We believe in the potential of young people to remake the world. 

Mission:

Springboard supports projects in higher education that help young people cultivate meaning, purpose, and the inner resources needed to address the urgent issues of our time.

The Need:

These Values Guide Our Work:

AGENCY: To know my inner compass and to use it to set my own course.

BELONGING: To be part of a community that I care about and that cares about me.

CREATIVITY: To unleash original ideas and bold visions.

RESILIENCE: To adapt to challenges and cope with change and uncertainty

We live in a time of staggering alienation.

Adrift from community and cut off from the natural world, young people face a breakdown of connection in their: 

  • Relationship to Self

  • Relationship to Community

  • Relationship to Place.

For young people to face the colliding crises of our time –  of climate, of meaning and purpose, and of democracy – all three of these relationships must be strengthened.

Springboard’s Response:

Education spaces can create conditions where these relationships flourish.

We support unique projects that do just this — small scale, living-learning models of education where young people reconnect with self, community, and place.

By building an ecosystem of such institutes, Springboard works to make this type of transformative education the norm.

Three strategic priorities drive our work:

  1. Grow a field of EXEMPLARY MODELS

  2. Develop a RESEARCH AND EVIDENCE BASE

  3. Establish an ECOSYSTEM of educators, funders, students and researchers

Read our White Paper

There is a kind of cosmic convergence going on, creating energy around the microcollege movement and undergraduate reform. It beckons (us) to remember that learning must nurture our spirits as well as our minds, build full lives and not careers alone, and that we grow best in communities, not simply as solitary beings.

— L. Jackson Newell (President Emeritus, Deep Springs College. Historian of Higher Education)

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