I have a confession to make: I used to think that donating money to charities was just a way for affluent people to feel good about “doing good.” I silently chided them: “If you really care about people who are less fortunate than you, you should get out there and help them.” You know the
AuthorJuliana Essen
No More Small Talk: Turning Big Ideas about Wellbeing into Action
I spend a lot of time thinking about how to achieve a Good Life for All—how a life built on a strong foundation of wellbeing would actually look in practice. While this may not make me the life of the party, I’ll gladly trade small talk for BIG ideas any day. The challenge now is
I Don’t Want My Daughter to be Happy*
(*I want something better!) I took this photograph of my daughter this summer: we are in an alpine meadow about an hour outside Munich, hiking up to a hut where some friends would be married. These two girls were thrilled to be together, conquering the mountain and communing with cows, carrying all they needed for
Why Is the Pursuit of Happiness Making Us So Stressed?
The “pursuit of happiness” is a phrase Americans know well. The United States Declaration of Independence established it in 1776 as an inalienable right for all citizens. Fast forward to 1955, and happiness becomes a national pastime, epitomized by Disney’s “Happiest Place on Earth.” Now in the first quarter of the 21stcentury, happiness is a
How to Save Seeds from Your Garden (workshop recap)
I’m a seed-saving convert! I’ve always shied away from seed saving — it seems like so much work! But last Saturday, when I volunteered at a seed-saving workshop at The Ecology Center (TEC) in San Juan Capistrano, I discovered that it’s actually fairly easy. And in the long run, it’s much better than planting your veggies
The “Right Development” Approach
Following last week’s post that critiqued the history of the development industry, I’d like to propose an alternative model of development, which emerged from my research on the Santi Asoke Buddhist Reform movement of Thailand. After studying for a year what made Asoke communities so successful, I determined that in order to raise the quality
A Setting for Wellbeing: Srisa Asoke Buddhist Center
The places people live, whether by choice or circumstance, can offer clues as to who those people are, and an intentional community like the Srisa Asoke Buddhist Center speaks volumes about its residents. This post introduces Srisa Asoke and the people who live there. Isan Srisa Asoke is located roughly fifty kilometers from the Cambodian
Economic Growth, SAPs, and Aid: Oh My! A History of the Global Development Industry
The concept of development implies positive change, and it is clearly an ideal toward which individuals, groups, and nations strive. But the term carries much more baggage than that. The Western world’s conceptualization of development—unilinear growth, evolution, or maturation toward an ever more perfect form—has its roots in evolutionary theories of the nineteenth and early
Sufficiency Economy versus the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach
I recently contributed a chapter to a volume exploring Sufficiency Economy (SE), in which I endeavored to refine SE as a development approach for sustainable livelihoods and community empowerment. To do so, I compared SE to the Sustainable Livelihood Approach (SLA), a framework put forth by the British Department for International Development (DFID) in the
Measuring Wellbeing: Exploring Alternatives to GDP
With the GDP turning 80, this year is sure to bring fruitful discussions on alternatives that will better measure wellbeing. These discussions are already happening, not just on the fringes of public discourse but in initiatives sponsored by world leaders in government and premier global organizations like the United Nations (UN) and the Organization for
Global Volunteer: Ethnography of a Tsunami Aid Organization in Thailand
The tsunami of December 26, 2004 swept away entire villages in Khao Lak, Thailand: houses, fishing boats, family businesses, shrimp farms, livestock, vegetable gardens, and people. Those who survived faced the seemingly insurmountable work of rebuilding their lives, but they didn’t have to do it alone. Volunteers from across Thailand and across the globe poured
“Resisting Global Capitalism”: Lessons from the Asoke Alternative
“Resisting global capitalism” is one way to frame efforts to create conditions that oster socially just and environmentally sustainable economic activity. Far from being passive victims of global processes, individuals and social groups across the globe endeavor in diverse ways to resist, reshape, appropriate, and create alternatives to the dominant neoliberal economic model. Alternatives that