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A Peak Inside the Guide

“ROPE® gives us something to hold onto during this difficult time of parenting adolescents.
It gives us a common language to speak with our children and other parents.”

Richard Keene – 1983
Parent of 5 ROPE® alumni
Killed September 11, 2001 World Trade Center

Since 1980 hundreds of thousands of youth and their parents have gone through a community-oriented rites of passage called the Rite Of Passage Experience© ROPE®. This is the 5th edition of the guide that integrates all of the lessons learned. There are 3 volumes to the Guide including approximately 500 pages.

Connecting communities and creating capacity - Lay of the Land – 3 Volumes.

Lay of the Land - The guide is broken up into three sections.

Volume I (Approx. 100 pages) – “A Unifying Story: Community Organizing through Rites of Passage” introduces us to a method for organizing a community through a unifying story of rites of passage. It lays out a whole systems approach to youth and community development and offers contemporary technologies like asset mapping for rites of passage and force field analysis to put the story into practice. For more information click here: (Community Organizing)

 

 

 

 

 

Volume II (Approx. 275 pages) the Rite Of Passage Experience© ROPE® award winning curriculum

The curriculum has been continually adapted and enhanced since 1980 through feedback from community organizers, teachers, youth workers, therapists and several hundred thousand youth and their parents within dozens of communities. It features designs for youth entering puberty and transitioning from primary to secondary school. It includes the parallel process of ROPE® for Parents© that mediates the potential for a “collision of transitions” likely to occur and recognizes that rites of passage are not a “one shot deal” or happens in isolation. Rather, contemporary rites of passage unfold over years and within a number of distinct, but interconnected environments. It attends to initiating youth within the major environments they come of age, i.e. home, school, community, within their peer group, their culture and the natural world. For more information click here: (How ROPE works) and how to “install community-oriented rites of passage” click here (Installing Community Rites of Passage – ROPE®)

 

 

Volume III (Approx. 100 pages) A Common Language & Unifying Story expands on how to use the language of rites of passage as a unifying story to link all other education and youth development approaches and practices. It includes:

  1. ROPE for Parents© – a parrell process to their children’s rite of passage experience. Common language and experience mediates the potential for a “Collision of Transition.”
  2. Reframing therapy as ongoing process of initiation - It can be used to reframe children and youth’s “problems” as an “ordeal” and part of the ongoing process of initiation. It details how to facilitate a process where youth are “co-researchers,” not “patients” or “clients” and partners in resolving issues.
  3. The Initiation of Scholars© process that fosters climates of respect in schools while impacting academic performance.
  4. Play as secular spirituality and a central ingredient in the 2nd of the 3 - phase of a community-oriented rite of passage is described more fully.
  5. Community service – giving to others as characteristic of maturity and expectation for an emerging adult.
  6. Tying all of a community’s assets and resources together with ROPE.

Click here to learn more about how to “Change the Story – Transform the Future.

Community Rites of Passage