gep Magazine
gep Magazine is a remote mentorship program delivering incentivized challenges directly to kids & teens.
They can be nominated or self-nominate to participate in the program.
There is no cost. No barriers. Just opportunity arriving at their door, challenging them to unlock their full potential.
An invitation.
A game. An opportunity.
“Are you ready?”
Dear Reader,
Congratulations! You have been selected to participate in an exclusive experience with gep Magazine.
Accompanying this invitation is your first volume of challenges. Completing these challenges may take some time & effort, but every token earned brings you closer to real prizes worth playing for. Yes, real prizes!
Each challenge includes clear instructions for completion. Move at your own pace but never give up. Once 50% of the challenges in a volume are complete, you can request the next volume using the QR on the back cover.
To track your progress, we’ve provided a progress map with stickers. Hang it where you’ll see it daily so you remember to keep playing!
The challenges in gep Magazine are designed to help you unlock your unique potential. Stay in the game to discover just how powerful your mind really is. Are you ready?
gep
Seek art. See revolution.
Progress Map
Included with the first volume of gep Magazine is the Progress Map, a double-sided companion poster that brings every challenge together into a single visual journey.
Children are invited to make their first creative decision in the program by selecting which side of the poster they want to display in their space. With two distinct aesthetic options, the Progress Map becomes a daily reminder of the journey ahead.
As challenges are completed, stickers are placed over corresponding challenge codes on the map. Over time, the poster transforms into a growing record of their effort, resilience & accomplishments across every volume of gep Magazine.
While each child’s journey is unique, the destination is shared: a generation empowered to create a more equitable, regenerative & beautiful world.
gep Magazine
Structure & Methodology
There’s nothing quite like gep Magazine. It’s not a workbook or textbook, and it’s technically not even a magazine. Magazines are static, printed once and fixed in time. Every volume of gep Magazine is continuously updating as new data emerges, new partnerships develop and gep’s mission grows.
gep Magazine is a carefully-crafted catalogue of incentivizing challenges that motivate children to develop healthy life practices, discover their skills, and realize their purpose.
As kids progress through the program, they’ll build their mind to be resourceful enough to see options where others see dead-ends and build doors when all others seem closed. They’ll understand how their choices indefinitely shape their lives and other’s. They’ll learn to meet every obstacle with the full capacity of the most powerful tool they’ll ever possess… their mind.
Challenge Territories
gep Magazine covers multiple territories of human development. Each volume revisits each territory, deepening comprehension & complexity as they progress.
-
The Mind Territory develops the inner skills kids use to navigate themselves & the world: self-awareness, emotional regulation, cognitive flexibility, executive function & mental resilience.
Through reflection, problem-solving, goal-setting, breathwork, meditation & other practices introduced progressively across volumes, kids learn to understand their thoughts, regulate their responses, consider different possibilities & follow through on what they set out to do.
-
The Body Territory teaches kids to understand and care for their physical selves as a foundation for everything else. Movement, nutrition, rest, and physical self awareness are documented prerequisites for cognitive function and emotional regulation.
Body challenges are practical & accessible, designed to meet kids and teens wherever they are with whatever they have.
-
The Home Territory begins with a single personal space and expands outward across volumes. Kids learn to think intentionally about their environment: what a space is for, what it should feel like, how to care for it & how they can improve it.
That way of thinking compounds from a bedroom drawer to a room, from a room to a home, from a home to a neighborhood. Environmental improvement is where inner development meets the physical world.
-
The Relationships Territory develops the interpersonal skills that determine the quality of every connection a kid or teen builds across their lifetime: communication, active listening, boundary setting, conflict resolution & reciprocity.
These skills are rarely taught explicitly. gep treats them with the same seriousness as any other subject. Research consistently links relationship quality to physical health, mental wellbeing, career success, and life satisfaction across every demographic studied.
A landmark Harvard study tracking participants for over 80 years identified the quality of close relationships as the single most significant predictor of health & happiness in later life… more than wealth, fame, or professional achievement.
-
Every child & teen is creative. Not just the ones who draw well or play an instrument. Every human being has the capacity to make something that didn’t exist before.
The Creative Expression Territory asks kids to make things: art, writing, building, designing, cooking, crafting. The medium is secondary. The practice of taking something from imagination into reality builds creative confidence that transfers into every other territory and every challenge life presents.
-
Contact with the natural world is not supplemental to human development. It is documented as essential.
Nature Territory challenges develop ecological literacy alongside the wellbeing benefits of nature contact, using the natural world as a living laboratory for environmental science & STEM. Through observation, experimentation, tending & growing, kids explore how living systems work and how human choices interact with them.
-
The Community & Civics Territory develops one of the most important beliefs a young person can carry: that they are not simply members of their community, but capable contributors with the power to improve it.
Challenges move from improving a shared community space to identifying neighborhood needs, organizing others, and submitting formal proposals to gep for larger initiatives. This territory is where gep Magazine connects most directly to gep’s Community-Based Initiatives.
-
The Ancestry & Culture Territory helps kids explore the histories, cultures, traditions & lineages that connect people across generations. Challenges invite kids to discover their own ancestry & cultural heritage while developing curiosity & respect for cultures beyond their own.
Exploration might begin with what a child already knows, independent research, cultural traditions, historical records, stories, art, food, music, language or knowledge shared by people they trust. Kids are given the freedom to decide what parts of their own story they want to explore & how deeply they want to explore them.
The goal is not to define a child by their family history, but to give them opportunities to understand where they come from, explore what resonates with them & develop a stronger sense of identity, belonging & cultural awareness.
Diverse Applications
Challenges are not lessons. They are real experiences that produce real outcomes.
Habit-Building Challenges run approx. 30 days with daily check-ins. These challenges are designed to turn healthy life practices like breath-work, movement & written reflections into natural daily habits.
Project Challenges are self-paced and completed when the work is done.
Community-Based Challenges extend beyond the individual into their community and involve collaborating with others. Variable in timeline. Real in impact.
How We Connect
with Participants
Children Can Be Nominated by:
-
Trusted community leaders, such as social workers, school administrators & NGOs, can identify children ages 8–17 who may benefit from the program and provide children, or their guardians, with a Guardian Authorization Form for completion.
Only legal guardians can authorize participation. Community leaders cannot approve participation on a child’s behalf unless they are the child’s legal guardian.
-
Kids & teens interested in joining the program can obtain a Guardian Authorization Form to be sent to their guardian by scanning a Nomination QR Code from a peer’s magazine or by obtaining an authorization form from their school, local community center or other partner locations.
Guardian Authorization
Prior to Participation
Before a child can create a username, submit completed challenges or earn tokens, their legal guardian must provide consent using gep’s Guardian Authorization Form. This process supports compliance with child privacy laws (COPPA) and offers parents & guardians peace of mind and transparency throughout their child’s participation.
Form Requests the Following:
-
Full name, signature, email & cellphone number
-
Child’s first name, age & shipping address for program deliverables: magazines, safety device, instant camera, challenge supplies, prizes
-
For digitally submitting completed challenges
-
If a child’s legal guardian does not want the child participating in gep’s remote mentorship program, they may select "Opt Out" on the form.
Guardian Consent Verified by:
-
Mail a completed Guardian Authorization Form with a pre-stamped, pre-addressed envelope provided by gep
-
Scan the QR code provided on the Guardian Authorization Form to complete authorization digitally
-
Click the “Guardian Authorization Request” link sent to the guardian’s email or cell phone when a child submits their request using the Nomination QR code found in in gep Magazine
Partnerships
gep is currently preparing to launch gep Magazine’s pilot program, designed to serve approximately 200 kids & teens ages 8–17. The pilot will include at least three volumes, with challenges spanning all eight developmental territories in each volume, giving participants a minimum of 24 challenges to explore, complete & build upon.
As we prepare for launch, we are actively seeking partners whose products, resources & expertise can help bring those challenges to life, remove barriers to participation, and strengthen the experiences we provide for children. In return, gep works to build collaborations that generate meaningful value for participating children, the communities we reach, and the organizations helping make that work possible.
-
Not every kid & teen has access to a smartphone or computer to digitally submit completed challenges. An instant camera partnership helps ensure access to technology never determines a child’s ability to participate.
Providing participants with instant cameras & film gives kids a tactile creative tool they can use to document their work, capture their experiences and submit completed challenges by mail when a smart device is not available.
The Opportunity
Expand Access: Help remove a technological barrier that could otherwise prevent a child from fully participating in the program.
Put Creativity in Their Hands: Give participants a physical tool for documenting their experiences, expressing themselves & sharing what they create.
Value for Partners
Meaningful Product Integration: Your product serves a genuine purpose within the program rather than appearing as disconnected advertising.
Equity & Access: Demonstrate a tangible investment in making creative & developmental opportunities accessible to more children.
Impact Storytelling: With appropriate permissions & child safeguards, gep can highlight the experiences your contribution helped make possible.
Meaningful Visibility: Receive recognition for helping provide participants with the tools they need to remain active in gep Magazine.
-
Some gep Magazine challenges require supplies such as gardening tools, art materials, building materials or other resources a child may not have readily available.
Challenge-material partnerships help ensure that a child’s ability to participate is not determined by what they can afford or already have at home. By providing the tools a challenge requires, partners help turn an activity on a page into an experience a child can actually complete.
The Opportunity
Remove Barriers: Help provide participants with the materials they need to explore, experiment, create & complete challenges.
Enable Real Experiences: Put useful resources directly into children’s hands so ideas can become projects, experiments, artwork, gardens & other tangible outcomes.
Value for Partners
Authentic Integration: Products can be incorporated where they serve a genuine function within a challenge or participant experience.
Visible Social Impact: Connect your contribution to something tangible your organization helped make possible for participating children.
Community Goodwill: Demonstrate meaningful investment in youth development, creativity, education & equitable access to opportunity.
Mission Alignment: Support challenges that align naturally with your organization’s expertise, products or social-impact priorities.
-
Kids & teens earn tokens by completing challenges, reflections and other milestones throughout gep Magazine. Those tokens can be redeemed for real prizes, transforming progress into something participants can see, celebrate & work toward.
Prize partners help us maintain an incentive system that makes persistence exciting while reinforcing an important message: effort, follow-through & growth are worth recognizing.
The Opportunity
Celebrate Achievement: Help create meaningful moments of recognition when participants reach goals they have worked toward.
Incentivize Persistence: Give kids another reason to stay engaged, continue challenging themselves & experience the satisfaction of earning something through their own effort.
Value for Partners
Purposeful Participation: Your contribution becomes part of a reward system designed to encourage persistence, accomplishment & continued growth.
Positive Brand Visibility: Receive recognition for helping gep celebrate the effort & achievements of participating kids & teens.
Community Goodwill: Demonstrate a tangible investment in children’s development to families, educators, community leaders & other mission-aligned audiences.
Impact Storytelling: Help us tell stories not simply about what children received, but what they accomplished to earn it.
-
As gep Magazine encourages kids & teens to explore, learn and increasingly engage with the world around them, their safety & wellbeing remain essential.
A personal safety device partnership would help provide participants with an added layer of protection they can carry while completing challenges, participating in their communities and navigating everyday life.
The Opportunity
Support Safer Participation: Help provide kids & teens with an easy-to-use resource designed to offer an added layer of protection and greater peace of mind for families.
Provide a Lasting Resource: Unlike materials used for a single challenge, a personal safety device can remain useful to a child long after a particular activity is complete.
Expand Access: Our goal is to make a personal safety device available to every gep participant who has not already received one through another gep initiative.
Value for Partners
Meaningful Product Impact: Place a useful resource into the hands of young people & families who can benefit from it beyond the program itself.
Family & Community Goodwill: Demonstrate a tangible investment in the safety & wellbeing of participating children.
Long-Term Value: Your contribution continues serving a purpose at school, in a child’s neighborhood, while traveling or as they participate more actively in their community.
Mission Alignment: Support gep’s goal of giving children greater opportunities to explore, participate & develop independence while keeping safety at the center of that progression.
Why This Matters for Partners
gep Magazine partnerships are designed around meaningful integration. Rather than simply placing a logo beside the mission, partners can help make specific parts of the program possible.
Depending on the collaboration, partners may receive recognition through gep Magazine, our website, social platforms & impact storytelling while demonstrating tangible investment in youth empowerment, creativity, education, equity & regenerative development.
Most importantly, we seek partnerships built around reciprocity: collaborations that create genuine value for children while also creating meaningful social, reputational & strategic value for the organizations contributing alongside us.
Empower the Next Generation
The opportunities mentioned above are a starting point. We welcome partners to introduce resources, expertise & ideas not yet considered. When an opportunity can support one or more of gep Magazine’s Challenge Territories, we’ll work to develop meaningful empowerment challenges around it.
Challenges also extend beyond the magazine as gep invites our broader social community to take on these challenges themselves, giving the public a fun way to experience what we ask of our youth participants while creating an interactive opportunity to feature partners & resources that helped make our challenges possible.
All challenges developed through partnerships remain grounded in gep’s developmental framework, with the child’s experience & benefit guiding their design.
Support gep Magazine
with a monetary gift.