Voices of Thriving
Discover inspiring stories from those Thrive With Dignity has Partnered With
01
Tim Fish
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I wholeheartedly recommend Beth-Sarah Wright's "DIGNITY" as an invaluable resource for schools navigating the complex challenges of our time. It provides a framework for standing in the space of adaptive challenges, helping all stakeholders in our school communities to ask questions, reflect, gather information, and align our work with our identity and values.
What I find most powerful is how it generates questions rather than prescriptive answers, creating opportunities to build stronger communities and deeper relationships. For schools striving to close the gap between aspirational identity and lived reality, Wright's approach blends imagination and capacity building with urgency and non-negotiable commitment. It's a must-read for all educational leaders.
-President, Two Chair Studios (Former Chief Innovation Officer, National Association of Independent Schools)
02
Laura Jackson
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We began intuitively from a Diversity assessment that our community included many different perspectives. Working with the DIGNITY lens helped us realize the need to communicate our Identity and value commitments more explicitly. Reflecting on our work with Dr. Wright has catalyzed several important initiatives in the past year.
* Our work with Identity and Transparency led directly to creation of the Covenant that all of our chapters endorse, including a commitment to inclusive community. Very much as “The DIGNITY Lens” predicts, being clear and explicit about who we are and what we value has made it easy to understand why and whether to affiliate with us. Since the creation of the Covenant, our number of diocesan chapters has nearly doubled and continues to grow. (In particular, this clarity has helped some diocesan leaders quickly understand the distinctive value that was already apparent to our local volunteer Conveners.)
* In addition to local diocesan chapters, our members have created several non-geographic Affinity Groups for clergy spouses who share other intersectional identities, including LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and parents of small children. The powerful move for us was in coming to understand these online gatherings not as special event offerings, but as permanent and essential parts of The Partner’s Path's churchwide network of communities. That affirmation grew out of our reflection on Identity and holding that together with our understanding of our Diversity as a community. We are still learning how to communicate broadly about these groups so that those who need them are able to find and trust in the support they offer.
* Honoring the Yield of our work and whether we are accomplishing what we intend, we are building a system of surveys and data analysis which has helped us and our potential supporters to understand the powerful impact of our work for reducing isolation among all kinds of clergy spouses, and where we have opportunities to grow in effectiveness. We are hearing, for example, that an affinity group for male clergy spouses to support each other would give needed space to address particular unique experiences in that demographic. The statistics and feedback that we gather have been key to helping granting organizations understand our story and see the value in our work with clergy spouses.
- Laura Jackson, Executive Director, The Partner’s Path
