Supporting healing and connection in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.
Mindfulness Programs for Community Well-Being
Supporting healing and connection in Charlottesville and Albemarle County.
About The RESTORE Project
Our Mission
The RESTORE Project is a registered 501c3 organization dedicated to enhancing the well-being of historically rooted communities in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, VA. We strive to create an inclusive environment where individuals can explore mindfulness and healing practices that resonate with their cultural backgrounds.
The RESTORE Project's Programs
Empowered and Peaceful™ Parenting Support
Empowered and Peaceful™ Parenting Support
Empowered and Peaceful™ Parenting Support
A person-centered, mindfulness-based experience for caregivers seeking to raise children in Love without losing themselves in the process. We offer grounding practices, community support, and space to reconnect with your own wisdom while parenting intentionally.
Community Rest Installations
Empowered and Peaceful™ Parenting Support
Empowered and Peaceful™ Parenting Support
These pop-up healing spaces invite individuals and families to pause, breathe, and soften. Rooted in womanist traditions of communal care, our installations offer rest as resistance—and restoration—as a right.
Trauma-Informed Money Mentoring
Empowered and Peaceful™ Parenting Support
Trauma-Informed Swim Instruction
In partnership with trauma-informed money coach Aqura Nicholson, this offering supports participants in healing their relationship with money through safety, clarity, and values-based financial practice. Reclaim your power without shame.
Trauma-Informed Swim Instruction
Beginner-Friendly Culturally-Responsive Meditation, Mindfulness, and Mindful Living Workshops
Trauma-Informed Swim Instruction
In collaboration with the Piedmont Family YMCA, this program offers culturally-responsive, trauma-aware swim experiences for families—especially Black mothers and their children—centering safety, joy, and body-trust in the water.
Culturally-Responsive Health Coaching
Beginner-Friendly Culturally-Responsive Meditation, Mindfulness, and Mindful Living Workshops
Beginner-Friendly Culturally-Responsive Meditation, Mindfulness, and Mindful Living Workshops
Partnering with Eat Plants & Prosper, we support whole-body wellness through affirming, accessible, plant-centered care. This offering honors your story, your heritage, and your evolving path toward nourishment and vitality.
Beginner-Friendly Culturally-Responsive Meditation, Mindfulness, and Mindful Living Workshops
Beginner-Friendly Culturally-Responsive Meditation, Mindfulness, and Mindful Living Workshops
Beginner-Friendly Culturally-Responsive Meditation, Mindfulness, and Mindful Living Workshops
Designed for new and returning practitioners, these workshops weave mindfulness with culture, history, and body-awareness—creating brave, welcoming spaces to ground, reflect, and grow.
Calm Coaching™ – 1:1 and Group Format
Whole-Being Wellbeing™ Toolkits and Training
Leadership Mentoring – 1:1 and Group Format
Gentle, customized support for those seeking to regulate their nervous systems, reconnect with their bodies, and re-enter their lives with clarity and intention. Offered in private or group settings with Yolonda Coles Jones, The Calm and Thrive Coach.
Leadership Mentoring – 1:1 and Group Format
Whole-Being Wellbeing™ Toolkits and Training
Leadership Mentoring – 1:1 and Group Format
A conscious, compassion-based leadership space for change-makers, culture-shapers, and caregivers. These sessions help you lead from your values, stay connected to your body, and expand without burning out.
Whole-Being Wellbeing™ Toolkits and Training
Whole-Being Wellbeing™ Toolkits and Training
Whole-Being Wellbeing™ Toolkits and Training
Our toolkits and training equip individuals, families, and organizations with accessible practices for rest, regulation, and relational thriving. Built for real life and rooted in love.
Healing Circles
Scholarly Talks and Lectures
Whole-Being Wellbeing™ Toolkits and Training
Our Healing Circles create sacred space for reflection, storytelling, and collective release. Facilitated with tenderness and care, they are rooted in ancestral wisdom and contemporary mental-emotional needs.
Scholarly Talks and Lectures
Scholarly Talks and Lectures
Scholarly Talks and Lectures
Led by Yolonda Coles Jones, founder and executive director of The RESTORE Project, these talks bridge academic research, lived experience, and current data to illuminate the impact of systemic harm on Black and Brown nervous systems—and the urgent need for culturally rooted healing. Drawing from sociology, psychology, history, and both local and national statistics, these presentations offer a clear-eyed look at how intergenerational trauma, structural violence, and ongoing inequities shape everyday life—and how we might interrupt the cycle with care, dignity, and evidence-based tools for empowered living.
Whether speaking to community groups, academic institutions, policy leaders, or organizational teams, Yolonda offers truth with tenderness and clarity with compassion—anchored in womanist tradition, professional training, and years of grassroots engagement.
The RESTORE Project's Outcomes
Direct 1:1 Coaching, Mentoring, Calm Coaching™, and Parenting Support Sessions across 2 years (May 2
22 out of 29 Trauma-Informed Family Swim Access at YMCA Participants in Year 2
8 out of 9 Trauma-Informed Family Swim Access at YMCA Participants in Year 1
92% reported increased sense of self-worth and clarity in decision-making after 1:1 session
85% reported improved communication with co-parents, family members, friends and/or co-workers after
60% began new family rhythms (rest routines, caregiving schedules, financial shifts)
96% of mothers who completed 1 coaching session requested continued access
Multiple mothers credited RESTORE with helping them avoid crisis-level breakdowns in their parenting
Support Our Community's Healing Journey
Your generous donations help The RESTORE Project provide mindfulness-based programs for historically rooted communities in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, VA. Together, we can create spaces for self-discovery, connection, and restoration.
We Love our Community Partners!
We believe in the power of community and the importance of working together to achieve our goals. At The RESTORE Project, we cultivate partnerships with organizations, businesses, and individuals who share our commitment to rest, healing, and collective well-being. Click below to learn more about our collaborations.
Meet the Founder & Executive Director
Native, Descendent, Current Resident & Community Teacher
Meet the Founder & Executive Director
In October 2022, I found myself yearning to connect with a deeply rested version of myself—one that I had never truly met before. As a homeschooling mother, the sole breadwinner at the time for a household of six, a Black woman, an entrepreneur, I felt the weight of it all pressing in too closely. I was tired of hearing myself say, "I'm not okay." I knew something had to change.
So, I took a radical step. I made a bold, faith-filled decision to block off the entire month of November for deep rest and restoration. One of the questions I carried into that rest period was inspired by Tricia Hersey’s then newly published book (only days before), Rest is Resistance: "How can I support myself and my community?"
By the end of those thirty days, the vision for The RESTORE Project came through as clear as day. I filled pages and pages with what I saw, and from those words, action emerged. I began hosting rest installations in spaces where Black people have historically gathered in large numbers—places I knew intimately from my own childhood. I returned to the meeting spaces where my parents, local church leaders who grew up in the Prospect, Dice Street, and Vinegar Hill neighborhoods, and their parents (my grandparents) had taken me Sunday after Sunday. I set up sanctuaries of stillness in the very places where my community had long gathered in faith, resilience, and resistance.
The numbers are staggering. At the time of this writing (2025), Black women face the highest rates of hypertension, maternal mortality, cardiovascular disease, and intimate partner violence. We are more likely to live in poverty, less likely to receive adequate healthcare, and more prone to exhaustion from laboring within systems not built for our thriving.
I am these numbers. My mother, my grandmothers, my aunties, my cousins, our national she-roes—we are these numbers. And this is why I founded The RESTORE Project. This is why I am ferociously sowing into it. Not just because we deserve rest. Not just because we deserve restoration and to thrive. Also because: justice.
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Your support and contributions will enable us to meet our goals and fund our mission.
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