Resilience is the capacity to stay well in the face of significant stress or hardship. It is influenced by our genes, relationships with others, life experiences, and environments.
Resilience isn't something we develop alone.
Resilience develops through positive interactions, protective factors, and by mitigating toxic stress. Reducing sources of stress, enhancing skills, and creating supportive environments can further strengthen resilience, especially for those with past adversities.
While resilience can be strengthened at any age, the best time to build the basis of resilience is at a young age.


How we got into this work
The Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul made a significant gift in 2021 to establish the Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul Community Impact Fund. The goal of the Fund is to provide grants to achieve transformative, sustainable, systems-level change in two issue areas:
Systems-level change involves improving structures, policies, and practices to better meet the needs of children, youth, families, and older adults in the KFL&A region.
Program Update
As of August 1, 2025, ten (10) collaborative initiatives (link to Funded Initiatives page) have received funding through the Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul Community Impact Fund and several applications are in progress. We are therefore not currently inviting new Letters of Intent for either stream of this Fund.
We are always interested in hearing about new collaborative approaches to systems-level change in these two issue areas and may be able to point you to others who are engaging in similar work or notify you should additional funding become available. Please reach out to our staff to see how we may be able to assist. Older Adults Connecting & Belonging (OACB) Project Manager: OACB@cfka.org; ACEs & Resilience Coalition of KLF&A (ARC) Project Manager: arcpm@cfka.org