We believe nature, community, and meaningful challenge can together create powerful conditions for people facing adversity.
At LEAP, participants do real, hard things.
Navigate whitewater in individual kayaks, live outdoors together, move through uncertainty, and rely on themselves and one another. Within a supportive community, those challenges create opportunities to build confidence, strengthen self-efficacy and belonging, and reconnect with self, others, and the natural world.
What we do.
Founded in 2010, LEAP provides multi-day, no-fee whitewater kayaking programs in partnership with nonprofit organizations serving youth and adults who have experienced adversity. On the Deschutes and Salmon Rivers, participants spend several consecutive days immersed in nature, paddling individual kayaks, navigating whitewater, living in community, and taking on meaningful challenges with the support of professional guides and trained facilitators.
LEAP’s programs are intentionally designed to strengthen confidence, self-advocacy, connection, belonging, and resilience. Through repeated experiences of challenge, support, reflection, and success, participants have opportunities to recognize their own capacity, rely on others, contribute to a group, and build deeper connection to themselves, one another, and nature.
LEAP works mostly through nonprofit partnerships, extending and complementing the support participants already receive in their communities. Programs incorporate whitewater, intentional community-building, trauma-informed facilitation, guided reflection, peer support, adaptive equipment when needed, and a progression of increasing responsibility and leadership.
All LEAP programs are offered at no cost to participants, removing financial barriers to access and creating opportunities for people from very different life experiences to come together around a shared experience of challenge, growth, and connection.