2025 Annual Report

Wellbeing as the Foundation for Sustainable Impact.

What an extraordinary year of collective growth and groundbreaking impact! 2025 was a year defined by deeper connection, locally-rooted growth, and the tangible realization of the sector we are building together. Thanks to the dedication and innovation of our entire team and our incredible partners, we successfully hosted our largest Global Hearth Summit yet, expanded our presence across six continents, and cultivated new movements centered on wellbeing — from educators and social entrepreneurs to environmental changemakers.

At the same time, 2025 was also a year of profound challenge for many across the social change sector, marked by growing uncertainty and significant funding cuts to international cooperation and civil society efforts. These realities only reinforced the importance of our mission: supporting the wellbeing, resilience, and long-term stewardship of the people sustaining change around the world. The milestones below reflect the foundation we have collectively built — and a glimpse of the future we continue to shape together in 2026.

For those who are new to our work: we are a global non-profit dedicated to catalyzing a culture of inner wellbeing for all changemakers. We believe that the inner lives of those working for social and environmental change matter — not as a luxury, but as the very foundation of sustainable, meaningful impact. Through research, convenings, and a growing global community, we walk alongside changemakers in tending to their wellbeing as an essential part of their work.

2025

Annual Report · The Wellbeing Project

2025 At A Glance

A year measured in gatherings, geographies, and growing networks.

Five numbers that frame the year of work — across our Summits, networks, and the global communities we steward.

1,000

Changemakers present at the Global Hearth Summit in Ljubljana

JUNE 2025 · SLOVENIA

2,600

Participants across 9 Regional Hearth summits

9 REGIONS · 2025

#

Organizations participating in our networks

GLOBAL NETWORKS

45

Foundations learning to shift practice toward changemaker wellbeing

FUNDER TRACK

24+

Countries participating at the Ecological Belonging Network

EB NETWORK

01

Convening — June 2025

Global Hearth Summit, Ljubljana

“There is something that happens when 1,000 people who have been carrying urgent work — often in isolation — finally find themselves in the same room. Ljubljana was that room, in June 2025.”

Hosted the largest-ever GHS

Convening 1,000 changemakers from over 80 countries in Ljubljana.

Pioneered the Family Circles model

To ensure intimate, personal connection and grounded learning within the large-scale Summit.

Integrated Art

As a living thread throughout the gathering to help host complexity, foster collective imagination, and collaboration.

Our most diverse Summit ever

Growing in depth, in geography, and in the quality of connection and networks

02

Convening — Nine Regions

Regional Hearth Summits

“Wellbeing is not a Western concept, and it is not a luxury for those with time to spare. In 2025, 2,600 changemakers across eight countries proved this — gathering close to home, in their own languages and realities, to tend to themselves and each other.”

Significantly expanded regional reach

Gathering 2,600 changemakers across 9 regional summits.

Sparked meaningful connections across sectors

Bringing together grassroots activists, artists, educators and researchers, philanthropists and impact investors, social entrepreneurs, and systems thinkers in shared spaces of trust and exchange.

Reinforced wellbeing as an act of leadership

Equipping changemakers with practices and strategies to build and nurture enduring cultures of care.

Since their launch in 2023, 24 Regional Hearth Summits have been hosted in 16 countries — expanding our regional footprint on every continent.

This is the most transformative summit I’ve attended — not academic, not PowerPoint-heavy, but real people sharing real life issues that are very, very related to my life.

– MANEI NAANYU · KENYA

03

Funder Engagement

Philanthropy & Wellbeing

“We believe philanthropy has an essential role to play in normalizing and funding wellbeing in changemaking. In 2025, our work accompanying funders on this journey reached new heights, convening 45 foundations at our Global Hearth Summit to explore these questions together.”

Launched the Global Hearth Summit Philanthropy Track

Engaging 45 foundations in peer learning to shift philanthropic practice toward changemaker wellbeing.

Expanded access to wellbeing through Regional Hearth Summits

Enabling 10 foundations to support over 100 changemakers’ participation.

Influenced funder practice

By co-publishing two blogs with Laudes and Hewlett Foundations, spotlighting wellbeing stipends and catalyzing uptake across philanthropy.

Join our Funders + Wellbeing Learning Group.

Peer support for those in philanthropy seeking to embed wellbeing into their grantmaking practices.

Learn More

04

Network – 24+ Countries

Ecological Belonging

“The crisis of disconnection runs deep — from ourselves, from each other, and from the living world we are working to protect. Ecological Belonging is our response: a practice of remembering that human and planetary wellbeing are not separate.”

Launched the global EB Ecosystem Network (EBN)

Now uniting 53 members from 24 countries.

Successfully wove the EB experience into the Global Hearth Summit

By leading the design of the unique Hearth Feast.

Scaled the practice of Ecological Belonging with over 20 Hearth Dinners

Hosted and the launch of the Ecological Belonging Member Spotlight series.

Restoring land without restoring relationship is an empty exercise. It is relationship that will endure and relationship that will sustain the restored land.

— Robin Wall Kimmerer · Braiding Sweetgrass

05

Networks – 5 Communities

Networks & Communities of Practice

“Burnout does not strike individuals in isolation — it moves through sectors, institutions, and generations. The networks we steward exist to interrupt that pattern: to create the peer connections and shared practices that make wellbeing sustainable, not just occasional.”

Drove significant global expansion for WHEN

Now including 98 institutions and 264 participants across 31 countries.

Launched the RestorEDucation network

To support 300+ educators facing burnout.

Conducted the El Factor Invisible — Chile

Research on entrepreneur wellbeing.

Renewed the Healing Trauma Program partnership

To provide 150 fully sponsored spots for Global South changemakers.

Secured the Spirit Rock Partnership

To integrate resilience and mindfulness practices for Climate and Nature Leaders.

WHEN has grown from 20 founding institutions in 2022 to 98 in 2025 — a fivefold increase in three years, across 31 countries.

06

Local Ecosystems

Regional Ecosystems

“The most durable change is locally rooted. We do not build wellbeing ecosystems in Africa or Asia — we walk alongside the leaders who do, supporting their vision with resources, connections, and the conviction that their work matters.”

Launched the Pan-African Wellbeing Movement (PAWM)

Rooted in African values, culture, and shared wisdom.

Advanced the strategy for the Wellbeing Ecosystem Bangladesh (WEB)

Defining priority wellbeing agendas across four key domains: education, ecology, workplace, and health (with an emphasis on mental health).

Wellbeing is the spark. It is what allows us to imagine a better world — from a place of imagination, capacity to aspire, and intuition — and then find others on the same journey.

— Carina Ndiaye · Senegal

07

Organizational Practice

Organizational Exploratory Program (OEP)

“Individuals cannot sustain their wellbeing inside organizations that don’t. In 2025, we began working alongside eight organizations to do the harder, slower work of cultural change — creating a Community of Practice that will carry this learning through 2028.”

Launched the Organizational Wellbeing Community of Practice (CoP)

Developed in co-creation with 8 OWEP members, the CoP launched in June 2025 and will run throughout 2028 to share learnings and support other organizations in addressing cultural change toward organizational wellbeing.

Implementing organizational wellbeing once felt more complex than it is, I was overwhelmed with many responsibilities. Through the Community of Practice, I found a clear way to start: forming a wellbeing council and learning from best practices — an excellent path that allows me to share this responsibility with the team and co-create together.

— German Zubia · Mexico

08

Inner Practice

Inner Development Program (IDP)

“The Inner Development Program begins with a question most changemakers rarely allow themselves to ask: what does my own inner life need? In 2025, we graduated our 6th cohort — and at the Global Hearth Summit in Ljubljana, something quietly extraordinary happened: alumni from 2015 and 2025 gathered in the same room, a decade of inner work meeting itself.”

Successfully graduated the 6th international cohort

Of the 18-month Inner Development Program (IDP), with high praise for community and personal impact.

Hosted an uplifting reunion of IDP alumni at the Global Hearth Summit

Connecting participants from the first cohort (2015) through to the most recent one (2025).

Building The Evidence

The State of Changemaker Wellbeing Survey

We believe that lasting change requires strong knowledge. In 2026, The Wellbeing Project will launch the State of Changemaker Wellbeing Survey — the first of its kind research initiative on changemaker wellbeing ever conducted.

In partnership with the Center for Healthy Minds (University of Wisconsin–Madison) and Humin, this survey is building a rigorous, globally representative picture of wellbeing in the social change sector — one that the whole field can learn from.

The findings will inform how funders, organizations, and changemakers themselves understand and invest in wellbeing — moving the conversation from anecdote to evidence.