Help Asheville teens experience Rites of Passage
Our world needs good men. Healthy men of vision and integrity who can take ownership of their lives, know their gifts and struggles and share their medicine with their community to build a more connective world. THIS PROCESS STARTS NOW and it BEGINS WITH OUR YOUTH.
Holistic Survival School and Forest Floor Wilderness Programs are taking the next step in supporting the growth of our communities teens. We need your help to make that happen.
Through community supported adolescent Rites of Passage, we're raising a generation of teens capable of facing the unknown challenges that lie ahead. Teens of vision, character, and confidence. Teens connected to their hearts and deep wells of inner strength.
Adolescent Rites of Passage are common to all intact indigenous cultures around the world. This ancient social technology helped ensure that our ancestors thrived. In order to revive this essential cultural element in our community, a small group of intrepid boys and men have traveled to the central fire in Vermont for the past 5 years to participate in an ancient, authentic, yet modern and relevant boys Rite of Passage called the Boys Sacred Fire Initiation (BSFI).
The intention of BSFI is to guide boys through the ancestral stages of a Rite of Passage — where young men dare to take a risk, accept responsibility for their lives, and explore beyond what they have previously know. This Rite of Passage serves to consciously guide a boy onto the path towards manhood with the support of peers and men who’ve walked this same path.
Boys are welcomed into a lineage of young men who have faced the unknown of initiation and come out the other side, taking steps towards manhood. Through this in-depth 3 year process they’re offered the teachings of our mentors and ancestors, along with guidance toward seeking the deeper, more spiritual teachings of the wilderness.
One Mother's Testimonial
"I'm totally blown away... (My son) had a profound and humbling and major character building experience.... he seems so much more grounded and sincere and level headed, kind, earnest, loving... he had SO many epiphanies, insights...
I feel so much gratitude though that word hardly seems sufficient...it is clear that it was powerful... transformational, and it feels like it was a sacred experience."
Your support will help us reach the following goals:
Launch our Satellite program - For 5 years, a handful of dedicated Forest Floor mentors have committed to traveling to Vermont to be trained in the subtle art of leading this adolescent Rite of Passage with the intention of bringing back this ceremony to our own local Asheville community. Our training is complete and now it is time to launch our own Asheville chapter of Boy's Sacred Fire Initiation. There is a cost to launching a new program and proceeds will go toward gear and supplies (tarps, tents, tools, etc).
Initiate local boys - It is our intention to host this ceremony every year to initiate boys that we have been mentoring for years. Your support will not only help us build the infrastructure so that this can happen every year, but also help raise scholarships for boys who wouldn't get this chance without financial support.
If you have the means we ask for a financial donation, although shares on social media are equally as valuable!
To our future generations...