A holistic approach to rural revitalization
2025 Civic Hub grantee
Thrive Allen County is a rural health organization in Kansas providing a new model of rural revitalization that harnesses the strengths of local residents to build healthier, more vibrant communities.
Thrive’s work is a story of a community taking control of its own destiny. Allen County, a close-knit rural community of around 12,500 people, shares many of the economic, social, and health-related issues that affect small towns across the country.
Thrive’s mission is to empower residents to tackle these problems together, one conversation and one project at a time. It believes that a healthy community needs a holistic approach, one where residents don’t just excel physically, but mentally and fiscally as well.
Thrive works to improve the quality of life in Allen County, Kansas by focusing on health, wellness, and economic development, by engaging people and institutions around a common vision for the future. Some of the key issues Thrive is helping Allen County collaborate on right now include housing, childcare, transportation, and access to healthcare.
“Thrive has taught us to think bigger as a town and a county. We each have special assets and talents to share, and Thrive taught us to talk to each other more and — more importantly — to listen to each other.”
-Mary Kay Heard, former board chair of Iola Industries, Inc. and supporter of Thrive
Each year Thrive hosts conversations with the nine communities in Allen County. These events bring residents together to discuss their vision for the future of their community, highlighting problem areas along with what is going well. Thrive acts as a convener and facilitates the discussion, and its primary job is to listen.
For the past couple of years, Thrive Allen County has hosted a conversation at local high schools and the community college where students take the lead. Instead of adults telling them what the community needed, youth interns ask their peers: “What can we do today to bring a brighter tomorrow?”
Hundreds of students share their ideas on improving local health, education, and economic opportunities. By empowering students to lead and by genuinely listening to their perspectives, it builds agency in the next generation, and trust between them and the broader community.
Thrive plans to use Trust funding to strengthen civic infrastructure and community engagement programs that are already embedded in Allen County, such as ongoing community conversations, inclusive programs that reach a broad spectrum of residents, and grant-writing services to other local non-profits that can’t afford a grant writer.
Learn more at thriveallencounty.org