About THRIVE

Thriving Harnesses Respect, Inclusion, and Vested Empathy: A crisis text line staffed by marginalized individuals in STEM.

THRIVE Lifeline is a grassroots response to COVID-19, organized by experienced crisis managers who personally understand the significance of displacement, isolation, and financial loss, especially for marginalized individuals in STEM.

The events of 2020 caused large-scale collective and ongoing trauma, bringing to the public dialogue the need for self care and mental wellness.

Amid a crisis of global scale, many marginalized individuals face greater personal crises, including being sent to unsupportive and/or dangerous home environments, greater health risks, job, food, and home insecurity, and the inability to access what may be their only safe community.

Recognizing the particular vulnerabilities within our intersecting communities and the breadth of needs, we used our existing crisis team to open a small-scale crisis hotline. THRIVE Lifeline began as a grassroots crisis text line targeting marginalized people in STEM, or STEM-adjacent, and remains accessible to all who need it.

Within three months, our team became convinced that we must scale up and sustain this crisis hotline resource and partner with other entities and individuals in STEM as we partner together to improve mental health access and support in STEM. In June 2020, we officially registered T.H.R.I.V.E., Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to the management of THRIVE Lifeline as well as to training, consultation, and event accessibility and crisis management services.

We believe that it is together that we THRIVE.

We need your help in order to keep THRIVE Lifeline as a vital resource! You can help by volunteering, contributing, and sharing.

• Volunteer: No prior experience is necessary. We are looking for active listeners with a passion for underrepresented individuals and a willingness to learn. We are especially seeking responders who are persons of color, persons living with disabilities, and/or transgender/nonbinary individuals. If crisis response is not a good fit, we are additionally seeking:
  • Resource Manager: This volunteer will manage the vetting and addition of new resources to our database.
  • Outreach Assistant: This volunteer will assist with outreach, sharing THRIVE Lifeline as a resource and broadening the impact of the hotline.
  • Training Assistant: This volunteer will support our Crisis Responders in Training (CRiT) by acting as texters to the hotline and conducting practice text-based interactions at appointed times (within the Assistant’s scheduled availability). The volunteer will be given one scripted scenario, along with its desired CRiT learning outcomes. A practice interaction will be approximately 40-60 min. While you are free to use sample responses as long as they flow in the conversations, please be advised that improvisation and adjustments will be required, based on a CRiT’s responses to your role-played texter’s statements.
  • Web Media Manager: This volunteer will manage THRIVES social media presence.
  • Apply Here
  • Questions? Contact us
    
• Contribute: We are currently raising $60,000 to purchase and integrate a professional SMS platform that will allow us to increase our call volume while providing optimal service to our texters. We are additionally seeking funds to train 20 new suicide interveners in the upcoming year.
  • GoFundMe.
    
• Share: If you or anyone that you know is in need of support, THRIVE Lifeline is providing 100% confidential, judgement-free text-based support at +1(313)662-8209

Please be advised that our text line supports individuals 18+.

If at any time you would like to stop a text-based conversation, please text STOP. Conversations are 100% confidential.

Under 18?

Please reach out to The Trevor Project.

24/7 call-based support:

• +1(866)488-7386.

Text-based support:

• Text START to 678-678.