The Richmond, Virginia community is currently experiencing significant challenges related to Black youth mental health. The public schools’ efforts to support Black youth are often thwarted by challenges at the community level (i.e. youth-involved shootings and gun violence) which increase students’ exposure to violence and other traumatic experiences. The increases in suicidality, trauma exposure, and mental health risks have led school staff to focus almost exclusively on responsive/crisis services and they report having little resources to develop and implement effective preventative services as a part of their multi-tiered systems of support framework. In this paper, we describe a community-research partnership, Black Youth Mental Health Initiative (BYMHI), a 3 year Office of Minority Health U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Demonstrating Effective Policies to Promote Black Youth Mental Health grant, that has the potential to serve as a model for addressing the antecedents, antecedents, prevention strategies, and intervention strategies for suicide risk in children. Specifically, this paper describes the accomplishments (and the unexpected pivots) as we explored what thriving looks like for Black children and adolescents in schools and communities.