Mission: Personal growth and community development through learning adventures in living classrooms.

Vision:
Rippleffect envisions a Maine community where youth and adults are engaged, healthy in mind, body, and spirit, and sensitive to diversity in their social and natural environment. Rippleffect offers a safe space on Cow Island and within expeditious 'pods' to nurture habits and skills that support this health. We aim to help participants share the insights gleaned during programs and transfer their learning broadly to create a healthy, interdependent community in Maine. We believe that a community that is aware of and committed to addressing local social and environmental needs will be a place that thrives.

Philosophy of Mind Body Spirit

Rippleffect believes that the disenchantment of many young people in our society is due to the increasing lack of connection with their inner voice and with the natural systems operating in their local environment. Rippleffect strives to connect students to the world around them, and to see the natural world underlying even the most urban of environments.

Our goal is to immerse students in experiences that will stimulate all aspects of their being, challenge their creative problem solving abilities, engage them in expeditions that will push their physical limits and comfort zone, and invite them to explore their consciousness and inner self through solo vision quests and a communion with the natural world around them. By addressing the whole of a young person, we are confident that they will develop the leadership and life skills that build healthy, effective people. Our program differentiates itself from similar organizations like Outward Bound or NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) by serving primarily Maine youth and integrating our young people into the wilderness outside their front door.

Mind

After learning the tools and hard-skills needed to keep themselves and one another safe, participants are challenged with everything from climatological changes to navigating their pod (group) from point A to B with chart, compass, and parallel rules. They will cope with boat traffic and safety considerations, ecological and environmental considerations, and paddling technique to increase their endurance. Additionally, our guides our trained to 'manufacture' group challenges and creative problems that the students are asked to solve themselves. From 'geocaching' to challenge courses high in the trees, there are no spectators in our pods; everyone is asked to play a role.

Rippleffect programs focus on issues of communication and group dynamics in hand with a kayaking and environmental curriculum. Research in outdoor education programs has proven that competence in a skill is one of the most effective barriers against self destructive behavior.

Body

Our aim is to give youth options for exercise and physicality that they can 'ripplicate' in their own backyard. Be it group games, yoga, kayaking, swimming, or running, we are proud to introduce youth to activities that they won't leave behind with their middle and high school careers. These are life-long activities that will keep a person fit and enthusiastic about exploring the world around them.

Students are given the opportunity to experience the gratification of "hands-on" applied learning techniques, an effective approach for all youth, especially those who are challenged by the traditional classroom environment. Kayaking offers access to island environments and a shift in perspective that is a great tool in generating goals and broadening values.

Our programs have strong vocational components and are meant to give students the opportunity to engage with increasing challenge, year after year. A 9 year old in Portland Waterfront's Aucocisco group may find herself as a high school junior receiving a scholarship for the Youth Leadership Summit (YLS) for her Maine county. A YLS student may find himself coming back as a Guide in Training, who may move on to an administrative or intern position through our fundraisers Linen, the Kayak Regatta, of Velvet. We offer qualified and motivated students the opportunity to intern with the Rippleffect program and eventually train to become one of our certified Maine Sea Kayaking Guides.

Spirit

"Your soul is your true self, those qualities that most deeply define and express who you are and the unique gift that you were born to bring to the world, a world so much in need of the socially transforming contributions of initiated, actively engaged adults." -Bill Plotkin, Animas Valley Institute

Through our programming, we create opportunity for youth to take time alone, and to engage in facilitated activities like yoga, drumming, and vision quests that allow them to meditate on fundamental questions of identity, spirituality, and community. By investigating ourselves, we learn that much of our agitation, disharmony, and suffering comes from within us, and that it us up to us to face these challenges head on, rather than running away from them. By focusing on the simplicity of breathing and inner experience, students will begin to generate a self awareness that will serve them for a lifetime.

Rippleffect is not a faith-based organization, and provides a secular, open environment for youth and adults of all faiths to feel welcome.