Driving preventive, system-wide solutions for health and wellbeing in the Central Okanagan.
About Thrive Okanagan
Thrive Okanagan helps organizations across the Central Okanagan collaborate to improve community well-being and address complex social challenges.
Across the region, many organizations are working hard to support people facing challenges related to mental health, housing instability, social isolation, and economic stress. These challenges are interconnected and cannot be addressed by any single organization or sector alone.
Thrive Okanagan is a regional collaboration supported by the KGH Foundation that focuses on strengthening relationships, coordination, and shared learning across the Central Okanagan.
Rather than delivering services directly, Thrive Okanagan plays a backbone role through community catalysts who help bring partners together, align efforts, and support collaborate action across sectors.
Why Thrive Okanagan?
Complex social challenges require coordinated responses.
When organizations work in isolation, it can be difficult for people to navigate services and access the support they need. Fragmentation can lead to duplication, gaps in services, and missed opportunities to address root causes.
At the same time, Central Okanagan has strong leadership, committed organizations, and a growing appetite for collaboration.
Thrive Okanagan focuses on strengthening how the system works together so that efforts are better aligned, resources are used more effectively, and people can access support earlier.
By supporting collaboration and shared learning, Thrive Okanagan helps the region move from reacting to crises toward prevention and long-term well-being.
THE FOUNDATION'S ROLE
The KGH Foundation plays a key role in supporting Thrive Okanagan by investing in new approaches to improving community well-being.
In 2022, the Foundation brought together partners and raised $1.7 million to explore how the region could move beyond fragmented approaches to mental health and well-being. Early researched highlighted significant gaps in coordination, with many organizations working independently despite shared goals.
Thrive Okanagan was created in response to this opportunity.
Today, the Foundation provides backbone support for the initiative by investing in community catalysts, convening partners, and supporting collaborative work across sectors. This includes advancing shared priorities, supporting research and learning, and helping partners align efforts to improve the conditions that shape well-being across the region.
PROJECTS & CORE PRIORITIES
Thrive Okanagan supports collaboration across the region by strengthening relationships, coordination, and shared learning between organizations. Rather than funding isolate programs, Thrive Okanagan focuses on supporting collaborative initiatives that improve how the system works as a whole.
- Primary Care & Immigrant Services Working Group: Our Community Catalyst convened health-care and settlement agencies to identify barriers newcomers face when accessing services. Together, we developed an action plan and secured new funding to enhance translation and navigation tools for immigrant and refugee communities.
- Indigenous Community Partnerships: Our Indigenous Field Catalyst built relationships with Elders, knowledge keepers, and Indigenous-led organizations to co-create culturally grounded recommendations. This work has laid the groundwork for more trusting, collaborative programming and will inform future mental-health initiatives.
- Community Disaster Planning Workshop: We brought over 30 leaders from government, health, emergency response, and non-profits together to map evolving resources and co-develop emergency protocols. The workshop produced a consensus-built response framework, new resources, and a coordinator network ready to activate in future crises.
- Goals for Wellbeing Framework: Guided by a community-led steering committee of 20+ organizations, we created a 16-goal framework across Social & Cultural, Health & Social Care, Built & Natural, and Economic & Work environments. This shared agenda aligns partners around clear, actionable, well-being objectives.
- Research Projects
- Youth Mental-Health Resilience Sector Review & Summit – Conducted 42 interviews across 28 organizations to identify gaps in belonging, safe spaces, and family supports, leading to a Youth Summit that informed targeted prevention pilots. (Appendix A & B, Appendix C)
- Intimate Partner Violence (Child-Centred Perspective) – Participatory research with families and sector partners produced a gap analysis and prototype models for culturally responsive support pathways.
- Youth Dating Violence Literature Review – Synthesized global evidence on technology-facilitated harm and recommended peer-education and community-led prevention strategies.
- Physical Literacy Collaborative Table: This group is working to convene educators, recreation leaders, health professionals, and community groups to form the new Physical Literacy Working Group. This group will co-design strategies and subgroups to integrate movement and play into everyday settings such as schools, parks, and workplaces and develop shared metrics to track participation, confidence, and long-term well-being outcomes across the age span.
- Backbone Support for the Central Okanagan Food System Collaborative: Building on existing momentum, a Thrive Okanagan Community Catalyst will continue to facilitate coordination among farmers, food banks, commercial partners, and distribution agencies, recognizing that reliable access to nutritious food is a core determinant of mental and physical well-being. We will support pilot projects, such as surplus gleaning, mobile market initiatives, and community food hubs.
- Pilot the Goals for Wellbeing Framework: Several key organizations and departments will apply the 16-goal framework in their own programs. Thrive Okanagan will work side by side with partners spanning social services, health care, recreation, and economic development to co-create measurement tools, collect baseline data, and run rapid-cycle learning sessions. Insights will guide refinements before a broader roll-out and application of the Framework in Year 3.
- Deepen Relationships and Strengthen Governance: As Thrive Okanagan enters its second year, deepening relationships and strengthening governance remain core priorities. Year Two will focus on investing in intentional, inclusive collaboration that fosters trust, mutual understanding, and a shared purpose among system partners. Parallel to this, we are researching and piloting governance models, such as consensus-based, solution-seeking tables that embed shared leadership, place-making, and capacity multiplication at their core. A resourced and sustainable convening structure will support relational abundance in our networks, ensuring decision-making processes are co-created, transparent, and grounded in mutual accountability.
IN COMMUNITY
“Through Thrive Okanagan, we have been able to build meaningful partnerships with organizations across the region that we had not previously connected with. Having Thrive serve as the convener has been instrumental in helping us accelerate progress collectively.”
Central Okanagan Division of Family Practice
"Working together allowed us to identify trends, explore solutions, and better support newcomers in our community without duplicating services. It reinforced that together we are stronger.
Central Okanagan Public Schools
LEARN MORE
Explore detailed reports and tools to learn more about our work and access the data driving Thrive Okanagan’s impact:
A comprehensive summary of Year 1 achievements, pilot outcomes, research findings, and our developmental evaluation.
The Goals for Well-Being Framework is a shared tool developed with partners across the Central Okanagan to guide collective action and measure progress on community well-being across social, health, environmental, and economic conditions. It provides a common language and set of goals that help organizations align efforts, identify gaps, and understand how their work contributes to broader community outcomes.
In 2026, Thrive Okanagan is working with pilot partners, with an initial focus on the youth and family-serving sector, to apply the Goals for Well-Being Framework within real-world community initiatives. This phase is designed to better understand well-being in the region, strengthen alignment across organizations, and test how the framework can support more coordinated, preventive approaches across the system.
OUR VISION
Thrive Okanagan envisions a future where organizations across the Central Okanagan work together seamlessly to support community well-being.
In this future:
- People can access support earlier and more easily
- Organizations collaborate rather than work in isolation
- Communities are more connected, inclusive, and resilient
- Systems are more responsive, equitable, and effective
Over time, this leads to stronger relationships, better coordination, and meaningful improvements in the conditions that shape well-being across the region.
Stay connected to Thrive Okanagan and learn more about collaborative work happening across the Central Okanagan.
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HELP IS AVAILABLE
Mental Health Resources
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, support is available: