HU’s Zoë Newcomb and Mahendra Pandey share reflections about the importance of prioritizing wellbeing and care-centered spaces from their time attending the Global Hearth Summit.
Last month we had the privilege of gathering with some of our colleagues and partners from the Forced Labor & Human Trafficking and Peacebuilding portfolios in Ljubljana, Slovenia for The Global Hearth Summit hosted by The Wellbeing Project. This convening gathered artists, activists, musicians, peacebuilders, and changemakers from around the world together with a focus on individual, collective, and ecological wellbeing.
The lessons and conversations at the summit bridged the work of HU’s programmatic portfolios, offering key reminders for how wellbeing and care underpin our collective work:
How we are together is equally as important as why or for what. Often, meetings and convenings are designed around habit and status quo, and fail to offer space for care and connection. At the Global Hearth Summit, sessions included community-wide dance, concerts, poetry, comedy performances, and culinary experiences. Venues for sessions were spread across the city, creating opportunities to move through and anchor in the local context. This integration of arts, movement, spaciousness, and ritual reinforced connection and deepened quality of conversation. In intentionally adopting these types of practices, we can re-anchor in shared humanity, the ability for individuals to show up safely and fully, to build trust, and imagine what new ideas are possible. The way we gather is not separate from what we are trying to bring forward into the world; it is an active manifestation of the values and vision we have for the future.
The opportunity to be in conversation with and experience the work of musicians and artists was a particularly moving thread in the design of the Hearth Summit. These types of opportunities to be in relationship with other changemakers from diverse sectors, contexts, and backgrounds are critical for building collective power and energy. This diverse representation across the summit helped create space for cross-pollination and cultivation of a shared sense of how change happens through care and attention to wellbeing. Relationships and solidarity with those doing the work in other spaces and from other lenses evokes a deeper felt sense that we are not alone amidst the complexity and challenge, while also strengthening the infrastructure to be in the work together. With these connections also come sparks of creativity and imagination, embedding cross-contextual wisdom and expertise.
Designing for care and connection also helps to facilitate the space to begin to name and confront the structural barriers that uphold broken systems. The summit had a robust agenda packed with brilliant and inspiring speakers but, importantly, these sessions were paired alongside “family groups” for participants to connect in more intimate conversation, as well as many other spaces and practices attending to relational deepening and care. Safe spaces for difficult conversations are the essential foundation to change, pairing relational ways working with structural honesty and accountability. Too often, discussions about change are superficial, extractive, or harmful. Attending to wellbeing at depth requires honesty, commitment, and structural safety—which requires us to challenge dominant norms and imagine different ways of being together.
For us at HU, these reminders are an affirmation that how we show up in the work matters as much as what we do. Philanthropy has long focused on systems, structures, and solutions. But what if care—inner, relational, and collective— wasn’t just a side effect, but central to how we fund? Wellbeing is the foundation upon which vibrant and sustainable change is built. Funders can and must invest in the care-centered, relational spaces where real change happens.