Yoga and Mimosas at Mill Race Park Supports Youth Scholarship

A park yoga class with a mimosa finish gave Columbus another example of how wellness events can do double duty as social outings and civic fundraising. Yoga and Mimosas brought participants to Mill Race Park, 50 Carl Miske Drive, from 9 to 11 a.m. on April 25, pairing an outdoor session with a clear benefit: proceeds went to the Chuck Wilt Youth Scholarship.

The format was simple and, in community-event terms, effective. The Columbus Park Foundation and Zen Wellness teamed up for the morning practice, and attendees were asked to bring their own yoga mat. After class, Sunny Daze Mobile Bar served a mimosa or a no-mosa, a detail that gave the event the easygoing, brunch-adjacent feel that helps pull in people who might not sign up for a studio class on their own.

That mix matters because it lowers the barrier to entry while keeping the cause front and center. Instead of asking supporters to give in the abstract, the event offered a low-pressure way to show up, move, socialize and contribute. Mill Race Park, already a recurring site for Columbus community programming, worked as the right setting for that approach, with the open-air venue reinforcing the casual tone of the fundraiser.

The local impact is concrete. The Columbus Park Foundation says a $200 donation can allow a child to pursue a passion through the Chuck Wilt Youth Scholarship Program. The foundation also moved the scholarship funds into an endowment beginning in 2023, with a goal of building the fund to a minimum of $300,000 so support can continue for years. In 2024, donors helped provide more than $27,000 in scholarship dollars through the program.

That scholarship work sits alongside the foundation’s broader mission, which includes free and low-cost programming, playgrounds, facilities, trails and parks for the community. Zen Wellness brought its own identity to the event as a group focused on health, healing, longevity and eastern wellness disciplines, making the partnership fit for a public-facing class rather than a technical workshop.

For Columbus, Yoga and Mimosas was less about advanced poses than about a fundraiser people could actually picture attending. A mat, a park, a drink afterward and a scholarship that reaches local children made the formula easy to understand and even easier to support.