Mission

Conversations on the Fringe (CotF) is an organization seeking creative and innovative ways to close the justice gaps for vulnerable and marginalized individuals in contemporary society.

Vision

To be a leading entity in providing training, resources, and consulting services to youth, families, and community organizations in the areas of mental, emotional, physical, and social health among vulnerable and marginalized individuals.

Core Values

Courage

We commit to being willing to enter those dark places on the fringe where vulnerable and marginalized individuals, have been pushed. We are committed to taking the help and hope they need TO them.

Audacity

We are not afraid to reach innovatively into that darkness either. We are willing to push the limits and even fail in our attempts to find and reach out to those who are broken, victimized, and oppressed.

Honesty

Believing that honesty is the foundation for any hope for a healthy and holistic lifestyle, we model honesty in our work with the community and in our administrative activity.

Community

We are committed to helping build and model healthy community(ies), believing that healthy community(ies) produce healthy individuals.

Justice/Advocacy

We embrace the fight for justice/advocacy as the voice of our conscience; believing that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

We believe in transformative justice – that rather that punishing people for surface-level behaviors, or restoring conditions to where they were before the harm happened, we need to find the roots of the harm, together, and make the harm impossible in the future. We believe that the roots of most harm are systemic, and we must be willing to disrupt vicious systems that have been normalized.