Community well-being

Community well-being is feeling pride in your work, your life, and making meaningful contributions to communities, whether locally or globally.

A diverse, vibrant, and inclusive community allows each of us to feel connected, valued, and treated fairly. When we show up as our true selves with our lived experience, and share knowledge with one another, our communities can thrive!

Understanding the needs of a community helps to determine how you might connect. We can find ways to connect when we take the time to learn the issues and about the community members.   

How to be a good local community member:  

• Check on vulnerable individuals during times of extreme heat, heavy air pollution, illness, or income changes that may cause food or housing insecurity. A small action on your part could make a tremendous impact on someone else’s life;
• Use your voice and your vote to speak out on social justice concerns; and
• Connect with one another in a positive and caring manner.

How to be a good global community member:

• Understand the stressors on our planetary health and how these can be inequitable, based on location and circumstance. The article No Public Health Without Planetary Health by the Lancet Journal, discusses environment impacts on well-being. Becoming familiar with issues that plague our planet helps to create an understanding of community needs throughout the world;
• Consider ways to assist and support those around the world that need help. For example:
  • Find ways you can help from the comfort of your home with World Relief; or
  • Combine world travel and volunteering with Workaway

How to find your community right here on campus, today:

• The amazing community work at Detroit Mercy, is an incredible place to collaborate with like-minded peers in one of Detroit Mercy’s registered organizations and clubs; or
• Find community from the comfort of your laptop, through Care2. This online community group allows you to participate in advocacy and petition signing for topics important to you.

Community is not just physical proximity, like a neighborhood or town; our planet is one large community and in the words of Helen Keller, alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.