How It Works
Erik’s Ranch & Retreats is a unique residential living opportunity that will provide a home for 83 young adults with autism, as well as interesting on-site careers, extraordinary activities, and daily opportunities to build relationships with people from near and far. We have two properties, one in upscale Edina, Minnesota (a suburb of Minneapolis), and a second in Montana’s beautiful Paradise Valley near Bozeman. There are other agrarian and urban group homes that cater to adults with autism but nothing as comprehensively designed for resident living and working success as Erik’s Ranch & Retreats:
- Our locations are not only home to 83 young adults with autism, but they are guest accommodations run by the very residents who live there, thus providing meaningful work and other opportunities.
- Our Experience Guide program offers our residents with autism the ability to use their skills and interests “guiding” vacationers and other guests in a host of recreational and cultural activities.
- Our life/work model, with its principles of lifelong learning, individual community building, and bidirectional integration provides residents with social opportunities and lasting friendships not previously available.
- We are a self-sustaining operation, with guests, voluntourists, and other visitors to Erik’s Ranch & Retreats providing the donations necessary to run our residences and guest accommodations.
Our guiding principles of lifelong learning, individual community building, and bidirectional integration through voluntourism offer our residents individualized life plans in exciting and challenging careers, opportunities to build connections and relationships with an extended community of new friends from around the world, and a new paradigm for reciprocal integration which is instrumental in expanding life and social skills for individuals with autism. So, whether you choose to live or volunteer at our urban retreat in Minnesota or our ranch in Montana, our core principles are the same.
