The
Center’s mission is to promote positive youth development
and to assist children in the transition through adolescence to
becoming healthy adults connected to their communities. We accomplish
this by creating effective school and community-based strategies
in partnership with parents, teachers, counselors, and community
leaders.
Our work is unique in that it focuses
on youth and community development through the perspective of rites
of passage. All our ancestors, whatever our cultural and ethnic
backgrounds, celebrated the passage from childhood to adulthood
with special ceremonies and rituals designed to transform children
into contributing members of their communities. In a sense, it was
the first way humans carried out youth and community development
work.
The first initiative we developed was the
Rite of Passage Experience®. Since
its inception in 1981, over 100,000 youth and their families across
the nation have participated in this initiative. It integrates the
lessons of our ancestors with contemporary social and behavioral
science to produce a positive effect on the confidence and judgment
of children and teens.
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