Passages Northwest: Courage, Confidence, and Community

Organization Information:

Organization Name:
Passages Northwest
City & State:
Seattle, 
Washington
Organization Website:
http://www.passagesnw.org
Organization's Mission Statement
The mission of Passages Northwest (“PNW”) is: to educate and motivate girls to develop leadership and courage through the integrated exploration of the arts and the natural environment.

Submission Information

Impact Essay
Passages Northwest is an organization that believes in inspiring courage and leadership in girls through the outdoors and the arts. Our programs are based on developing young women’s self-confidence, while creating a compassionate community. In our programs, girls are able to celebrate both their mistakes and successes, and those of others. Our vision is a world where girls are valued for exactly who they are and given every opportunity to succeed in life. We seek to inspire courage– inquisitive, creative, and physical – within young women through mentorship, adventure, and fun. Inquisitive courage involves widening one’s perspective, or learning to be unafraid to ask questions. Creative courage involves learning to freely express one’s character through the arts. Physical courage involves trying challenging new physical activities in a safe environment. We use activities such as rock climbing, backpacking, sea kayaking, and camping skills to teach conflict resolution, respect for self and others, community building, and activism. Currently, Passages Northwest serves approximately 700 girls a year through year-round wilderness programs, afterschool programs, parent/daughter activities, and partnership programs with local schools and organizations. We have a core commitment to serving girls from a wide range of cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds: in 2008, 51% of our students were girls of color and 68% received full or partial scholarships to participate on our programs. This commitment to serving girls from all walks of life makes our job of recruiting girls and families to our programs both challenging and time-consuming. All of our outreach materials are crafted using Adobe software. Your products allow us to create resources that communicate the importance of our mission and the fun adventure that girls can expect from our programs. In addition, we use Adobe products to create materials to share with our supporters, which capture the transitions in courage, confidence, and community that occur over time in our programs. This has helped build a broad base of support for our programs, helping Passages Northwest grow into a trusted community institution for girls. Recently we coordinated our second annual series of community presentations called “Celebrating Diversity in the Outdoors”. These events encourage youth to get outdoors, and increase public awareness and support of our programs. This year 1,800 people participated, a 50% increase from our previous year. All of our advertisements were done with Adobe Photoshop software donated through TechSoup. Your products have increased our name recognition, opened doors for organizational partnerships, and expanded the number of schools requesting presentations of our programs. We are submitting this event flyer for your contest, because it was created by a young woman who has been impacted by our vision of courage, confidence, and community. This piece attracted a large and diverse audience to our events, and helped us share the importance of the outdoors for children and within communities of color. We are grateful for your support in making this product available to us and we look forward to using Adobe products to reach many more girls in the future.
Submission Category
Environmental Impact Print/Photo