Theory of Change

• nourish wellness through healing foods, arts, and community learning

• wellness is a process of creating vitality, building resilience, and living intentionally to cultivate dynamic and diverse ecosystems within, amongst and around us

• community wellness is achieved by purposeful collaborations of individuals, workplaces, and institutions who agree that wellness is a priority for everyone, if we are to create just, regenerative, and inclusive societies

Bauman Wellness integrates 5 nourishing wellness practices:

• eating for health

• joyful movement

• mindfulness

• healing relationships

• spiritual practice

Bauman Wellness community adds the spices of art, culture, nature, and love into all that we hold dear and aspire to share with all our relations. We believe that integrating healing foods, arts and community learning will bring about systemic changes with individuals, communities and institutions.

Purpose our evidenced-based frameworks and pathways for learning and improving outcomes for individual, workplace and institutional wellness will be continuously refined to reflect our emerging understanding of what works individually and collectively.

Precondition systemic social and economic injustice inhibits wellness.

Outcomes evidenced-based systemic changes towards individual, community and institutional wellness through integrating healing foods, arts, and community learning.

Process design thinking, radical diversity, integrative, agile actions and reflections, and story-based engagements.

Building our iterative theory of change is built on ongoing evidenced-based cycles of collaborations amongst individuals, communities, and institutions, as they revolve around the following five key elements:

• conditions: relationships amongst individuals and/or places where they live, work, and play and the agency they believe they have in relation to influences impacting their wellness.

• affect: feelings and emotions in relation to conditions that affect our sense of agency and how they are shaped by our character and virtues.

• behaviors: actions and habits influenced by our conditions and affect that can improve wellness through educational interventions and/or mechanisms of change.

• cognition: our diverse learning predispositions, abilities, and skills.

• outcomes:  the short, medium, and long-term positive changes on individuals, communities or institutions.

Our theory of change is based on unpacking, testing and adjusting the following factors:

• radical diversity requires being present and mindful of diverse individuals, communities and institutions.

• can be place-based and/or communities of common interests.

• individuals, communities and institutions are linked to varying degrees.

• relationships amongst participants is more than the sum of the individual constituents, which create culture.

• past, present, and future actions and conditions affect culture and ability to positively change.

• individual and community agency affect institutional interventions.

• wellness of participants directly affects the creation and sustainability of virtuous circles of dynamic growth.

Our theory of change is shaped by analyzing and interpreting the evidence as we try to answer some of the following questions:

• How can simple, affordable and healthy foods foster wellness?

• How can the arts foster agency by creating positive feelings and emotions that lead to positive behavioral changes?

• How can diverse forms of community-based learning lead to positive behavioral changes?

• What are the catalysts for positive change amongst individuals, communities and institutions?

• How can diverse and integrated co-created programs improve overall wellness?

• How can we nourish character and virtues to foster wellness?

• How to we determine, measure, quantify and qualify hard and soft outcomes?

• How do we measure what really matters and their related outcomes?

Practices: we will foster cultures of best practices for systematically reviewing wellness evidence for programs related to:

• healthy foods   

• arts                   

• community learning          

• character         

• wellness practices     

Research we will also:

• review current indicators

• review literature and research on intersections around wellness           

• analyze wellness data and outcomes

• create indicators and assessments around our definition of wellness

• collaborate and co-create with partners through pilot studies and research

• engage with diverse practitioners, researchers and consumers

• rigorously apply evidence-based research to online learning communities by and amongst practitioners and consumers

As our journey unfolds we will continuously change and update our Theory of Change.