I found it difficult to recruit some friends whom I thought would really benefit from an experience like APB, and I mostly only managed to convince friends who already had previous outdoors experience. The current glaring lack of people of color in the outdoors creates a feedback loop: many people of color don’t see themselves represented or have any experience in this predominantly white space, so they’ll likely just avoid it.

Hi, I’m Michaela. I am a 5th-year senior from Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I study Music Therapy and American Sign Language.

Our mission at A Place Beyond is to create an exceptional in-person learning community for college students taking their coursework online. The idea of taking classes in the woods may sound like a break from academic rigor, but we put academic success and fulfillment above all else. We see ourselves as additive to a college education, not distractive.

Accessibility at A Place Beyond. Where we are, and where we're going. Help us raise $20k to cover the costs of students for whom APB is out of reach.

After months of planning and dreaming, our participants are here! While we had a lot of fun imagining what A Place Beyond would look like, it’s been a dream to see that vision come to life in the hands of these bright, funny, compassionate people.

A Place Beyond participants will engage in group living, which means that we will act as one family unit for the duration of the semester — living together while social distancing from the rest of the world.

While you might love the idea of an intentional community with amazing college students in some of the most beautiful country Arizona has to offer, you can’t help but ask yourself, “...yeah, but what would it LOOK like to be at A Place Beyond?”