Green Bay, Wisconsin

A new generation of leaders in Green Bay, Wisc. is uniting across cultures to build people power.

Rooted in the cultures and voices of all the communities that call Green Bay home, local leaders in government, business, sports, and community-based organizations are collaborating on interconnected initiatives. These issues include everything from housing to food security, from health services to making the city a welcoming and supportive place for everyone.

Learning about the changing dynamics of the city’s population was critical. Leaders implemented a new framework for measuring wellbeing, providing insight into residents’ physical health, mental health, social connections, and community conditions—such as income, housing, and safety. By centering the lived experiences of its residents, Green Bay, Wisconsin’s oldest city, is actively recalibrating systems to better prioritize community needs, build trusting relationships, and foster hope for a future of health, equity, and liberation. Key highlights of their work include:

• Local health organizations established a one-of-a-kind set of evaluation tools to measure community wellbeing in Green Bay and Brown County. With the local community centered at every step of the process, the data gained has led to a community-wide declaration of racism as a public health crisis, advocacy around LGBTQ+ equity, and has highlighted the disparities by self-reported gender in mental health.
• Amid the largest racial justice uprising of a generation, a unanimous City Council vote declared racism a public health crisis and created an Equal Rights Commission. The Commission produced recommendations for guaranteeing fair and equal access to housing, which was used to inform new affordable housing projects. By centering a community need to increase LGBTQ+ inclusivity and visibility, the city collaborated alongside members of the LGBTQ+ community to set in motion internal changes that significantly increased Green Bay’s score on Human Rights Campaign’s Municipal Equality Index. By 2024, Green Bay scored a perfect 100.
• A partnership of local groups and resource centers representing Green Bay’s Hispanic, African American, and refugee communities worked together to advocate for stronger links between medical clinics and the communities they serve. With more than 40 languages spoken across the communities represented in the coalition, they worked to provide appropriate language services within local clinics. Results include hiring support staff from these communities and ensuring key documents are translated into as many languages as possible.
• Green Bay’s Cultivating Community project has supported the building of health and wealth within Northeast Wisconsin by addressing food insecurity. Originally designed to address equity gaps in healthy food, Cultivating Community has grown into a source of innovation and entrepreneurship for the community, as well as a model for community-driven environmental sustainability, cultural connection to food, and prioritizing farmers traditionally underrepresented including Hmong, Indigenous, Black and Brown farmers.
• Through public-private investment, Green Bay is addressing the affordable, safe housing crisis in one of its most racially and economically diverse areas by developing equitable, mixed-use housing coupled with an urban farm. The project, which includes green spaces, community gathering places, a neighborhood playground, sidewalks, bike lanes, an urban barn, and intentional connection to existing neighborhoods, is guided by community learning and engagement sessions that are being held in four languages.