The Education and Consulting Collective is a collective of educators, facilitators, and practitioners that helps partners, organizers, educators, youth, families, and the general public re-weave meaningful passageways into the fabric of their communities.

We are guides, educators, activists, change-makers, facilitators and consultants, connected through a deep commitment to serving youth initiatory practices, advocating for social justice and equity, and honoring place and lineage. We hold a unique set of frameworks, cultural practices, and ancestral offerings, reclaimed and reimagined. We are dedicated to sharing and developing tools to support young people, their communities, and organizations that serve them. 

The Education & Consulting Collective was started by a multi-racial, multi-gendered group of settlers living on Turtle Island¹, held by the wider circles of Youth Passageways which include Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. These relationships help to preserve the integrity of our vision as we work to bring Indigenous activists, educators, and healers into seats of leadership in the collective. Members of the collective are primarily in their 30’s and 40’s, with 1-3 decades of experience in rites of passage, education, movement organizing, and other related fields. 

The Education and Consulting Collective helps strengthen the YPW network’s ability to make a significant impact in restoring rites of passage to their critical role in building healthy communities through: 

• fostering meaningful, culturally appropriate (as opposed to appropriative) training in rites of passage and related themes;
• supporting the livelihoods of rite of passage practitioners, especially BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) members;
• supporting the infrastructure for Youth Passageways as a social-profit organization (or organism, as we like to think of ourselves);
• engaging economic systems of solidarity and reciprocity, and uplifting a culture of equity, justice, and interdependence, within our network.

We center decolonization and reparations as critical steps on a journey of healing, reconciliation, justice, and re-wilding in service of life itself; we see work in our communities as an imperative in creating the social will necessary to take these steps on a large scale. This includes addressing and repairing injustices as they arise within our own network, as well as developing a larger liberatory framework that includes the liberation of land and wealth. These efforts are rooted in the ongoing learning process that has been part of Youth Passageways since our beginning, as we have sought to articulate Cross-Cultural Protocols in Rites of Passage. These protocols, which continue to evolve, guide the work of Youth Passageway and the Education and Consulting Collective.

To meet us and see our bios, click HERE 

¹“This is the name given to North America by some Indigenous Peoples, such as the Iroquois, Anishinaabeg, and other Northeastern nations. The term originates from their various creation stories.” From Indigenous Ally Toolkit by the Montreal Indigenous Community Network.