Our Work
Offers the difference
Our mission: With nature as our greatest resource and guide, The Greater Mercy Foundation (TGMF) provides educational, experiential, and transformational opportunities for the mind, body, and spirit. In partnership and collaboration with our community, we provide programs and services that support mental wellbeing and cultivate courageous leaders.
Our vision: It is our vision to create and strengthen community connections within the context of our interdependence with each other and nature. Our vision is a community vision being shaped by intergenerational gatherings, thoughtful voices, and deep listening. Our projects are inspired by these gatherings that we call Wisdom Circles.
What We Do & How We Work
With a focus on mental health and wellness, we provide support to our school community and the community at-large. We offer the difference, meeting the needs and filling gaps in services and systems so that there is more balance, stability, and connection especially during times of transition and transformation.
We have been working at the request of the community since 2017. Our projects have at least one or more community partners, and we work collaboratively with our partners to achieve community determined goals and outcomes.
Our projects promote mental health and wellness, and address the service gaps within the greater Wimberley area through four levels of care.
1) Prevention & Development: Our wellness and mental health projects begin with preventative services that build resilience and skills for emotional regulation and relationship building. These foundational elements build community connections so we can live, work, and thrive mutually and sustainably in an ever-changing world.
2) Intervention: We serve and connect adults, youth, and children with local professionals offering education, intervention, and crisis services. We are currently expanding services to directly provide high-quality, sliding-scale mental healthcare in the Wimberley community.
3) Crisis Services: When traumatic and crisis events occur, we respond through a two-tiered approach to address the immediate needs after a crisis event and with follow-up care and referrals in the weeks and moths after an event occurs for individuals impacted by a traumatic event.
4) Care and Supervision for Professionals: For those who provide important and critical care for others in our community, maintaining a regular self-care routine is crucial. We offer 1) weekly care opportunities for educators through free yoga classes. 2) rejuvenating, nature-based retreats for mental health practitioners, wellness providers, and educators to replenish mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual capacities, and 3) opportunities for supervision, support, and development for mental health professionals.
Wisdom Circles are our model for developing current and new projects. When a need in our community becomes known, and it is within our capacity and scope of work, we call a Wisdom Circle together. These gatherings are small, intimate discussions with key stakeholders and visionaries. We see the work together from many angles in order to develop important project questions and components. This process has allowed our work to develop thoughtfully, timely, and effectively.
Current Projects
Points of Wellness & the Wellness Center
The Greater Mercy Foundation has partnered with local mental health professionals to offer Points of Wellness. Wimberley ISD employees who need mental health support at a reduced rate now have access to a network of local therapists and counselors. Points of Wellness provides local, affordable, quality mental heath care for district employees. If you are a WISD employee seeking support, please follow this link and enter your password to access the provider list.
As the contracted district mental health provider, TGMF provides regular campus support. On a weekly basis, at least two mental health professionals serve middle and high school students at The Wellness Center located on the high school campus.
If you are interested in becoming a provider, please email Jennifer Sabatier .
Professional Responders in case of emergency
Our team of local, vetted, mental health professionals work in partnership with our school district to provide a two tiered approach during crisis events. Because no one can predict a crisis, our team is ready when called upon to be the bridge between crisis and stability. When a crisis occurs, school district mental health coordinators contact us. Working along side district mental heath staff, we show up to serve at the requested campus sites. Working with the individual and groups of students, we address the immediate needs of the affected children and youth. Because issues of trauma and crisis are complex and often unfold over the course of weeks and months, our team provides a second layer of service through follow-up care.
Yoga for Educators
Yoga Classes are resuming February 12, 2024. Please join us in the Auxiliary Gym at Danforth Junior High School.
For the second year, The Greater Mercy Foundation honors our educators and district personnel with a response from a network of collaborators to provide donation-based yoga classes for educators and the community at-large.
The Greater Mercy Foundation will host yoga classes in partnership with WISD. Classes will be held in the Auxiliary Gym at Danforth Junior High School 200 Texan Blvd. Wimberley, TX, 78676.
Classes will occur once a week, Wednesdays from 4:15-5:15 pm starting September 18, 2024 through May 8, 2025 (no classes the week of Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas, or Spring Break week). All classes are donation-based for attendees. Contribute what your heart feels called to offer.
2024-25 Yoga for Educators is possible through The Greater Mercy Foundation and mutually beneficial relationships with our natural environment, Wimberley ISD, SHAC, and The Wellness Center, Danforth Junior High School, local yoga teachers, and community donations. This project benefits our hard working often over-extended educators as well as the community at-large.
Connection is Key: Suicide Awareness Walk
The WISD Wellness Center in Partnership with The Greater Mercy Foundation and Blue Hole Regional Park hosted a Suicide Awareness Walk and Health and Wellness Fair at Blue Hole Regional Park on Saturday, September 14th 9:00 am to 11 am. We plan to host this even annually. Stay tuned for details for this event in September 2025.
“Connection is Key”, and we welcome the participation from individual community members to walk the trail and visit the fair. Community organizations interested in participating in our event in 2025 can reach out to The Greater Mercy Foundation through this link or contact Sarah Myers at the WISD Wellness Center at sarah.myers@wimberleyisd.net .
To Donate, click here and indicate “Connection is Key”.
Follow this link to see more details and our partners from 2024 event.
Return to Nature
John Knox Ranch, our host and partner, helps make nature experiences, discovery, and learning possible for Kindergareten through 12th grade students attending Wimberley ISD. Once a semester, students visit John Knox Ranch campus to engage with nature and each other on the outdoor campus of John Knox Ranch. Students learn about the natural world and their place in it through various activities like canoeing, hiking, and being among the trees and waterways of the 300 acre property.
With our partner, John Knox Ranch, The Greater Mercy Foundation offers Selah gatherings, a pause and retreat to co-create and contribute to a new paradigm that values sustainable systems and honors reciprocal relationships. A few times a year, we offer gatherings of our community leaders to join us so you can be held gently and safely so that you can replenish and rest in the natural landscape of the John Knox campus. Selah gatherings are a call to pause and an opportunity to consider another way of being and leading based on the foundational values of sustainability, mutuality, and resiliency.
Community Connections
Are you looking for a therapist, healer, educator? Are you a therapist, healer, or educator looking to connect with others professionally? It is part of our mission to develop community and create connections. If you or someone you care for is in need of therapy, counseling, body or energy work, educational support, please give us a call. We are here to connect you with local providers that best meet your specific circumstances. We also aim to establish a deep professional network so that together we can support each other and make the best referrals for clients or potential clients. Call us.
Developing Projects
wisdom circles
We have inspired young girls to lead through after school yoga programs. We have helped establish a wellness center on the campus of a high school. We have guided student leaders to help provide mental health support for their peers. We offer grief and loss training for parents, teachers, doctors, nurses, and others who want to show up to effectively support people struggling with big change and grief. We provide regular referrals to local mental health services, putting people in touch with compassionate providers who meet their needs.
As we enter this next phase of our work, we want to expand our circle of understanding. The community vision is being shaped by intergenerational gatherings, thoughtful voices, and deep listening. If you are interested in participating in our Wisdom Circles, please contact us.
