A Good Idea Picks Up Steam

The goal of the Happy Community Project has always been to scale up the process so any community anywhere in the world will have access to it. To do this, we have been making some important strategic partnerships.

The process of the Happy Community creates Action Groups where citizens get to know each other by doing things together. What better way to do this than in a financially sustainable and entrepreneurial way.

The Sobeys School of Business has partnered with the Happy Community project to bring their Pipeline process to all our Happy Community Project. This is a great opportunity where Ross Arsenault and Carl Archer of Saint Mary’s University bring resources, skills and ideas to create entrepreneurial solutions for social problems.  In the process, the community has great new resources to come together around. We are proud and excited to launch the Pipeline initiative this fall in our Happy Community Projects.

There is more

We are looking at … Read the rest

Montreal has Changed

I was blown away by how Montreal has changed to be a happier community.

My first trip to Montreal was for Expo 67 and I have been there many dozens of times since. In the 70’s and early 80’s, I was treated with rudeness and distain as Quebec struggled with identity insecurity, FLQ and separation. As an English speaking person, I was often refused service in stores and looked upon with disdain. In the later 80’s and 90’s as Quebec grew more confident in its own sense of self, people were more eager to take my money, but looked at me with ‘what do I have to do with their own pleasure’, and if the answer was nothing, then I again received a sense of coldness and rudeness. This wasn’t directed solely to me because I was English, but was more of a general attitude no matter whether I was a citizen or a visitor. . This showed up in … Read the rest

The Happy Community Project is made of many collaborations

The Happy Community Project continues to gain momentum

New communities are starting up, third party organizations are taking an interest in us, and most importantly, real projects are getting launched – projects that bring people together as a community.

The foundational idea is that communities that are highly socially connected across diversity enjoy a greater sense of belonging, meaning, sufficiency, security and fairness – the fundamentals for a contented life. I recently had a meeting with Anne who captured our goals beautifully. “I used to be able to walk our streets and meet people I knew – it used to be a social event. Now people don’t walk, they drive up to the store they want, and if they do walk, they have their head down and you don’t get a chance to make those connections. I want people to remember how important those accidental connections are to their wellbeing. We used to know and now we have forgotten.”

Sackville

… Read the rest

What the Core Group Does

What the Core Group Does

  • Keeper of the Vision
  • Helps launch new Action Groups ideas.
  • Links Action Groups to a common vision for our community
  • Provides centralized services to Action Groups so they can concentrate on doing their work and less on administration – for example – a common website and maintenance, media communications,
  • Creates a community network hub for sharing ideas, connecting with resources and people
  • Designing and implementing social incentives for greater participation of community citizens
  • Creating Celebration Events for the Happy Community action pods members and their participants.
  • Provide transparent feedback on our progress and achievements
  • Offer training on how to design projects that increase community participation and connections.

… Read the rest

Social Connections Are the Answer

Research shows that the more socially connected we are, the happier we are. Charles Montgomery, the author of The Happy City, demonstrates in his Tedx talk that trust goes up when social connection is high.

Our Happy Community Project is designed to build a sustainable way of creating greater happiness through stronger social connections. It is designed so that ordinary citizens can participate in the happiness of their community.

Find out more in the details of the Happy Community Project.… Read the rest

Social Physics in Action

,

Social Physics Principles

From the ideas of the MIT Media Lab

The Pillars of Success

The village decides the outcome. The village attracts the members with a connected intention to make the kind of change they know is important.

Trust is built in an environment of diversity through strong social connections and equal speak time and forms the foundations necessary to recruit new members, explore ideas and come to consensus on taking action.

Everyone connected to everyone else within a neighborhood provides the flow of ideas necessary for arriving at practical, creative solutions for obtaining results.

Social incentives are designed to support productive behavior of idea generation, membership growth, and measurable results. Incentives work best when the community benefits more than the individual.

Exploration both inside and outside provides the new ideas for creativity and productivity.

Measurable results provide the reality for transparency and feedback for the village. For example it could be tons of food locally produced … Read the rest

FAQs- The Happy Community Project

,

What is the Happy Community Project?

Based on research and experience, we have developed process that increases a community’s wellbeing and resiliency. The Happy Community Project provides communities that want to increase their happiness and resiliency with a simple process that brings communities together around common purpose.

Why is the Happy Community Project important?

As we move deeper into the age of disruption, it is the strength and resiliency of our communities that can provide us with the capacity to roll with the punches and come up smiling. The Happy Community Project is designed to increase the capacity of the community for happiness and resiliency.

How does the Happy Community Project work?

We provide a process and the citizens of the community apply the process in whatever way think is best. The process brings out the creativity and energy of a community and focuses it on building the social connections within the community that form the foundation for wellbeing and … Read the rest

The 7 Criteria for a Happy Community Project

,

What Makes a  Happy Community

The biggest indicator of a happy and resilient community is how strong are the social connections within a community. These are personal connections involving face to face contact. In most communities, you can’t know everyone, but you can know about 100 people really well and recognize several hundred others as being part of the community. When the whole community is connected by at least 2 degrees of separation, the community has the basics of hat it needs for happiness and resiliency.

What are the Happy Community Criteria

In the Happy Community project we create projects that are designed to both benefit the community and build strong social connections.

To accomplish this, the project needs to meet 7 criteria. When all 7 criteria can be checked off, the community has a happy making social connecting project

Project Check List – 7 Criteria

 

Do a large number of citizens feel strongly about this?

Does this project … Read the rest

What Makes a Happy Community?

,
… Read the rest

Why is Reshaping Our World Important?

,

For almost 3 years now, I have been working to bring people together to reshape our world. It started with the idea that my granddaughter’s future is at risk when she is in the prime of her life 30 or 40 years from now. I wanted to do something that makes a difference to that outcome.

We have had three conferences and countless meetings trying to figure out how to bring focus to this idea.

What I have concluded from these three years of efforts is that most people agree with me – our world is heading for trouble. I have also learned that most people want to do something about it; most people just don’t know what else we can do besides trying to be good neighbors, parents and employees. We want to make a meaningful difference; we just don’t know what it is or we don’t have the support we need to make the difference.

That is why … Read the rest