TC's Team Leader and youth introduce the 2019 Thriving Communities Gathering

Ryan’s House for Youth, on Whidbey Island, greets homeless 18-24 year olds with open arms to offer shelter, food, safety, belonging, mentoring, a sense of family, and unconditional love. The result? These courageous, vulnerable young people build life skills with renewed faith in their future. Ryan’s House gives them the space and support to grow so they can re-enter their communities with a sense of purpose.

Nyema Clark has a plan for restoring food equity and small neighborhood farms to her community in Seattle, and she’s making it happen. Nurturing Roots, the organization she founded, addresses systemic imbalances and oppression by focusing on farming, environmental justice, and resilience. It’s also about community-building, education, and re-engaging city folks with their environment.

iCare is an extraordinary for-profit medical insurance company serving low income members of its Milwaukee community. Metrics and data are essential to its work, but iCare considers RELATIONSHIPS its top priority. iCare members are seen, heard, supported, and loved. This is a remarkable new model for medical insurance.

This spoken-word meditation by Young Women Empowered (Seattle, WA) is an homage to the wisdom, beauty, and love of mothers and motherhood, and to the natural world.

What are cross-cultural challenges arise for Ethiopian immigrants and their U.S.-born children? Hear from two generations in this film produced by youth in the Ethiopian Community in Seattle through the Multimedia Resources and Training Institute (mmrtiseattle.org).

This powerful short documentary provokes all of us to ask how we can do better in communities of high incarceration. Filmed in a detention center/prison in Seattle and filmed by a group of young women, this raises the theme of the many unneccesary outcomes found in the incarceration of young people of color.

Peggy Taylor's and Charlie Murphy's decision in the early '90s to start a creativity and leadership camp for youth on Whidbey Island blossomed and spread, and has enriched the lives of to influence more than 250,000 young people around the world. "The Power of Hope" shows what vision, hope, love, and perseverance can accomplish when you commit to changing the world.

The story of Patrinell Wright and the Total Experience Gospel Choir she founded in 1975. Thanks to Pat's determination and the power of great music, the choir overcame early setbacks to become a community icon, a beacon of diversity in a segregated place, and a national phenomenon, one fried-chicken-dinner fundraiser at a time.