Welcome to the Rites of Passage Social Movement!
To download this short film click here!
If we do not initiate the young they will burn down the village to feel the heat.
African Proverb
The villages are burning. Worldwide. An estimated $500 billion is spent yearly on teen dysfunctions in the U.S. alone: drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy and STDs, school dropouts and expulsions, gang and property crimes, traffic accidents, ADD, ADHD, depression and violence...
Culturally appropriate rites of passage and mentorship programs help solve these problems. It just might be the silver bullet for youth development. Our film tells an inspirational story showing people exactly why ritually guided rites of passage and mentorship are necessary for all young people. It also offers the launching pad for a social movement that begins right when the lights come up for communities’ to begin co-creating programs for their own youth right then and there.
What we’ve done to date:
- Made the short film universally accessible.
- Offered free toolkits and curricula to:
- Parents
- High Schools
- Youth Development and Community Organizations
- Colleges and Universities
- Therapists, Counselors, and Psychologists
- Faith-Based Institutions
- Founded a non-profit that will become a clearinghouse of information on all youth rites of passage and mentoring organizations worldwide.
- Hired a staff person to help YOU implement these practices in your family, work practice, or community.
Now all we want is to bring the movement to scale. Join us! Your generous donation will help us take these tools further:
- Parents. Cost per: $12.
- Therapists/counselors/psychologists. Cost per: $300.
- Faith-based institutions. Cost per: $300.
- High schools. Cost per: $600.
- Colleges or universities. Cost per: $1200.
- Communities starting from ground up to create ROP. Cost per: $3000
The Long Film
Rites of Passage – Mentoring the Future (working title) will be a 90 minute feature length documentary that will do for rites of passage what Inconvenient Truth did for global warming – bring it out of the underground into the mainstream.
See our Press Kit.
For more on rites of passage , watch this video of Joseph Campbell speaking to the significance of initiation rituals.