Wellville was a 10-year (2014-2024) national nonprofit project to achieve long-term, equitable, community wellbeing. We served as a catalyst for five US communities – the Wellville 5 – as they work to improve their health and wellbeing through resident-centered, multi-stakeholder collaboration. The Wellville 5 inspire other communities to copy (and improve upon) their work and to promote change in how our nation invests in its people, institutions and systems.
The annual Wellville Gathering brought together people from the Wellville 5, the Wellville National team and Advisory Board, and other advisors and experts, to learn with and from each other.
This is the story of how the Muskegon YMCA, long a pillar of the community of Muskegon County, MI, wove itself into a broader supporting fabric, reaching out beyond a physical building to serve community members in the community.
At Wellville, we use our basic quadrant chart not so much to describe ourselves, but to explore the mindset shift we want to foster. Our two axes are “short-term thinking” vs. “long-term thinking,” and “benefits just me” vs. “benefits all,” otherwise called “self-interest” vs. “shared interest.”
Wellville communities are learning that if we want better health, we need to shift our mindsets, collaborate, and ask better questions: What future do we want? What’s holding us back? And what will it take to get there?
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