Introducing Julian Chavez, the newest member of the Youth Passageways family! Our team is so lucky to welcome this amazing soul into our staff circle as our Trust Tender.

Julian's journey began with a deep appreciation for social justice, nurtured by his mother, who spent thirty-five years rehabilitating at-risk populations. After earning an Associate's degree in Sociology from Central New Mexico Community College in 2023, Julian continued his studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is currently a senior, set to graduate in May 2025, with aspirations to ultimately obtain his Master's degree in Social Work.

Throughout his professional journey, Julian has had the privilege of working with organizations like Youth Mentoring Connection and Goodwill Industries of New Mexico. These experiences sparked his passion for social work and helping individuals in need. His Yaqui Nation heritage deeply influences his values and approach, instilling compassion, integrity, and patience in everything he does. Julian is dedicated to fostering systemic change, guided by a profound respect for his roots and a commitment to serving others.

Our Winter session was a big success!
We invite you to join us for the coming seasonal sessions:

Fall Session: November (dates forthcoming)
Winter Session: February 2025 (dates forthcoming)
Spring Session: May 2025 (dates forthcoming)

Sessions will be recorded and made available to registrants after each call.

Save the date for our coming session, November 21st, 10:30-12PM PST!

Youth Passageways, in partnership with Queer Odyssey, continues to circle a growing community of queer guides, edge-walkers and ancestral ritualists --coming together to share our questions, offerings, and the stories of our own queer initiations. This is an emergent community of practice we are calling the Queering Rites Collective.

Together, holding our questions and centering our relations, we are learning to uncover ancient queer lineages and begin to queer the normative ones we have inherited -- asking how to be in community ritual space and build new stories that support our queer communities to be in wholeness in these times.

If you are interested in joining one of our upcoming calls, please reach out to Y (yeshe@youthpassageways.org) or Jett (connect@queerodyssey.org) 

In partnership with Life Comes From It, we blend grantmaking and fiscal sponsorship to empower cultural stewards and practitioners across Turtle Island.

Our fiscal sponsorship and administrative support ensures impactful projects receive the funding they need. This year we processed over $2.4 million, directing flow to spread across 32 different fiscal sponsees and 80+ grantees. More than 90% of these visionaries are BIPOC and actively dedicated to restorative and transformative justice and earth based healing for generational change. The establishment of the trust marks a major transition in our network, focusing our energy towards those engaged directly in community and cultural revitalization work.

"TTO is a nonprofit organization based in South Dakota that facilitates holistic health and healing in an Indigenous context.  We are dedicated to protecting, teaching and utilizing traditional Lakota spiritual practices, Native American Church principles, Indigenous tenets and Lakota ceremonies to preserve cultural values and share spiritual knowledge from an intergenerational point of view. Our activities are informed by the 4 seasons and the regenerative circular rhythm of time represented by the medicine wheel.  

Our long-term goal is to turnaround the health disparities that run rampant in South Dakota and within Lakota territory.  The way to reverse these harmful behaviors is through the revitalization of our traditional Lakota lifeways, language revitalization, landback initiatives that were all taken from us through colonization.  We are in the process of reclaiming our sacred lifeways and core values, such as respect, through ceremonies and other traditional practices.  However, we lack the physical structures that will enable us to do this work, year-round. Specifically, we need to build a prayer lodge to hold ceremonies throughout the year, rather than only when the weather is accommodating and to erect structures to house guests from around the state, country and world. Both of these structures are imperative for TTO to do our important work at the level that our communities deserve and need."

An amazing offering and message from YPW Co-Chair Tree:

Hello dear YPW Network! Guides, Advisors, Elders, Youngers, Practitioners, Ceremonialists, Culture CREATORS. I'm Tree Willard. I'm Two Spirit Cherokee and the co-chair of Youth Passageways. I hope summer has been a time of renewal and fun for you along with the deep healing work that is always a part of how we move in the world as guides and leaders. 

I am convening weekly leadership accountability and support groups for all of you who are working through the big questions about leading transformational organizations successfully within a capitalist system.

You all are navigating the HARD questions every day:

- How do you structure your org and compensate staff in ways that are liberatory

- How do you practice and institutionalize awareness (and neutralization) of power differences? In hiring, in growth, in guiding, in all your relationships? 

- When/what is a responsible use of power within organizational structures?

- How do you create steady, reliable revenue streams to support your work in community without feeling like a sellout or "begging" philanthropists for "charity?

- And one of the biggest ones: How do you navigate conflict with love and respect in the complex context of being a liberation-driven organization in a capitalist world?

90 minutes every other week. Maximum 8 people per group. Free to members of the Youth Passageways network. 

Once I have a list of interested folks, we will figure out what time/day works for us, together. There will likely be more than one option as groups will max out at 8 people. Reply to just me (don't reply all) if you'd like to join in. Watch this video if you're interested but wondering who the heck this Tree person is and if you would even want to spend three hours a month with them. 

I look forward to holding space and growing with you all!

Entering & Engaging the Spiral of Re-Calling Our Ancestors (October 16th 1:00-3:00 PM EST)  - Join us for an introduction to The Spiral of Re-Calling Our Ancestors! Together we will orient ourselves to the cycles of healing and repair that guide our work.  

Re-Calling our Ancestors Month-Long (Wednesdays October 31-December 4th 2024) - Our signature month-long course Join the Re-Calling our Ancestors team  for a moon cycle of community exploration and ritual inquiry in ancestral recovery, truth-telling, and collective repair designed for white, white-passing, and white-proximate people commited to dismantling systems of oppression in ourselves and in the world around us, as well as in our communities of practice and in the bodies of work we carry. 

Summons: A Semester of Re-Calling Our Ancestors (January-June 2025, live sessions TBD) - A six month intensive and cohort for deepening in de-assimilation. Prerequisite: Participation in the ROA Month-long or equivalent. Over the course of six lunar cycles from Winter Solstice to Summer Solstice, we will follow the spiral curriculum of Re-Calling Our Ancestors. As a committed cohort and long-form container, we will develop shared inquiry and ritual practice, co-creating a  culture of anti-racism. Together, we will grow our ability to hold the fullness and complexity of the experiences that comprises ancestral recovery work: the disorientation of reconditioning of old patterns, the joys of reconnection, the griefs of reckoning, the clarity of action.