How It Works

The Rite of Passage Experience® (ROPE®) is more than just a quick fix or another “program.” It is an intentional assets-based process that builds a community’s capacity to respond collaboratively to the challenges faced by today’s youth and their parents.

It integrates the lessons of our ancestors with contemporary social and behavioral science to mobilize the community, within a common language and shared emotional experience, to employ its resources to help its children grow up well and become healthy, happy, responsible adults.

ROPE® is implemented in three phases:

Phase I: 6th Grade – Ages 11-12
Developing the skills, mastery & healthy identity for the transition from childhood to adulthood.
Phase II: 7th-8th Grades – Ages 13-14
Exploring Positive Leisure Activities
Phase III: 9th-12th Grades – Ages 15-18
Giving Back to the Community

These phases provide the framework for an effective youth development strategy. Positive developmental pathways are fostered in adolescents, helping them develop a sense of industry and competency, a feeling of connectedness to others, and to nature, and to society, a belief in their control over their fate in life, and a stable identity.

These phases also require that the community identify the assets and resources necessary to implement each phase of the initiative. They function as a vehicle to bring adults together and to shape culturally relevant, developmentally appropriate activities. Throughout the three-phase process, youth, parents and community members all support and learn from the ROPE® curriculum.

The Center for the Advancement of Youth, Family and Community Services (The Center) is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization located in Glastonbury, Connecticut.