Youth Passageways

The aim of Youth Passageways YPW is to increase access to healthy meaningful initiatory experiences for young people. Initiatory experiences often called rites of passage have been an essential part of human development throughout human history promoting mental health a strong sense of individual identity and a clear social role; while also strengthening community health and resiliency. Yet many if not most communities today lack meaningful rites of passage leaving a vacuum filled by unhealthy risk taking by youth disengagement of young people from the adults and elders in their communities and self-interest run rampant. For many years individuals organizations and communities throughout the United States have been seeking to address this gap in how we raise our young people through providing rite of passage opportunities in all sorts of different contexts from small scale community initiatives to larger projects in public schools. However there remains limited pub