Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is about more than creating a document or checking a box. It’s about bringing the right people together, making space for the voices that matter, and creating a shared direction people are ready to move forward.

Silver Linings International designs and facilitates inclusive, engaging strategic planning processes that help organizations, collaboratives, coalitions, and cross-sector initiatives understand where they are, imagine what’s possible, identify what matters most, and turn shared priorities into meaningful action. Using trauma-informed facilitation, Appreciative Inquiry, stakeholder engagement, and practical planning strategies, we help groups create plans that are not only thoughtful, but realistic, actionable, and built to be used.

Email Debra

Tennessee 500 Region

Shared Vision: Addressing Youth Homelessness

October 2024 – May 2025

Topic: Strategic Visioning to Address Youth Homelessness

Audience: Young adults with lived experience, community organizations, service providers, and regional stakeholders

Format: 1 Youth Preparation Session + 1 In-Person Kickoff + 6 Virtual Facilitation Sessions

Silver Linings International partnered with leaders and stakeholders across the Tennessee 500 region to facilitate a collaborative strategic visioning process focused on strengthening the systems and supports available to young people experiencing homelessness. Central to the process was the active involvement of the Young Adult Action Board (YAAB), ensuring that youth voice and lived experience helped inform priorities and shape the path forward.

Using a trauma-informed, strengths-based approach grounded in positive psychology and appreciative inquiry, the process created a safe and engaging environment for stakeholders to explore current challenges, identify opportunities, and develop a shared vision for meaningful change. Pre-meeting surveys and a SOAR analysis helped participants move beyond identifying problems to focus on strengths, aspirations, opportunities, and achievable results.

Key areas of focus included:

Strengthening post-housing services and mentoring
Expanding transitional housing options for parenting youth
Improving engagement with immigrant and Latinx communities
Enhancing support for LGBTQ+ youth
Strengthening coordination among organizations serving young people

Following the kickoff, monthly facilitated sessions supported participants in turning shared priorities into living action plans, with regular opportunities to check progress, adapt strategies, and maintain momentum. Youth representatives continued to participate throughout the process, helping ensure that decisions remained connected to the experiences and needs of the young people the initiative was designed to serve.

This initiative demonstrates how trauma-informed and appreciative facilitation can bring diverse voices together, center lived experience, and move communities from conversation toward coordinated, sustainable action.

North Carolina Department of Health & Human Services:

NC Healthy Transitions Initiative 2.0

July 2024 - current

Topic: Strategic Visioning to Support Youth Transitioning into Adulthood

Audience: State & regional agency leaders, behavioral & mental health providers, & community-based partners

Format: 1 In-Person Kickoff + 4 Virtual Facilitation Sessions

Silver Linings International partnered with the North Carolina Healthy Transitions (HT) 2.0 initiative to co-design and lead a statewide strategic planning process focused on collaboration, innovation, and youth voice. Working closely with project leadership, we facilitated a highly interactive kickoff that brought together key stakeholders—some still recovering from Hurricane Helene—to co-create a shared vision and roadmap for supporting youth and young adults (ages 16–26) with serious mental health challenges.

The in-person kickoff featured visioning exercises, interactive mapping of transition points, connection-building activities like “Bingo,” and analysis of pre-survey data. Teams identified immediate actions aligned with three shared goals:

Improve coordination across support systems
Expand youth-led mental health supports
Increase access to life skills training and financial literacy

Follow-up virtual sessions helped teams refine priorities and begin implementation—ensuring that ideas from the kickoff led to concrete next steps.

“This process gave us the clarity and connection we needed to move forward with purpose.”

“Debra helped us move forward from recovery to resilience.”

This initiative demonstrated the power of trauma-informed, appreciative facilitation to align stakeholders, spark innovation, and build momentum for lasting, youth-centered change.

Regional Collaborative Strategic Planning

Northwest Ohio Trauma-Informed Care Collaborative

June–November 2025
Format: Strategic Planning Process + Micro-Training Series + Needs Assessment
Audience: Cross-sector community leaders and organizational stakeholders

Silver Linings International partnered with the Northwest Ohio TIC Collaborative to guide a regional initiative focused on strengthening trauma-informed systems and collaboration. The engagement launched with a brief trauma-informed micro-training and continued with a three-part virtual strategic planning series grounded in Appreciative Inquiry and SAMHSA’s trauma-informed principles.

To support engagement and accessibility, we developed a custom web page to share updates, host the recorded training, and collect data through an online needs assessment. This helped streamline participation and ensured broad community input.

Through this inclusive process, community partners from education, healthcare, law enforcement, and beyond came together to explore shared strengths, clarify their collective purpose, and co-create an actionable plan for regional growth.

Key outcomes included:

A community-informed needs assessment and SOAR analysis
A unifying purpose statement and identity for the Collaborative
A 2026 action plan for education, engagement, and sustainability

“This process gave us the clarity, energy, and connection we needed to take real action.”

This project exemplifies how trauma-informed facilitation and digital tools can strengthen collaboration and drive meaningful, cross-sector change.