(Chelsea Update would like to thank Amy Heydlauff, executive director of the Chelsea-Area Wellness Foundation, for the information in this column.)
During the fall we have a history of celebrating the harvest – the result of hard work undertaken in order to assure a secure future – abundance now with enough to keep us fed and healthy through the frozen winter. The harvest culminates with Thanksgiving – a holiday with a name that says it all.
Our culture is full of lessons about preparing for tomorrow. The pilgrims, of course. Aesop’s fable about the grasshopper (frivolous) and the ant (industrious) is another.
Perhaps this year, you preserved food through canning, freezing, drying or other methods.
The Chelsea-Area Wellness Foundation’s (CWF) service area is still agrarian enough that people not only put up food on their own behalf, they gather the harvest to feed their farm animals through the winter – caring not only for themselves but also for those for which they are responsible. In other words, they are stewards. And, most of us are stewards in one way or another. There are many opportunities to care for resources on behalf of others.
The Chelsea-Area Wellness Foundation is a steward of resources that belong to the communities of our service area (Stockbridge, Manchester, Grass Lake, Dexter and Chelsea).
In their role as stewards of the service area funds and our mission the Board of Directors works hard to make challenging decisions about how to invest the money in the mission while at the same time preserving CWF’s purchasing power for the next generation – to give the service area the best shot at intergenerational equity (the same buying power now and in the future). That means constant, careful consideration about how to spend and invest.
There is healthy debate at CWF meetings and the board members spend time collecting and reviewing the best information they can find before making many tough decisions. They take out their calculators, a lot. The decisions they make are always made with the awareness that those decisions are made on behalf of our community with an eye toward an impact on the long-term health of the community. And, a desire to preserve intergenerational equity.
Our communities also harbor smart people with good ideas who can help CWF in our mission efforts. In 2011, we enlisted some of those people through community Wellness Coalitions. A substantial portion of the funds we spend annually are made available to the Wellness Coalitions – half a million dollars in 2013.
Decisions about how that money should be spent to meet the mission of creating a culture of wellness and sustainable improvements in health became the responsibility of those coalitions. They are also stewards of their community’s resources.
The Wellness Coalitions and the CWF Board of Directors take their responsibilities as stewards of their community’s resources seriously. They make hard decisions. They must make decisions with an eye toward the future as well as today. They behave as Aesop’s ant and it’s not always fun to be the ant. But a decade from now, the health and wellness of this service area will be a direct result of the tough decisions and hard work that is currently underway. And 50 years from now, the CWF Board of Directors hopes our decedents will have the same opportunities we have now.
Thanksgiving – what a great name for a holiday.
