Get to Know HKF

In this 4-minute video, discover the heart of Human Kindness Foundation. Meet Sita Lozoff, Spiritual Director, Catherine Dumas, Executive Director, Board Members Aaron Turner and William Elmore, and others who are part of the HKF family.


How it All Began: The Prison-Ashram Project

In 1973 Ram Dass was sending his spiritual book, Be Here Now, into prisons and receiving countless letters back. People wrote about their personal transformations and also asked tough spiritual questions:

How can you meditate when negative thoughts of anger, shame and guilt engulf you? How can you be loving in such a dangerous place? How can you forgive yourself and others? How can you create inner peace in a noise, violent and chaotic atmosphere? How can you find freedom behind bars?

Bo and Sita Lozoff felt a personal connection with Ram Dass’ book as well as with the prison populations because of their own brother-in-law who was incarcerated. They teamed up with Ram Dass to help him reply to mail from people in prisons all over the country. Thus the Prison-Ashram Project was born. In 1987, Human Kindness Foundation was founded to operate the Prison-Ashram Project.

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HKF Through the Years

From the beginning until now, take a look at the history of The Human Kindness Foundation.

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The Human Kindness Foundation serves over 30,000 people a year and provides all of our books for free to people who are incarcerated. Your generous donation helps us continue to send books, notes, newsletters and encouragement to people living in some of the toughest places we know.


Art from Inside

Real People, Real Stories

I had such dark thoughts. When I’d be mad at someone, I’d imagine… well… it’s bad. Now I imagine going to their house while they’re at work, and I plant a flower bed for them. I’ve gone to the library to look up what kinds of flowers to use, and I have the borders planned, and what colors I’ll plant together. I’m not even mad anymore. I want to bring beauty into their lives.



Justin, US Penitentiary McCreary

I don’t think I would have been able to find a belief in God had it not been for the meditation guide in Bo’s book. As my relationship with self and God has morphed it always comes back to the experience of meditating focusing on my heart chakra and the feeling as if my heart was the size of a thimble and a waterfall was being poured into it. Thus my first true evidence of God.