Join 20 Indigenous youth between 14 – 18 years old, adult allies, & The Three Things Team on a Cultural, Identity Building & Leadership experience in Australia
October 25th – November 5th 2025
$15,500 per youth or adult ally
Costs Cover:
Selection Process Tools and Resources
Pre-Travel Tools for participants and families
Fully staffed and support from take-off to return home
Travel to/from Toronto with overnight accommodations and programming
Travel to/from Australia, and all in country travel (air and ground)
All accommodations in country
All meals
Travel health insurance
All materials
Full 12 days of programming including:
Opening Circle and Ceremony
Three Things Youth Voice, Development and Healing processes and activities
Australian experiences including admissions for all excursions
Three day immersive land based cultural experience provided by Yalada Tours
Closing Circle and Ceremony
Your deposit of $7750 secures a space for a young person and/ or adult ally from your community or organization.
With each deposit made, it secures a space for a youth / adult ally to take part in mashkiki. For each deposit we invite you to have a minimum of three youth fully complete the application and The Three Things Team will use our proven equity driven tool and method to identify the youth who will be the best fit for the experience.
Starting with the application process is where we begin to build a community among the young people, adult allies, families, and the Three Things Team who will travel down under together.
Building a strong and diverse community is anchored in ensuring the best fit of each participant – youth and adults alike, (including the Three Things team), where each person’s experiences, insights, personalities and gifts complement each other, and together we achieve the goals of the experience.
This means we need to have young people who feel they HAVE to take part in mashkiki – beyond just thinking it would be cool, or because it’s a trip someone told them they would be going on.
It also for your community or organization, removes any challenges on how youth were selected to participate, as an outside body, (our selection team), is responsible. We also expect to have a video chat with adult allies who are planning on attending to ensure that they too understand the role they will be playing and expectations of all the adults, (including our team), taking part.
Our selection process helps ensure each young person, diverse in lived experiences, culture, language, and skill levels, can take part in the physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental of the components of the work that will be undertaken. The application process includes standard information required for a project of this sort, in addition to key questions and a video submission. Once you have secured your deposit we will provide the application form.
What does…the first of a lifetime of experiences… mean?
Three Things has been designing and delivering national and international youth gatherings and travel programs for more than a decade.
We led 45 Indigenous youth and young adults between 15 – 23 years old in daily leadership and identity development programming as they sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia across the Atlantic Ocean to France. Beyond the programming, both on land and while at sea, our team managed logistics, (travel to/from Halifax and return from France), accommodations and meals in France, and supportive, caring, and skilled staffing in each component of the project. We collaborated with a collective of partners who together created the initial first of a lifetime of experiences signature project.
Again, working with key partners, we brought a team of Indigenous teenagers, all elite athletes, to Peru to witness the Pan Am Games, visit Machu Picchu, and take part in a sport, cultural and leadership development program. Again, our team led not only program design and delivery, but all the logistics for youth, Elders, and adult allies who were part of our delegation. From flights to accommodations, meals and cultural activities, our team collaborated with the champions and visionaries of the project, (including Olympian Waneek Horn-Miller), and Elders, (Wilton Littlechild and Marie Wilson) of the program to ensure a safe and supported experience for each participant.
The young people who take part in mashkiki will be honoured for their inherent sacredness, they will be celebrated for their bravery, and they will cared for in a way that ensures they know, they matter, they are important, and they belong. They’ll come to understand, that they are mashkiki: they are beautiful medicine.
Many of our team of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit consultants, each who bring their own gifts, teachings, and approaches to our work have been travellers: experiencing the world past their own community, Nation, and postal code. That positive risk taking that allowed them to see and learn more about other cultures – the similarities and differences, and in doing so, learning much more about themselves: who they are as Indigenous Peoples.
We expect mashkiki will not be a one and done adventure and experience participants have in their lives – that instead it will provide them the grounding to see what can be gained from taking these leaps beyond their own borders. It will open the door for a lifetime of experiences. Maybe it will be future travel; throughout Canada and abroad, leaving home for post-secondary education, or learning more about who they are, as Indigenous young people.
Wherever their path takes them, mashkiki will become the first of a lifetime of experiences they bravely undertake.
If you’re wanting to learn more about us, we invite you to visit (and subscribe to), our YouTube channel by clicking below.
Here is a snapshot of some of our team – some of whom are helping design and will be on the ground to deliver the mashkiki program.
Contact us at youmatter@3things.ca if you want to arrange a video visit to learn more and move forward with having young people in your space be part of this important and life shifting experience.
