In an Era of Disruption, How do you Create a Happy Community?
How do you create a community that puts well-being first and also has the resiliency to roll with the punches?
Happy Communities have a strong well established foundation – a foundation that can be created by intent. They can bring wellbeing through the disruption process and come out the other side smiling.
Social Connections are the Foundation
There are many factors that affect a communities wellbeing and resiliency. There are things like financial capital, infrastructure and education that are important factors. But social connections underpin how much impact these factors have in creating community happiness.
When social connections are strong, the community can draw on trust, mobilize relationships and put its resources to work to deal with whatever comes its way. It can reach out to community members to help those that need help. When people are widely connected across diversity, then all citizens can experience belonging, meaning, sufficiency, security and fairness. The social connections create the foundation for community happiness and resiliency.
Without strong social connections to diversity, the community can be weak, vulnerable and at risk to disruptive events.
The Happy Community Project is a Process
After four years of research and experimentation, we have created a process that every community can apply that increases social connection and the capacity for wellbeing and resiliency.
We have developed a step by step process called the Happy Community Project. This process is designed to increase the strength depth and breadth of social connection within the community. The process does not depend on culture and is adaptable to all communities.
How does it Work?
In the Happy Community Project Process, the community always decides what is important. It is not dependent on outside expertise. It does depend on using the process that has been researched and tested in real communities.
The goal is to develop strong social connections through out the community. These social connections are developed when citizens do things together consistently over time. The projects are designed so that people both can and want to work and play together and in the process, develop relationships that connect the community together.
The Happy Community Project is Unique to Every Community
Although the process works the same in every community, how the community uses it is always unique to each community. In this way, it always respects local culture and utilizes local resources.
The community makes the decisions.
The process uses existing resources.
This process does not have to be capital intensive. Instead it uses the existing resources of the community.
Every community can afford to be a Happy Community.
How do we implement our own Happy Community Project?
There are two ways that you can have access to the Happy Community Project process.
Set up a training program for your community.
Get the fundamentals by having Barry come to a speaking event.
The goal is always to transfer to the community everything they need. The process works best when the community is self-reliant and self-determinant in their own destiny. All we do is provide the principles, the process and guidance as the community desires.
If this sounds interesting – contact us.
We can hope or we can do something about it.
Yes – the problems are big. But collectively we can make a difference. We can build a future for ourselves and our grandchildren.
Most people believe that there is nothing they can do that will make a difference. All they can do is little things and have hope that their governments, big businesses and NGOs will provide for their wellbeing. They are too busy, too stressed and too isolated to do anything about it themselves.
Many communities have made themselves vulnerable and reduced their general wellbeing by leaving it to other institutions to take care of the most fundamental thing that makes a community a community. That is – to know each other, care about each other, and look out for each other. The Happy Community Project rebuilds and strengthens the foundation on which strong happy communities are built. It connects all people together across diversity. It puts the destiny of the community into the hands of its citizens.
The Happy Community Project provides the process that increases the social connections within a community. The process is designed so that most citizens in a community want to be part of the Happy Community Project and have something that they can contribute.
The process is designed so that it is a benefit, not a hardship for citizens to participate. The process makes it easy for citizens to participate. The reality is that people are busy, stressed and over committed. The process is designed so that it fits their ability to participate. The process is designed to accommodate and include everyone in participating. People do not need a lot of money, or be highly educated or be highly mobile. Everyone brings what they have in ability and it is this diversity that builds strength into the community.
Why is it Important?
Decisions should be about happiness and the factors that affect true happiness are simple: