Marking a Decade in Service
In October of 2023 the Youth Passageways family gathered for our annual Spiral Leadership Gathering. We gathered in the Pacific Northwest on Squaxin Island and Puyallup homelands to mark 10 years of Youth Passageways; to renew and deepen our connection to each other and this ecosystem; review and bring imagination into the evolving futures of the network; and celebrate our collaborative good work over the past year. It was a weekend brimming with community magic – from shared meals to circling under the old growth redwoods to dance parties.
In the fall of 2018, in the Yellow Bear Canyon just outside of the Black Hills, Youth Passageways brought together a small intergenerational delegation, for relationship building, truth-telling and healing, and explored an alliance to support and uplift indigenous youth throughout the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. This gathering was one of the many threads that have and continue to build the tapestry of Youth Passageways over the last few years and feels like a foundational step towards actualizing YPW’s mission.
The theme of the 2018 gathering was Spirit Led. What this meant for the group was to allow the unseen to be welcomed and incorporated into our time together and to guide the journey throughout. Those gathered let go of attachment to specific ideas of schedule or form that could block the Blessings from coming through.
