Cultivating leadership and healthier lives through collective impact
Women and Girls Thriving in Brookline began as “Survive and Thrive,” a short-term, intensive counseling group and workshop series at The Brookline Center. The group helped women facing multiple challenges learn and practice essential resiliency skills. Over its first five years, Survive and Thrive supported dozens of Brookline women in improving employment, housing, health, and family outcomes.
Under the leadership of Brookline Center clinician Andrea Johnson and educational consultant Ann Brackett, the program grew to encapsulate a broader, Collective Impact approach to change that increased access to community resources while engaging low-income women as leaders working in partnership with community agencies and advocates.
Through this framework, residents with ‘lived experience’ (lower-income women), cross-sector groups (community agency staff and lay leaders), and funders began working together to address complex social problems and to promote learning, collaboration, and growth across the community.
In March 2019, Women and Girls Thriving became an independent nonprofit organization, Women Thriving, Inc.
