Month: September 2016

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A new narrative for the Economics of Happiness

London 14th September 2016, Initiatives of Change center:

At a recent workshop Helena Norberg-Hodge shared an alternative paradigm she calls the ‘economics of happiness’. Below is a trailer from a film Helena produced on the subject.

What if human well-being didn’t have to be at the expense of the environment? What if we could simultaneously increase genuine prosperity,reduce social inequality, and tackle climate change? With some simple economic shifts, all this becomes possible. That’s because so many of our current crises—financial, social and ecological—are linked to the scale of the economy. Localisation is a solution-multiplier that systemically reduces economic scale, creating benefits that ripple throughout society. In this day-long seminar, her talk highlighted human-scale economies and the steps—at the community, national, and international levels—that can bring us there.

Stephen Hinton provided his perspective from helping local initiatives in Sweden.

[slideshare id=66411742&doc=economicsofhappinesssummary-160926082905]

READ MORE

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Peace Promoter: Interviver

OVERVIEW

Name:  INTERVIVER  Interviver.org

Type:  Portugese not for profit organisation

Mission Statement:  to promote of health, well-being and Peace in Portugal

Peace-promoting activities:   InterViver is working with municipalities in the Greater Lisbon Area with civil society mobilisation for health, well-being and Peace. InterViver offers a Peace Education Program as well as, in cooperation with the Higher Institute for Social and Political Sciences (Lisbon), well-being lessons for 7 th, 8th and 9th graders. The pilot project is being implemented this academic year in a public school in Cascais.

Continue reading “Peace Promoter: Interviver”

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Inside peace, the documentary film


The Inside Peace documentary follows a group of inmates doing hard time in a Texas prison as they embark on a journey of personal discovery while struggling with society’s roadblocks and dangers.

“These stories bleed through Inside Peace, and they are crucial to it, but they’re only part of what the film is about. The men manage to take the message to heart that they have value as people – no simple lesson… This is where, for the viewer, the awe comes in.”
—Peace Behind Barbed Wire by Robert Koehler, Huffington Post.

About Inside Peace

Criminal offenders with lives marked by generations of violence, addiction, and poor social conditions attend the Peace Class in a Texas prison where they struggle to discover their humanity, improve their outlook on life and rebuild their lives from the inside out. Four years in the making, Inside Peace is a feature documentary that focuses on several compelling characters who were incarcerated at Dominguez State Jail in San Antonio, Texas. There, they embarked on a journey of change by enrolling in the Peace Class, one of the few self-improvement programs offered in prisons across the country that are not faith-based, but instead concentrates on the individual’s inner strength and self-worth.

Read more on the Inside Peace documentary website.

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Invest in an NGO Peace Bond

iip_bond

Invest in Peace has the idea to create a prototype crowdfunding platform. The service is at concept phase. You you can get an idea of how it is intended to work from this video.

https://youtu.be/RRVeYo2hzgk

The purpose of the platform is for people to invest their money in helping NGOs working for peace. The money Invest in Peace collects will be lent to NGOs to help them build up their operations.

The loans are interest-free, but bond holders will get bonus points, which can be redeemed in the points store. Participating NGOs offer their products and services for redeemable points.

To try the system out, go to our test site by  following this link

Sign in using the name: test

Password: test

Your test account has an overdraft facility so you can go to the catalogue to browse items and redeem them against Peace Points. Search the classified Ads section. You can enter advertisements for your own things as well.

Contact us if you would like to help out with developing this investment platform.

Beneficiaries will be Peace Bank Members. Contact us if you would like your organisation to join.

 

 

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Peace Promotor: Local Futures

OVERVIEW

Name:  Local Futures LOcal futures         http://www.localfutures.org

Type:  Not for profit organisation,  established 1978

Mission Statement: Local Futures’ (ISEC) mission is to protect and renew ecological and social well being by promoting a systemic shift away from economic globalization towards localization. Through its “education for action” programs, Local Futures develops innovative models and tools to catalyze collaboration for strategic change at the community and international level

Peace-promoting activities:   Local futures provides support for communities to develop food security and other securities that underpin peace. Continue reading “Peace Promotor: Local Futures”

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FILM: The Economics of Happiness

Watch a short excerpt for free

The Economics of Happiness describes a world moving simultaneously in two opposing directions. On the one hand, government and big business continue to promote globalization and the consolidation of corporate power. At the same time, all around the world people are resisting those policies, demanding a re-regulation of trade and finance—and, far from the old institutions of power, they’re starting to forge a very different future. Communities are coming together to re-build more human scale, ecological economies based on a new paradigm – an economics of localization. Continue reading “FILM: The Economics of Happiness”