Brave Light


Brave Light Youth Exchange Project

The Brave Light Youth Exchange Project brings two groups of high school students together, one group from central Vermont and another group from the Boston area. 

Through Brave Light’s three summer conferences, these groups will have a chance to form sustained and fruitful relationships with each other. 

The different life experiences of rural Vermont and urban Boston will provide an interesting backdrop as Youth Exchange participants engage with issues of climate change and sustainability as well as issues of race and social difference. 

Questions like, “Who are we today?” and “Who can we become tomorrow” are central to the Brave Light mission.  Brave Light is searching for a new way forward for the younger generation that is rising.

Brave Light offers constructive, challenging experiences that are designed to help students reach their full potential.  Together, we grapple with important personal and interpersonal issues, with important cultural and societal issues. 

We will strengthen the muscles we have and we will grow the muscles that we need in order to confront the challenges that are before us all. Brave Light offers a safe environment for young folks to take risks, to go deep, to wrestle their perspectives about the world in which we live.

 Come join us!


Conference Schedule 2024

Star Island Conference takes place July 14-17, 2024, and is a special experience.  After each set of youth exchange their perspectives on life based on where they live, both groups will travel away from their homes to experience something new together.  In mid July, we will all travel to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  We will gather at the dock of the Isles of Shoals Steamship Company and travel by boat to Star Island.  Star Island is located nine miles east of Portsmouth.  For three days, we will live together and learn together on that island.  We will learn about cultural and environmental sustainability.  We will learn what it means to live together in challenging times. We also will get to share about our hometowns with one another. 


 

Here is the link to the online application form.

Please fill it out and hit the submit button at the bottom of the form.


History

For many years, North Chapel has developed a successful track record of working collaboratively with community partners—from Sustainable Woodstock, to the Norman Williams Public Library, to Safford Commons Affordable Housing Community. Combining our efforts with partners in the Boston area as well as in Portsmouth, NH, we have been able to design a set of cooperative programs the will challenge Brave Light Youth.  The Brave Light Project will provide youth opportunities to grow and flourish.

The Children and Youth Task Force was a small group of teachers, counselors, parents and high school students.  In 2018, the Task Force began to meet in order to learn more about the needs of children and youth in central Vermont.  We met for a little more than a year.  Several clear needs emerged out of that experience - the need to fight social isolation, a longing for inter-generational experience and the desire to know what city life is like.  This is what inspired us to create the Brave Light Project. 

The Brave Light Project is quite expensive.  With generous support from the Canaday Foundation, the Byrne Foundation and committed, individual donors, we are able to offer the Brave Light experience almost entirely without cost for its participants.  Except for the registration fee, the Brave Light Youth Exchange Project is free.

Contact us.

North Universalist Chapel Society 7 Church Street, Woodstock VT 05091 Directions/Map

Minister: Rev. Dr. Leon Dunkley can be reached by calling or texting 802-369-5104.

Music Director: Diane Mellinger can be reached at 802-234-6619 or vermontdianem@aol.com

Administrative Assistant: Joanne Boyle can be reached at 802-369-9838 or office@northchapelvt.org 

Director of Spiritual Education: Tatum Barnes can be reached at 646-675-9232 or tatumali1030@gmail.com