Our Charitable Programs for Education and Mental Health

We are proud to have recently been recognized as the following by Charity Intelligence in 2023

Boundless has been awarded Charity Intelligence’s “5-Star” designation for over a decade. These awards represent a rigorous and objective assessment of our cost-effectiveness, the achievement of exceptional student outcomes, transparency, accountability to stakeholders, and sound financial management.

To look under the hood of Boundless, please visit the documents section below.

Our Clumsy Utopia

Boundless is a rather unique combination of being an Independent High School and a Mental Health Counselling program, located in the pristine wilderness of Eastern Ontario. Our classroom rests on 600 acres of forests, cliffs, and various congregations of cow poop, abutting the Madawaska River in Renfrew County.

It’s an educator’s dream. But it’s also a clumsy fantasy.

The youth that come here present anxiety, depression, and often severe learning issues. They are marginalized, compromised, and often victimized. Trying to support them to rise above and beyond their hurdles is sometimes messy. But in the final analysis, almost 95% of our students prevail.

We are considered a Congregate Living Essential Service, and know we shall be operating throughout the pandemic.

Our Community Partners are Deeply Invested in Boundless

Our partners provide more than just referrals. They manage cultural training, shared treatment approaches, and send staff to accompany youth to Boundless. They include Indigenous Communities, Children’s Aid Societies, Children’s Mental Health Centres, School boards, and officials in the Youth Justice system.

How our Program Flows Throughout the Year

From September to June, we deliver our core charitable activities to struggling youth. This includes a Boundless Live-In-School (BLIS) and one-week stints that see hundreds of youth earn credits for their journeys in leadership and self-exploration. All kids are provided with a 100% scholarship when referred by our community partners.

In July and August, we raise funds for our charity through a social enterprise, delivering education programs to families who can pay the full costs. Pre-Covid, this operation provided almost a third of our revenue to support the youth noted above.

Our Direction for 2023-2024

– Number of youth served shall increase from 317 in 22/23 to 400 in 23/24 

–   Our plans to navigate the HR dilemma is to diminish our social enterprise, redirecting staff resources to our core charitable programs, enabling their expansion. 

– We are  piloting a new community model where we shall serve more youth participants at any one time (up to forty). We’ll also rely more on our community partners to provide Elders and leaders to guide their own communities.

– We anticipate a significant expansion of youth participants by 30%, both in the Indigenous community and in the mental health sector that treats anxiety and depression

–  More planted trees. More land remediation. More nature based curriculum. 

 – We are launching a qualitative research project that is looking at how effective our program is for addressing anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders

 

Please Support our Programs for Indigenous and other Marginalized Youth

By donating to Boundless, your support will go towards serving 300 youth annually. Or, consider supporting our Indigenous program, launched in 2020. Currently we are developing partnerships with the Native Child and Family Services of Toronto, The Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, Indigenous Programs at the Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board, and the Innuuqatigiit Centre for Inuit Children, Youth and Families (Ottawa).

 

The Boundless Education Conservation Area (B.E.C.A.)

We hope your great, great, great, great grandchildren, and their distant progeny, will visit the wondrous BECA in the year 2437, or perhaps pop by in 2699. They’ll drop to their knees in awe when they behold the old growth forest, feast on produce from the carefully protected organic farm, fry up pickerel from the pristine Madawaska River, and stroll through fields of amber grass that will thrive from its romantic relation with cow poop.

This is our vision for BECA – that current students and future generations of visitors thrive on this piece of paradise.

The land will be protected for centuries – all 600 acres of our Madawaska valley soil. In our eco-fantasy, we plan to gobble up adjacent land by making our neighbours offers that they can’t refuse. Shhhhh, don’t let it out of the bag just yet. We need a pile of cash first.

But we do have time.

Our governance model for BECA
is made to last 

The newly formed BECA committee has pledged a lifetime of commitment. They have chosen successors who will step up when the original committee passes away. And these successors will choose their replacements. And on it goes.

BECA is supported by the BECA Fund (see financial statements), a tidy sum of 200k that will be used to defend the land should anyone or any group deign to violate the conservation easements we have built into the bedrock of the property.

If left untouched, the BECA fund will grow into a monstrosity over the centuries. The possibilities are rather dazzling.

But for now, meaning this century, this decade, this year, and this week, we’ll teach our students how to protect nature, and inspire them to be dedicated warriors of land protection.

How to Donate

We are a Canadian registered charity (124225855RR0001) and issue tax receipts for all donations. Donations may be made by PayPal, cheque, Visa, or Mastercard.

Donors may designate their donations to any of the following programs:

Youth programs | Indigenous programs | B.E.C.A

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