{"id":28573,"date":"2023-11-02T07:00:45","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T11:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=28573"},"modified":"2023-11-02T08:48:44","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T12:48:44","slug":"dan-weidenbenner-mill-village-ministries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/dan-weidenbenner-mill-village-ministries\/","title":{"rendered":"Thriving community organization grew from Furman roots"},"content":{"rendered":"

For more than a decade, Mill Village Ministries<\/a> has connected the Greenville, South Carolina, community with its nonprofit enterprises, providing food, transportation, entrepreneurial and social justice resources to hundreds of residents.<\/p>\n

It all sprouted from a few seeds planted by founder and executive director Dan Weidenbenner \u201911, enriched along the way by his student experiences and the Furman family.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing at Furman really helped me get plugged in to the Greenville community,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of our original support has come from alums, and it still does to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plugging in to community<\/h3>\n
\"\"

Dan Weidenbenner \u201911 (center) and other members of the Mill Village Ministries team at the groundbreaking ceremony for the organization\u2019s future headquarters in the Village of West Greenville.<\/p><\/div>\n

A native of south Florida, Weidenbenner was attracted by Furman\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew the psychology department was really good,\u201d he said. \u201cI met some of the faculty when I toured campus, and I had a good advisor back in Florida who told me all about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He served as a resident assistant for Furman\u2019s Engaged Living First-Year Experience<\/a> community, earned a fellowship with the David E. Shi Center for Sustainability (now known as The Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities<\/a>) and worked on the Furman Farm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Weidenbenner began finding ways to connect the campus to his new hometown. In downtown Greenville, he volunteered at the Scott Towers public housing development for low-income seniors. As part of a Furman research project on improving seniors’ cognitive abilities, he helped build community gardens at Scott Towers and at The Woodlands at Furman.<\/p>\n

In April 2011, he helped organize a flash mob<\/a> that brought more than 200 students to Falls Park downtown for a group dance to CeeLo Green\u2019s \u201cForget You.\u201d The viral video got nearly 90,000 views within three months.<\/p>\n

Building relationships and trust<\/h3>\n

After a post-graduation church mission trip in the Lowcountry, Weidenbenner returned to Greenville, moving into Greater Sullivan, a predominantly Black neighborhood formerly surrounded by textile mills. Many of his neighbors were living below the poverty line in what had become an under-resourced food desert.<\/p>\n

Drawing on his Furman community gardening experiences, Weidenbenner sowed the seeds of Mill Village Farms<\/a> in 2012, turning a patch of land at Long Branch Baptist Church into the Sullivan Street Garden<\/a> with the help of dozens of neighborhood volunteers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI built a lot of relationships and trust, which frankly took a lot of time for someone not from this community,\u201d he said. \u201cI became passionate about building cross-cultural relationships and building bridges.\u201d<\/p>\n

The garden now includes 30 beds, a greenhouse and a commercial kitchen. At-risk youth<\/a> work as volunteers and apprentices, and a food share<\/a> program distributes produce throughout Greenville.<\/p>\n

Other organizations have since come into being under the Mill Village Ministries umbrella. In 2013, Weidenbenner launched Village Wrench<\/a> to provide free bicycle repair and encourage sustainable transportation in Greenville. Village Launch<\/a>, founded in 2014, provides training, mentoring and other resources to local entrepreneurs. Village Engage<\/a> joined the collective in 2019 to involve people of faith in social justice and equity issues.<\/p>\n

His work has gotten wide notice. The Upstate Business Journal selected Weidenbenner for its 2015 Who\u2019s Who<\/a> honors. In 2021, Mill Village Ministries\u00a0won a Community Spirit Award<\/a> presented by the Community Foundation of Greenville and TOWN Magazine. Earlier this year, the Motley Fool Foundation inducted Weidenbenner into its Financial Freedom Rule Breakers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All of the Mill Village Ministries\u00a0enterprises will soon come together in a 14,000-square-foot space<\/a> in the Village of West Greenville.<\/p>\n

\u2018Early seeds\u2019<\/h3>\n

Throughout its growth, the organization has kept close ties to the founder\u2019s alma mater, providing opportunities for student interns<\/a> and researchers<\/a> and partnering with Furman\u2019s institutes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Village Launch often collaborates with The Hill Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship<\/a>, and \u201cmany of The Shi Institute Student Fellows<\/a> come work with us,\u201d Weidenbenner said. \u201cI always love telling them my story, because the early seeds of the ministries came from me doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The social entrepreneur is now working with Judith Williams, an assistant professor of anthropology, on a research project supporting minority- and women-owned businesses. Weidenbenner also frequently visits sustainability and psychology classes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a lot of ways, my job is solving problems,\u201d said Weidenbenner, who still lives in Greater Sullivan with his wife and two daughters. \u201cThe skills of critical thinking, being able to analyze problems and test solutions and then communicating those solutions are things I\u2019ve kept with me from Furman.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For over a decade, Dan Weidenbenner \u201911, founder and executive director of Mill Village Ministries, has pursued his mission of elevating Greenville through healthy food, sustainable transportation, youth employment and social justice, with plenty of collaboration with his alma mater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":28577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,70,37,81,48,18,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-diversity-equity-and-inclusion","category-earth-environmental-and-sustainability-sciences","category-innovation-and-entrepreneurship","category-psychology","category-shi-institute-for-sustainable-communities","category-undergraduate-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}