Meet Sally and Jonah Ismael | Co-founders of the non-profit organization The Power Within🔑, competitor athletes, Advocates, and Authors.

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sally and Jonah Ismael and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sally and Jonah, what’s your definition for success?
Although success is a general term used to define the final destination we reach when we achieve our dreams and goal, it is not the same for both of us. Instead, success has been our story of taking a long and painful journey to unravel the hidden forces within us. Furthermore, although success is a journey rather than a destination, we see our success simultaneously through our positive emotional and mental impact on others and ourselves.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?

We are Sally and Jonah Ismael, sixteen-year-old twins from Plano, founders of the non-profit organization The Power Within, authors, taekwondo practitioners, and students of Plano East Senior High School. The roots of our story go back to when we were ten years old. We were young and had a great love and admiration for our sport, Taekwondo. But unfortunately, we faced severe psychological and emotional abuse from our former taekwondo master. We left the master dojo, running away from his abuse and looking for a new dojo to participate in the only sport we loved. Unfortunately, the Master used his power and authority back then to prevent us from participating in our sport in other dojos. He swear he’ll ensure we won’t get anywhere without him. We tried hard to find a dojo that could take us as an athlete, but we had consistently slammed by the rejection of many dojos and coaches in our sport. They all acceded to our former master’s request, so we had left with no place to train. Despite the rejection, we were determined to work on our goals to join AAU/USA national team, Texas State Team, and reach the World Cadet Championships. It didn’t take long for us to enter our training journey on our own, with no team, no teammates, and no dojo; We started practicing everywhere, in our driveway, school track field, in our community park, and inside our house when the weather couldn’t cooperate with us. We felt hopeless, lost, and desperate. Rejection was painful for kids our age, isolation unbearable. However, something inside us constantly pushes us not to give up and pursue our dreams. After nearly a year of training on our own everywhere, we came up with the idea to build our dojo. We thought that if we could train for a year without help from anyone, we could expand our training and train more professionally to achieve our goals and dreams. At that time, we had just turned eleven but felt we were old enough to carry the responsibility toward our dreams and goals. We told our parents about our plans to create a dojo in our home garage; our parents thought it wouldn’t take long for us to feel we needed to switch to another sport. Still, they were surprised by our determination and commitment to continue training and building our dojo. The rejection of other dojos

was a turning point in our mindset and planted the seeds of perseverance inside us. We left no choice but to stand firm against our former master’s abuse and decided not to allow him to determine our fate. 

We planned our daily training sessions in our dojo and monitored our weights to stay in our weight division. This traumatic experience made us determined not to give up and continue our journey together. We practiced our sport in challenging situations in a small and dark garage. In addition, we faced loneliness and chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that developed within us due to the emotional and mental abuse caused by our master’s previous abusive actions toward us. Finally, after five years of hard work and many national and international competitions that enabled us to visit many countries such as Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Bulgaria, Amsterdam, Belgium, Netherlands, and Israel to collect ranking points, we were able to qualify for the European Cadet Championship in Spain and the World Cadet Championship in Uzbekistan. Coming from a small garage in Plano, Texas, we finished fifth in both championships. We competed against the best athletes in the world. Our dreams came true when we represented the Texas State Taekwondo Federation and our country at the Canadian Open and won gold and silver medals; in addition, we had the honor of joining the AAU/USA National team by winning two gold medals; Most importantly, we defeated the bullies, abusers, and many of those who abused and rejected us. We have shown that our belief in our abilities is vital to our success. 

This experience changed our view of our purpose in life. We began researching how to help other athletes and children find their strength within themselves, so we applied our new vision toward enhancing our knowledge and educating our peers about the importance of education for success. We found shelter in books through the many years of training in the garage. We read many books that taught us how to develop techniques to help us adapt to the difficult situation we faced in the garage and build our mental strength to overcome our obstacles and conquer our fears. Our training journey on our own in the garage at a young age was a journey towards revealing our inner strength. However, a seven-year journey would not have been possible without the knowledge we had developed; books opened our minds to see opportunities in our solitude and guided us to work on embracing our inner strength. Every day we spent in the garage was a self-learning journey to unravel the forces hidden within us. We have embraced the power of our minds and challenged our abilities to face the obstacles and challenges we encountered on our own. This experience forced us to find solutions to immediate problems and cultivate creative minds who see beyond our barriers. We developed an interest in the human mind after seeing our abilities to turn our obstacles and disappointments into motivational resources to keep us moving forward. Yet we continued to think about the many hopeless kids who struggle alone to achieve their

dreams and conquer their fears and doubts. After we returned from the Word Cadet Championships 2019 in Uzbekistan, We continued our research about how we can reach those kids’ minds and empower them to develop skills that will help them defeat their obstacles and limitations. The firm determination to continue our training journey is based upon our belief that if we give up on the only thing we are passionate about because we encounter obstacles along the way, it would be easy later on in life to give up on other things that matter to us. So we worked day by night to build our dojo and became the Masters of our sea. Training in our garage at the age of eleven wasn’t easy. However, we managed to survive and thrive with our positive attitude and the mindset we developed during the difficult times we encountered in the garage. We kept thinking of many other children who faced challenges and obstacles alone during that hard time. Therefore, we shifted our goals to create and provide a healthy environment that could provide emotional and mental support to these kids. Thus we founded a nonprofit organization, The Power Within. Our non-profit was born in the garage, where we fostered our dreams and achieved our goals. The Power Within is a non-profit designed to help many children find their hidden strengths and embrace their powers. Through seven years of training in the garage, on our own, we realized the importance of the mind in self-exploring our abilities and capabilities. Through books, we have found answers to many questions about overcoming our obstacles and how we view rejection as a motivational component to embracing our passion rather than giving it a negative connotation. Therefore, we value education and knowledge and see our mission of empowering young children’s love of reading as a rewarding medal. We sketched out a plan to empower children at scale; We started using our social media to send motivational messages to kids our age and younger and were amazed at the positive impact we’ve had on many kids and young athletes. After a year of inspiration and successful advocacy for athletes and children worldwide, we began brainstorming ideas on how to fund our nonprofit’s project to help as many children as possible. In 2020, we came up with an idea and decided to shift our goals from training for competitions to training for a cause. We set a plan to hold four competitions each year for the past three years, state, national, international, and open competitions, and we trained daily for hours in our garage; On the day of the competition, we took 40% of the funds initially designed to cover travel expenses for the competitions and allocated it to support our mission of funding projects for our nonprofits. We raised funds that covered 200 backpacks and school supplies for 200 children through a partnership with Plano ISD Foundation and Children’s Health. We covered the fund to build a library for 1,000 children in Africa by providing over 1,200 books for this mission, shipping them to the community schools in Africa. 

Our vision of embracing the love of reading and promoting educational literacy among children in underrepresented communities has furthered our mission of

empowering children. So, we gave up on our dream of going to the World Junior Championships 2022, and we have been training for the past three years for a cause to raise money. In books, we found shelter to strengthen our minds and help us develop strategies and skills to overcome obstacles. During the past seven years, we have been reading alongside training in the garage. Reading strengthens our minds and expands our knowledge. We had the privilege to write our memoir describing our story that will publish by the end of this year, 2022. Our mission is to motivate children, empower kids, and advocate for families to stay positive and not give up when challenges and obstacles stand in their way, just as we did by overcoming obstacles, breaking our limitations, and overcoming challenges 

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We see the beauty of places through people; we were born and raised in Dallas. We love nature; we run in parks, so we see ourselves more within our town’s tall trees, vast stretches of land, and many trails. However, we love walking or jogging in Bob Woodruff Park in Plano.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?

Our journey would not be successful without our parents’ endless support, who never stopped believing in our purpose, mission, and dream. In addition, our teachers at Murphy Middle School and McMillen High School. They positively supported us and served as motivational sources through our many challenging times. 

Website: https://www.thepowerwithinsj.org/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepowerwithinsj , https://www.instagram.com/sallyandjonahismael