The 7 Vital Conditions for Health and Well-Being framework gained significant traction in 2017, thanks to a collaborative effort involving ReThink Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), among others. These organizations worked together to develop and promote this comprehensive framework, focusing on improving population health by addressing social, environmental, and economic conditions that impact well-being.
The Power of Belonging and Civic Muscle
Belonging and civic muscle are foundational to thriving communities. Belonging creates a sense of being part of something larger, while civic muscle is the collective strength to affect change. Recent research by Raj Chetty and findings from the U.S. Surgeon General, which reveal that social isolation can increase the risk of premature death by more than 60%, underscore the importance of belonging and the critical need for fostering strong social connections.
For many, the question of “how?” remains. How do we actually go about fostering belonging and civic muscle, and how do we do it in a way that is adaptable, sustainable, and scalable?
A Blueprint for Collective Action
Common Change offers a practical, scalable approach to accelerate the development of belonging and civic muscle. It provides a clear path for communities to transform themselves, not only meeting basic needs but thriving through a way of life centered on collective action, leveraging the power of technology to help people share resources, ideas, and support in systematic yet personal ways.
Key Practices of the Common Change
Thousands of participants across the United States, the Caribbean, the UK, and South Africa have been engaging in collaborative giving for the past 20 years both developing and using the Common Change and discovering success through this approach. Through their efforts, they have identified five key practices that foster a sense of belonging and strengthen civic muscle.
- Person-to-Person Connection: Prioritize face-to-face interactions to build trust, empathy, and mutual respect. Common Change has discovered that person to person connections (rather than institution to person connections) are essential for building a sense of belonging in communities.
- Formation of Named Groups: Create groups with a shared identity and purpose, which fosters ownership, accountability, and enhances the group’s impact on the broader community. Common Change has discovered that a heightened sense of belonging and ability (civic muscle) is almost immediate when someone identifies themselves as part of a group with a name.
- Commitment to Time-Bound Participation: Set clear, short-term expectations and commitments for participation to keep momentum alive, foster regular reflection and celebration of successes, ensure that progress remains both measurable and achievable, and provide clear and realistic on and off ramps for involvement. Common Change has discovered that a secret to increasing engagement and participation in a group effort and also facilitating creativity and exploration within that effort (and thus increasing belonging and civic muscle) is to approach the whole effort as an experiment and starting with a short term stopping point already insight.
- Abundance-Focused Collaboration for Meeting a Need: A special sense of belonging and empowerment (civic muscle) forms when people work side by side together to accomplish something, and especially when that accomplishment is for the benefit of someone else. We call this”meeting a need.” The “need” or “needs” a group is interested in meeting can take many shapes and sizes, and will likely change overtime, but the “what” is less important than the how. Common Change has discovered that it’s crucially important that a group simply commits to meeting some need together and then begins by asking “How might we?” rather than “Can we?”—shifting from scarcity to abundance by focusing on the resources already at hand. By pooling skills, time, and efforts, we unlock new possibilities and create impact through collective, solution-driven action.
- Integration of High-Tech and High-Touch Solutions: Use technology to enhance connections while maintaining the depth of personal interactions ensures the methodology is scalable and adaptable. Common Change has discovered a way to leverage technology without sacrificing connection.