Passages Northwest
Inspiring courage in women and girls

Erica Nixon Mack, Program Director, Passages Northwest.

Passages NW works with girls to inspire courage and leadership through integrated exploration of the arts and the natural environment. We offer after school programs, wilderness adventures, custom courses, and workshops as well as trainings to share our expertise.

While PNW serves a diverse clientele, we primarily work with people in urban areas. Typically our courses are comprised of participants from a variety of socio economic, racial and ethnic backgrounds. More than half come to us on scholarship and over a third are girls of color.

Our goal is to have participants leave with a sense of confidence and connectedness. They may have had no previous exposure to experiential education techniques, rock climbing, backpacking, camping, and yet they leave with these skills as well as strategies for effective communication and conflict resolution.

A success story:

A girl recently participated in the Girls Rock! after school mentorship and rock climbing program. She enrolled in part because she was sometimes being bullied at school. After Girls Rock!, she told her mom a story of how she confronted a girl at school.. She used the “VOMP” technique (Voice Own Mile Plan). VOMP is a structure for dealing with conflict; Voice - get out on the table what is going on; Own - take responsibility for your own actions; Mile - walk a mile in the other person(s) shoes to better understand where they are coming from; Plan - make one for moving forward. When her mother asked where she learned this, this young girl reported, "In Girls Rock!, mom.  We do more than just rock climbing, you know!"

Passages Northwest was founded in 1997.  Several of their alumnae are now instructors of their programs.

Given the current economic crisis, we are doing a couple things differently. It brings to mind a quote from Kurt Hahn, “Your disability is your opportunity.” This year, we are either keeping tuition the same or lowering our prices by 5-10%.  We have implemented a sliding scale for payment with which we are more overtly working with families to pay what they can. And, we believe that these hard times may allow some segments of the population to choose us over more expensive alternatives. We are right here in Seattle and so we are more cost effective than programs that require girls to travel further from home.

Despite the economic downturn, our core values stay the same. We are about connecting people to the natural world and supporting people that have been historically underrepresented in the outdoors.  In a non-profit world, you can get in the attitude have to do more with less. We are focusing on doing less with less. In other words, we are trying to be mindfully focused on the right things every day.

Exciting Upcoming Events:

Diversity Tour 2009: We are partnering with YBOYS and the Sierra Club to sponsor the second annual Diversity in the Outdoors Tour this spring.  Speakers will include Winona LaDuke, Subhankar Banerjee, and others during the week of March 16th to speak about their experiences as people of color in the outdoors.  Events will include a tour of 10-12 middle and high schools that target underserved students, and a public event on Wednesday March 18th at the Langston Hughes Cultural Center.  Our goals are to introduce youth from diverse backgrounds to outdoor experiences, show diverse role models who work in the outdoor field, demonstrate the value of and spark an interest in the natural world, and connect students and others with opportunities to explore the outdoors through our organizations. Please contact Robin (robin@passagesnw.org ) for more information about how to participate.

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