Stepping Stone Ranch

Aboriginal youth-at-risk is a chilling reality driven amongst Aboriginal youth age 10 to 18. Today Aboriginal communities continue to struggle with the high youth crime rate. Although only 3.29% of the Canadian population is Aboriginal, they represent 21% of the admissions to our correctional services. This growing trend is a major barrier to the development of the Aboriginal youth population and their inclusion in the social and economic fabric of today’s knowledge-based economy.

Stepping Stone Ranch (SSR) project is not about the past, rather about the future! It is about leadership, about people who can make a difference, about courage to make change, about innovation, about collaborating on a common problem and effecting meaningful change from within. A project of Aboriginal actor Adam Beach and friend, Luc Latreille, SSR is an alternative correctional program for Aboriginal youth at risk.

Stepping Stone Ranch is a promise of change offering Youth-at-Risk a unique solution to help them become community “Ambassadors of Change” as part of the TecVana program and as students of Stepping Stone Ranch.  SSR is a unique therapeutic horse farm program designed to allow the youth to transition from offender to student with an opportunity for health healing, job training and life skills management; graduating as productive members of society.

SSR will treat offenders as students who will learn new e-skills, will be rehabilitated through education, will learn accountability through farm employment, will have behaviour modification through a unique horse management program and SSR will be sustainable through multiple new farm / culture related revenue streams.

It is important that SSR be integrated into the TecVana program and be connected to the global economy for a better future.