The Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development has launched a new initiative of making a difference in the lives of vulnerable children and families: TBRI® Ambassador Organizations.

TBRI® Ambassador Organizations are identified as key partners who have long-term relationships with the Purvis Institute and are furthering its mission at a systemic level using Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®). The current TBRI® Ambassador Organizations include:

• All God’s Children International
• Crossroads NOLA
• Global Impact International/Restoration Rome
• Methodist Children’s Home
• Volunteers for Youth Justice, LA
• Empowered to Connect/Memphis Family Connection
• Show Hope
• Raise the Future
• CASA of Montgomery County
• CASA of South Mississippi
• HALO Project
• Immerse, NZ
• Presbyterian Children’s Homes and Services
• Williamson County Juvenile Services

Dr. David Cross, Rees-Jones Director, had the idea of utilizing key partners at an unlikely moment in the Institute’s history .“Dr. Purvis’s dream was to bring hope and healing to all the children of all the world. Around the time we were losing her, I started to think about how we couldn’t possibly bring this dream to life, even if we had a huge staff.  We had to have strong partners whose footprint could help extend the reach of our work at the Institute.”

The Institute provides training, consultation, and ongoing support to TBRI® Ambassadors and leans heavily on them for their hands-on experience in the field. Daren Jones, Associate Director of Training and Consultation Services, sees TBRI® Ambassador Organizations as an opportunity to reach families and communities worldwide. “The more we understood what it really meant to meet the needs of kids, families, and communities across the globe, we figured out that we couldn’t be all things in all places to all people everywhere. That said, it was really important to engage with local partners and field experts to set up a process where we could scaffold and develop the TBRI® Ambassadors who can then scaffold the communities they serve.”

While the Institute’s work has evolved over the years, the mission has remained the same: changing the world for children. The Institute has trained over 4,000 professionals worldwide as TBRI® Practitioners, individuals who spread TBRI® within their scope of work through training and implementation. TBRI® Ambassador Organizations extend the work of TBRI® implementation through systems change.

Institute leadership is clear that the goal is not to make every organization who employs TBRI® Practitioners into a TBRI Ambassador Organization. Amanda Purvis, KPICD Training Specialist, who supports both TBRI® Practitioners and TBRI® Ambassadors notes the difference. “The key differences between an organization who promotes or uses TBRI® and a TBRI® Ambassador Organization are the longstanding relationship, the capacity for systems change and the shared mission of bringing that change through TBRI®.”

Like the intervention the Purvis Institute teaches, the partnership with TBRI Ambassador Organizations boils down to one crucial piece: relationship.

“We have a long-standing, trusted relationship with the ambassadors,” said Purvis. “It’s an authentic partnership between the organization and the Institute, a dance of implementation that is truly relational.”