 Our Operational Principles
The following characterize our organizational principles:
- we seek to be formed by and inform the positive youth development movement.
- we believe that rigorous research must inform and guide how youth development programs and policies are carried out.
- we trust and honor the hard-earned wisdom of practitioners.
- everything we do as a foundation is based on the maintenance of good relationships.
- we seek leveraged, systemic, creative approaches in determining how to be the best stewards of our resources.
- we are held accountable by how effectively we help young people thrive, and by our core values of joy, learning, openness to change, rigor, hospitality, and grace.
- our work is informed, inspired, and strengthened by our faith in God.
Decision-Making
We have sought to identify an internal set of criteria to determine the best utilization of our resources. This work-in-progress is designed to drive us towards high-leverage stewardship on behalf of the youth whose lives we seek to enhance. Decision-Making Criteria.
Foundation Strategy
Thrive Foundation for Youth does not accept outside requests for grants. Thrive works in collaborative fashion with organizations that share a common vision, and we seek to build bridges to achieve positive outcomes for diverse youth. Our funding and work has supported both research and practice, and especially seeks ways to connect the two.
Increasingly we find ourselves interested in identifying, supporting the development of, and even creating well-grounded, practical tools that can be used by young people and those that care about them. We believe that these "thriving tools" should provide an accurate assessment of how individual kids are doing in important life indicators. We also believe that tools should be designed to help youth identify their strengths, reflect and act on their positive development, and live more intentional, hopeful, and purpose-filled lives. Furthermore, assessment needs to be intricately linked to action.
Therefore, Thrive Foundation believes that we can be most effective by focusing on these three components: defining thriving indicatorsTM, assessing those indicators, and creating alignment between indicators and action. We seek to support purposeful actions that families, individuals, schools, communities, and governments take which enhance the character and quality of each young person's life, so that each youth can become all that God intends. We believe that ultimately the members of any society are best judged by how well we are accomplishing our responsibility to raise the next generation to be happy, healthy, and good human beings. |
