Community in white garments arms raised in golden light MAAFA ceremony

A Spiritual Journey of Identity, Ancestry, and Purpose for African Americans

Embark. Remember. Become.

The Invitation

Rerooting Identity.
Rekindling Faith.

The Ark Experience is an invitation to African Americans who feel the pull toward something deeper — a reconnection to who they are, where they come from, and what they are here to do. Drawing on sacred and contemplative practices from across spiritual traditions, it offers a structured space to reground identity, revitalize faith, and step into one's fullest self.

"What have I carried?
What am I now free to build?" — The Ark Experience

Why This. Why Now.

A Wound That
Demands a Response

The United Nations has recognized the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity — a rupture so total it severed African peoples from language, ancestry, spiritual practice, and a continuous sense of self. No other group of Americans carries this particular wound.

The consequences are not merely historical. They live in the body, in the family, in the questions African Americans carry about who they are and where they belong. Existing formation programs were not built to hold this.

The Ark Experience was. It is a direct response to the rupture — a structured, spiritually grounded journey that moves through lament and remembrance toward re-rooting, reclamation, and the full expression of one's purpose and potential.

400+
Years since the first Africans were enslaved in colonial America
12.5M
Africans forcibly transported across the Atlantic
370
Days — the length of Noah's journey on the Ark, and the length of this transformational Experience
Woman at the water edge at dawn
I
Awakening
Bay Area, California
Mothers of Gynecology sculpture Montgomery
II
Remembering
Montgomery, Alabama
Senegal sunset through palm trees
III
Becoming
Senegal, West Africa
Community gathering in ceremony
IV
Being
Yearlong Integration

Who This Journey Is For

Called, Curious,
and Ready to Cross

The Ark Experience is not for everyone — and that is by design. It asks something real of those who board.

✦
You feel a deeper stirring

You are drawn toward an ever-deepening intimacy with God — or toward discovering what that relationship might mean for you. You understand that the richest connections, including the one with your Creator, are always capable of growing deeper, truer, and more alive.

✦
You are willing to be challenged

This journey moves through lament and honest reckoning before it arrives at joy. Participants must be willing to sit with difficulty, face history, and be changed by what they encounter.

✦
You can hold space for others

The Ark Experience is a communal journey. Participants commit to creating a generous, non-judgmental container for one another — honoring each person's process without centering their own.

✦
You are African American

This program was designed specifically for African Americans navigating the inheritance of the transatlantic slave trade — its ruptures, its resilience, and the particular questions it leaves in the lives of its descendants.

The Ark Experience is built for African Americans who feel called to deepen their sense of who they are, unlock their fullest potential, and bring more love, joy, and purpose into the world.

About

Formation for Those
Who Feel the Pull

The Ark Experience was built for African Americans who sense something deeper stirring — a calling that existing programs haven't named, much less honored. And it was built to ripple outward: transforming not just the individual, but the communities and institutions to which they return.

Philosophy

Not Just Information —
Formation

Most programs offer content. The Ark Experience offers a container — a structured arc of awakening, lament, ancestral encounter, and commissioning that allows something deeper than knowledge to take root. Participants don't just learn about their history or their calling. They inhabit them.

The program is grounded in two foundational frameworks. Howard Thurman's theology of the inner life — his insistence that the spiritual lives of the disinherited are a site of profound resistance and renewal — anchors the program's contemplative core. The Black Panther Party's Ten-Point Program grounds participants in the tradition of collective self-determination: the insistence that freedom is not given but built, together, with clarity of purpose.

These are not merely historical references. They are living orientations — companions for a journey that asks participants to hold both the wound and the possibility at once.

Vision

A Replicable Model
for Deep Formation

The Ark Experience is designed as an intimate journey — cohorts of twelve, held with care and intention across 370 days. But the vision is larger than any single cohort. Each participant returns home carrying a formation that ripples outward — into families, congregations, neighborhoods, and organizations.

Over time, the Ark Experience is designed to become a replicable model that faith communities and civic organizations can adapt and carry forward — seeding deep, culturally rooted formation across the African American diaspora.

Nancy Duranteau Founder and Director of The Ark Experience

Founder & Director

Nancy Duranteau

Formerly Chief Learning Officer at UCSF, Nancy Duranteau has spent decades at the intersection of learning design, organizational transformation, and spiritual formation. The Ark Experience is the culmination of that work — and of a deep personal conviction that formation rooted in history, ancestry, and calling is one of the most urgent needs of our time.

The program draws on a network of scholars, pilgrimage guides, community leaders, and spiritual directors whose wisdom shapes every movement of the journey.

The Journey

Four Movements.
One Unfolding Life.

The Ark Experience begins by exploring where African Americans are as a people today — then travels backwards through history, ultimately coming full circle to propel participants forward through an intentional, engaging journey toward their own purpose pathway.

I
Woman at waters edge

Bay Area, California

Awakening

The journey begins at home — in the Bay Area. Over two days, participants gather as a cohort for the first time, establishing community, naming the spiritual questions they carry, and orienting themselves to the crossing ahead. Grounded in Howard Thurman's vision of the inner life as a site of freedom, and in the Black Panther Party's insistence on collective self-determination, this movement asks: Who am I, as a descendant of Africans brought to America in chains, standing here today?

2 Days
II
Mothers of Gynecology statues Montgomery

Montgomery, Alabama

Remembering

Montgomery holds the weight of American history in its soil. Over four days, participants engage in lament, truth-telling, and communal prayer — facing the legacy of slavery and its long aftermath with unflinching care. This is not tourism. It is a spiritual reckoning, held with the collective courage of those who came before, that opens the ground for what the Becoming movement will plant.

4 Days
III
Senegal sunset

Senegal, West Africa

Becoming

The heart of the Ark Experience. Nine days in Senegal — standing where ancestors were held before crossing, encountering living African vitality, and navigating the full arc of vocational discernment. Participants move through the four listenings of the Purpose Pathway (framework developed by Nancy Duranteau): What is calling me? What have I remembered? What grounds me? What are the first steps forward?

9 Days
IV
Community ceremony

Home — Yearlong Integration

Being

Formation does not end at the airport. The Being movement stretches across 370 days — the same span Noah spent on the Ark — with structured cohort gatherings, ongoing spiritual practices, and peer accountability as participants integrate what the pilgrimage stirred. The year culminates in a Day-370 public ceremony of testimony and commissioning — each participant names who they have become and is sent forth, witnessed by their cohort, to live it.

370 Days

For Funders & Partners

Investing in the
Formation of a Generation

The Ark Experience addresses a genuine unmet need — spiritually rooted, historically grounded formation for African Americans who are ready to move through the inheritance of rupture toward their fullest potential.

Why the Ark Experience

The Unmet Need

The United Nations has designated the transatlantic slave trade a crime against humanity — an act of rupture so profound it severed millions from language, ancestry, and a continuous sense of self. Four centuries later, its consequences persist in the lives of African Americans in ways that existing formation programs were never designed to address.

The Ark Experience was built to meet this specific need: a structured, pilgrimage-based, spiritually serious program that honors what African Americans carry — and helps them move through it toward reclamation, purpose, and joy.

✦
Pilgrimage as Pedagogy

Physical movement across sites of historical and ancestral significance creates embodied learning that no classroom or retreat can replicate. The journey is the curriculum.

✦
Rigorous Evaluation

An independent evaluation team documents participant outcomes across all six cohorts — providing funders with longitudinal data on spiritual, vocational, and communal transformation.

✦
Sustainability by Design

A layered funding model — participant contributions, philanthropic support, and institutional partnerships — is built to carry the Ark Experience well beyond its founding cohorts.

✦
Led by Expertise

Founder Nancy Duranteau brings decades of learning design and organizational leadership to every dimension of this work, alongside deep personal spiritual formation and pilgrimage experience.

Get in Touch

Ready to Learn More?

We welcome conversations with funders and partners aligned with this vision.

Contact

Begin the
Conversation

Whether you are a prospective participant, a partner organization, or a funder, Nancy welcomes the conversation.

Nancy Duranteau

Founder & Director, The Ark Experience

nancy@arkpilgrimage.com

Je suis Noé — je construis.

I am Noah — I am building.