About Synthesis Scholarships
The Synthesis Institute is committed to diversity, inclusion, sustainability, and advocating for prosocial change and leadership. To increase access to our services and, more specifically, to ensure that the next generation of psychedelic therapists, guides and practitioners accurately reflect the diversity of society at large, we offer four scholarship programs: Synthesis Access Scholarship, Synthesis Equity Scholarship, Jan Bastiaans Scholarship and Prosocial Scholarship.
Our scholarship programs seek to nurture diversity in the field of psychedelics, expand access to and include those who have historically been under-represented, oppressed and disenfranchised, and/or those who are unable to afford our Psychedelic Practitioner Training.
Ensuring diversity in the field starts with including and welcoming those voices that historically have not been heard, and it continues with asking the question of what psychedelic care should look like for different populations, with their different needs. Our Psychedelic Practitioner Training seeks to bring different voices together to answer these questions. To ensure everyone has access to the program, The Synthesis Institute offers a reduced-fee scholarship program. Scholarships are awarded based on an application process and award amounts range from 25% -100% support, depending on application and need.
We prioritize applicants who
1. Cannot participate in our training program because they are not able to afford to attend without a scholarship. (Synthesis Access Scholarship)
- You are supporting children or have other people who depend on you
- You have significant debt
- You have medical expenses that are not covered by your health care insurance
- You are eligible for social security/public assistance
- You have immigration-related expenses
- You are an elder with no or limited financial support/retirement funds
- You are an unpaid community organizer
- You are a returning citizen who has been denied work due to a history of incarceration
- You come from a country with a lower mean GDP
2. Come from or belong to historically underrepresented, oppressed, and/or disenfranchised communities. (Synthesis Equity Scholarship)
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- You are a descendent of enslaved or colonized people
- You are a (descendent of) Native American Indian
- You are a (descendents of) First Nations Person
- You are a (descendent of) Indigenous person
- You are a Black or Brown person
- You are a person of color
- You come from the global south
- You identify as LGBTQI+
3. Demonstrate a dedication to prosocial leadership, social justice, sustainability, and/or systemic change, whether in the capacity of work, education, and/or activism. (Jan Bastiaans Scholarship)
4. Are currently working in the capacity of guide, healer, priest, clergy, religious professional, shaman, or psychedelic-assisted psychotherapist and are specifically catering to marginalized communities (Prosocial Scholarship)
We acknowledge that our scholarship program may not or does not address certain (structural) barriers that people from marginalized communities are experiencing. Moreover, we understand that people from historically oppressed groups might have differing needs. Some people from these groups experience high levels of financial security and might not need our scholarship support. Others from marginalized communities have needs beyond the financial. We invite those with such needs to express their needs to us so we can explore how access to our training program, in the widest sense of the word, can be ensured.
Our team has members from the LGBTQIA+ community, but currently only has white and cisgendered facilitators. If you have needs that are not addressed in our scholarship offerings, you are questioning if your needs can be met by our team, or you have suggestions for how The Synthesis Institute can increase and improve our efforts to be inclusive, equitable and more accessible please do not hesitate to reach out Daan Keiman, our Director of Ethics and Advocacy, at daan@synthesisretreat.com
