About.

The name

Tenderfoot is the first rank a Scout earns. It also means what it says: someone new, unhardened, easily hurt. We were tenderfeet. Many of us learned to walk hard over what happened and never stopped. A circle is a place to put the pack down.

The mark

A trail blaze: two painted rectangles, one offset above the other. On a trail it means the path turns here. It is painted on trees by volunteers, belongs to nobody, and can be followed by anyone who looks up.

The keepers

Wilfred Henry (he/one) is a community justice practitioner based in Nelson County, Virginia, founder of In Search of Peace, senior circle keeper with Hidden Water, and facilitator with Central Virginia Community Justice. A rural letter carrier and believer in public goods, he dreams of non-carceral community justice practices as a universal service, reaching every household.

Every circle has two keepers, and keepers share the lived experience of the circle they keep. As circles close, new keepers will be trained from among the people who sat in them.

Lineage

The practice is modeled on Hidden Water, which has kept healing circles for people affected by childhood sexual abuse since 2010: circles for those who were harmed, those who love them, parents and caregivers, and those who caused harm and are taking responsibility. Hidden Water's circles rest on the Indigenous practice of circle and on restorative justice: healing, accountability, and repair rather than punishment. Tenderfeet carries that practice to one institution's particular harm, with gratitude.

Tenderfeet is a project of the In Search of Peace Fund, which seeds and sustains participant-led, community-held circles that respond to sexual harm, and resources the people who keep them. Tenderfeet is independent of Scouting America and of the Scouting Settlement Trust.