Kalos Eidos means "Beautifully Formed"
We teach adults and youth to see
themselves and children in Full Color.
Kalos Eidos means "Beautifully Formed"
We teach adults and youth to see
themselves and children in Full Color.
The Kalos Eidos Foundation is dedicated to empowering caring and committed adults with the tools, knowledge, and support they need to create and sustain a robust, Full-Color Web of Support for every child and youth within their reach. Our approach is grounded in research and proven practices, offering a rich tapestry of stories, metrics, and measures to build a thriving, adaptive developmental ecology. We focus on equipping adults—whether they are family members, neighbors, or mentors—with the resources and coaching necessary to nurture resilient, healthy, and fulfilled young people who contribute positively to society.
At the heart of our mission is the creation of safety nets, dreamcatchers, and launch pads that expand opportunities for children and youth. By doing so, we help them navigate life’s challenges, achieve their potential, and lead fulfilling lives marked by success and civility. The Kalos Eidos Foundation strives to build a community where every young person is supported, valued, and inspired to grow into their best selves.
It is nothing new to see yourself and the world around you in Full-Color. Yet, in this ever changing world, it is become increasingly unusual. Seeing in black and white has become a norm, and seeing in Full Color feels like a revolution of libery within coherence.
Kalos Eidos Foundation exists to fully prepare young people for all of the roles they will move into and out of in their lives: child to youth, youth to son or daughter, youth to student, youth to congregant, youth to employee, youth to young adult. Our goal is to have the whole young person show up to those roles more thoroughly prepared and problem-free for the transitions that occur when they cross multiple thresholds each day.
We are the discoverers of a coherent story that teaches young people how to move from one web to another while weaving for themselves one grand and beautiful web that will ensure their self-agency. We support others to create a seamless bridge between each side of the thresholds, empowering Youth to embrace their full potential with resilience, confidence, and a strong foundation of support.
Our mission is to create a seamless, supportive environment that bridges multiple thresholds, like home and school, fostering holistic development and well-being for every child.
The Kalos Eidos Foundation exists to CATCH young people up with the ingredients they’ll need to live a full and interesting life. (CATCH = Compel people to learn more, Appreciate the strengths they have within and around them, Teach to deliver information and tell the story, Coach to guide implementation of the ideas into real action, and Hand them off to others to encourage the fractal nature of Webs of Support.)
We will do this by making the invisible world around them and within them visible, coherent, and actionable through their self-agency. We will use the comprehensive and coherent framework uncovered and articulated by Derek Peterson, the founder of Integrative Youth Development™ and the Full-Color Web of Support.” Peterson has been practicing his work for over 40 years and uses it to amplify the innate resilience within each individual, thereby ensuring that they’ll have the personal liberty and social capital to endure, learn from, and appreciate each star in the constellation of their life.
The foundation is dedicated to promoting youth development, supporting their Anchoring adults, and supporting adults in thickening and sustaining their individual and necessary Webs of Support. Our mission is grounded in the belief that a strong Full-Color Web of Support can significantly improve resilience, reduce web eroding behaviors, and enhance thriving indicators among youth and adults alike.
The Kalos Eidos Foundation will house the infrastructure and financial resources necessary to accomplish its mission and to meet all strategic goals.
Strategic Goals:
Research and promote the best principles and practices in youth development to parents/guardians, individual community members, agencies/organizations, and schools, in order to create full educational ecologies for every child and youth.
Continue to add to and lead in the dissemination of the body of knowledge currently available on Integrative Youth Development and its role in producing positive outcomes for children and youth.
Actively engage youth, and the adults around them, in the work of creating and sustaining thick webs of support for themselves, and one another.
Guide and support youth in discovering their innate talents, intelligences, and abilities in order for them to uncover their full potential, andto provide them with the supports they need in order to use that potential to launch to success.
As the Director of Education at Kalos Eidos, Sarah empowers individuals to maximize their impact on the lives of children and teens. By aligning talents, intelligences, and their Web of Support, she elevates the capacity of individuals and initiatives within our foundation, ensuring the highest return on investment in the individuals, villages, and communities we serve.
The work of the Kalos Eidos Foundation is deeply personal to Sarah, reflecting her own life experiences and struggles. The combination of ADHD and the constant need to rebuild her Web of Support made it incredibly difficult to connect with caring adults and peers. These experiences have given her a profound understanding of how challenging it can be to establish meaningful relationships when life is in constant flux.
Peterson is a youth development focused entrepreneur, leader, writer, and guide. Before the Harvard Education Review highlighted his work, he was named Alaska's "Prevention Professional of the Year" and "Educator of the Year." A believer in the wild side, he has: bicycled 11,000 miles in an attempt to pedal the western hemisphere, hiked 2000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, paddled a canoe 480 miles of the Yukon River, and trotted 48 miles rim to river to rim and return across the Grand Canyon.
Peterson is the Principal Director of the Institute for Community and Adolescent Resilience - Unifying Solutions (ICAR-US.com), which has developed the Full-Color Web of Support™, which measures the developmental ecology of a child, youth, and Anchoring adult.
Through the support of multi-million dollar Department of Education and National Science Foundation grants, Peterson has figured out how to show and measure a child/teen's youth developmental ecology as it correlates to resilience, student success, risk behavior reduction, general well-being, and self-agency.
Since 1994, Peterson has traveled the world, delivering over 3,000 presentations to audiences as large as 2,800 and as small as 25. More than 310,000 copies of his books in the "Helping Kids Succeed" series are in circulation. Peterson served on the National School Climate Council for eleven years. He was the National School Board Association's Youth-in-Governance consultant for 11 years. He worked with young people and their boards to increase youth voice and prepare them to lead the democratic institutions they'll soon inherit.
Derek, in his work, brings a message of hope to young people, their families, schools, and communities. While he still works directly with students, he is intentionally transitioning to coaching and supporting his cadre of professional trainers to take his metrics and measures worldwide.
He holds a Master's Degree in Educational Psychology from Northern Arizona University. He and his wife, Laura Williams, spend summers on their family farm on the North Dakota prairie and winters at their surf shack in Baja Sur, Mexico.
The Full-Color Web of Support™ is being used in countries around the world to show survivors of sexual assault a pathway back to wholeness through resilience.
We have Web of Support programs in Lagos, Nigeria; Baja, Mexico; a girls' school in Tanzania; and a school system in Australia.
We support families undergoing divorce.
We work with young couples considering marriage, exploring the integration of their support networks.
We support a singles ministry in Tennessee.
We are engaged in grief work here in North Dakota.
The Kalos Eidos Foundation's full spectrum thumbprint logo stands as a testament to individual uniqueness, embodying every individual's unique beauty and intrinsic worth. This symbol challenges the common metrics of identity, focusing instead on the distinctiveness of each individual's gifts, talents, and intelligences. It encourages us to appreciate and cultivate our unique contributions, steering clear of comparison and competition, which too often diminish self-worth.
The thumbprint image serves as a powerful reminder that our identity should never be a source of judgment, comparison, and deficit-based thinking. Instead, it emphasizes growth, change, and adaptation and advocates for the exploration and maximization of one's potential in a positive, self-autonomous manner. The foundation's logo, with its spectrum of colors, reflects a commitment to recognizing and valuing the broad range of abilities and backgrounds that each person brings to their personal village, thereby fostering a supportive environment for everyone to thrive.
Defining Kalos Eidos as “Beautifully Formed” encapsulates the essence of what it means to be human. Each person, with their unique abilities and potential, is beautifully formed, capable of contributing to the larger Web of Support. Just as the thumb’s opposition allows the hand to grasp and create, so too does each individual’s unique strengths contribute to the formation of a resilient Web of Support. Our foundation believes in celebrating this uniqueness and fostering environments where everyone’s potential is recognized and nurtured, much like the supportive web we aim to create for all individuals.
The Kalos Eidos Foundation is distinct and focused in its approach and purpose. We support young people and their Anchoring adults to:
1) see themselves and the things that influence them in Full-Color instead of in black and white,
2) we teach them the wisdom and research-based PHactors that lead to an interesting life,
3) we provide them with measurable metrics to measure (take a snapshot) of the current state of their Web of Support,
4) we support them in changing their mindset from repairing weaknesses to amplifying their strengths,
5) we focus on thickening the Web of Support they have to strengthen themselves and those around them ,and
6) we support individuals in the larger community in aligning their policies, programs, and practices to create and maintain the conditions necessary to build and support connections and create a resilient community through resilient individuals.
