Foundation Team, our partners, and especially the boots on the ground: the teachers and the students who show up and have turned this program into such an impactful program for all these years!