Find Your Path. Help a Family Find Theirs.
$20 for a summer-long treasure hunt across Fairfax County and Northern Virginia — supporting Evolve Empowerment Initiative.
Fairfax County, VA + Northern Virginia
Every family who comes to Evolve Empowerment Initiative is trying to find their way through a system that wasn't built with their child in mind. They need a map. They need a guide. They need people on their side.
EEI provides exactly that — affordable, non-adversarial special education advocacy for families with twice-exceptional and neurodivergent children. They help parents secure appropriate IEPs and 504s, build collaborative relationships with school teams, and learn the system well enough to keep advocating long after the meeting ends.
The Path Finders Adventure is one of their first major fundraisers. Every Adventure Pass sold helps a family who's still finding their way.
A nine-stop self-guided walking trail through Old Town Fairfax. Sequential stops reveal one another as you go — about 75 minutes of walking, splittable across visits. The Farmers Market and a bonus stop at Blenheim wait at the end for the curious.
Scan QR placards at sponsor businesses scattered across Northern Virginia — places where neurodivergent families already feel welcome. Each visit earns Compass Points and a piece of the Path Finder Map.
Eight short exercises — one for each of the eight senses neurodivergent kids navigate every day. Sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, vestibular, proprioception, and interoception. Try them anywhere, anytime. Use them when you need them.
Questions about neurodivergence, IEPs, advocacy, and the real work EEI does. Each answer comes with an explanation and often a link to learn more. Come back through the summer — new questions arrive regularly.
Collect all nine Map Fragments and the Final Hunt unlocks. Decode the cipher. Visit the marker. The first player to finish wins the Grand Prize at EEI's anniversary celebration at the end of the summer.
Built with neurodivergent families in mind. There's no timer on any challenge. No required order across hunts. Multiple paths to the Final Hunt — so a family that can do every stop and a family that can only do some both finish the same adventure. Reduced-motion preferences respected throughout.
The Grounding hunt isn't decoration. It's a real eight-senses grounding tool that travels in your pocket, ready when a kid (or a parent) needs to settle a moment.
EEI was founded by Katy Petrik and Jess — two parents who walked through the special education advocacy process themselves. They learned the language, learned the unspoken rules, and now help other families do the same.
Their mission is bringing radical humanity into educational advocacy. The true meaning of "radical" is "back to the root" — chopping away the layers of adversity and fear around education to get to what actually matters: caring for a child.
EEI takes a non-adversarial, child-first approach. They listen. They translate. They show up. And they make sure no parent has to walk into an IEP meeting alone again.
Learn more at eeiadvocacy.com.
Adventure Local is the platform behind this hunt — a way to turn cities, campaigns, and causes into self-guided experiences worth taking. The same technology has powered treasure hunts for Catholic University, the Maryland Music Educators Association, and historic Baltimore. Learn more at adventurelocal.co.
Allies are the local businesses and partners that stand behind EEI's work. Visit them across Northern Virginia, scan the QR placard, and earn Compass Points and Map Fragments. Visit in any order, anytime through the summer.
A growing collection of questions about neurodivergence, special education advocacy, and the work EEI does. Each answer comes with a real explanation and often a link to learn more. Come back through the summer — new questions are added regularly.
Eight short exercises — one for each of the eight senses neurodivergent kids navigate every day. Try them anywhere. Take them with you. Use them when you need them. The last one unlocks a Map Fragment.
A walking trail through Old Town Fairfax. Nine main stops, plus a Farmers Market stop and a bonus stop for the curious. Each stop unlocks the next. Allow about 75 minutes of walking — splittable across visits.