About the News - Content, Organization and Sources

News Coverage
Latest news from Gross National Happiness USA, the broader GNH movement, and essays about growing personal and collective happiness.

Content is provided by a variety of contributors and partners.

View All News and posts or click on the following news topics to access select blogs and articles.

Serious About Happiness
- GNHUSA related blog posts and essays from diverse contributors
- Thoughtful explorations of gross national happiness issues and questions, including the interplay between community and individual well being.

GNHUSA News
- GNHUSA produced news and announcements
- Independent multi-media coverage of our work
- Happiness Walk reports

Inspiring News
- Gross National Happiness (GNH) Movement – relevant research, opinion pieces and activities
- News from our partners

Our happiness and animals – the inextricable link.

Do animals make us happy? Most people would answer “yes”. Why else the proliferation of internet cat videos, or baby animal memes posted all over Facebook and message boards. Most of us feel a connection to animals such that even a picture of a furry or feathered creature sleeping will make us smile – or at...

Let's Have More Conversations Like These

On a hot summer night, the beginning of a long Fourth of July weekend, a hardy group gathered in Princeton, NJ to discuss adopting GNH policies in the United States to better enable widespread pursuit of happiness....

GNH Supports The People’s Climate March: A Look Inside How It Works When You Are Serious About Happiness

If you think measuring the right things could change the world, then it behooves you to measure the way you go about promoting that idea. So, if you had been a fly on the wall at the last few Gross National Happiness Board meetings, you would have heard a lot of discussions about the development, fine-tuning,...

29571164_1236732973127080_331155754757490592_n

The Science of Happiness Walking

The view greeting chief Happiness Walker Paula Francis on the Happiness Walk in April 2018. When the residents of Portland, Oregon or Olympia, Washington or any of the other cities on Leg 13 of the Happiness Walk see Paula Francis and other walkers in their neon "Serious About Happiness" vests, they will...

12193860_10153585748699003_8177247315030880939_n

GNHUSA President Beth Allgood Presents at International Happiness Conference in Bhutan

Beth Allgood wears many hats, including U.S. Campaigns Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) as well as President of the GNHUSA board. Both hats were appropriate when she presented her paper, "Beyond GDP: True Wellbeing for Animals and People" at the international GNH conference in Bhutan in November, 2015. What an honor...

Special News Report on GNHUSA

Across The Fence reports on Gross National Happiness USA

On March 20th, 2018 - The International Day of Happiness, Across The Fence aired a special news report about Gross National Happiness USA and the movement to change how we measure progress and success in order to increase personal happiness and collective wellbeing. The news segment highlights...

Stop Fixating on Economic Growth -- Let's Talk About Quality of Life

On December 10, 2016, online news source Truthout published this very thoughtful essay by John de Graaf, the Director of Public Relations & Communications of the Happiness Alliance, on the need to move away from unrestrained capitalism toward a more cooperative way of life. Truthout has given GNHUSA permission to re-post John's article here. It's necessary to promote...

19417599_10211490718996009_2035848418876222704_o

Breaking News: Results Are In for 2017 Vermont Happiness Study!

Results from the 2017 Vermont Happiness study are in, and 78% of Vermonters say they’re happy. This study, a unique collaboration between Gross National Happiness USA, the Happiness Alliance, the Vermont State Data Center and the Center for Rural Studies, explores Vermonters’ dispositions across 11 life domains including social connectedness, physical health, material well-being and more. The intent is to provide Vermonters with holistic metrics...

12046910_10153519094049003_6247750413832067349_n

Animal and Human Wellbeing Are Deeply Interconnected

It's not just we humans—animals planet-wide also need a GNH paradigm to protect their well being, or even, in some cases, their very existence as a species. Human and animal happiness are so deeply interconnected that it’s in our own species’ best interest to protect them from the ravages of a GDP-only mindset and policy framework....

A Literally Novel Approach to Spreading the GNH Message

R. Vania's new novel that centers around Gross National Happiness. Editor's note: When author R. Vania recently sent GNHUSA a copy of her new new novel The Dragon's Children, we were curious about why she decided to write a fiction book in which Gross National Happiness plays such a key role. R....

The Unifying Power of Happiness Dinners

There's a reason a picture of my granddaughter illustrates what is essentially an extended invitation to you -- yes, you, the person reading this right now -- to celebrate the 5th annual International Day of Happiness (IDOH) by hosting a Happiness Dinner. The photo's relevance will soon be clear. First, though, I want you to know that...

GNH special guest talk by George Lewis - January 18th

Gross National Happiness Perspectives. Learn how GNH is developing locally and globally with George Lewis and GNHUSA board members. Thursday January 18th 6-7:30pm Kellogg-Hubbard Library - East Montpelier Room 135 Main St., Montpelier, VT 05602 Hear a Global Perspective from special guest, George H. Lewis GNH - A vehicle to a new paradigm George H. Lewis is an internationally acclaimed British...

Exciting News from New Zealand: Plans to Use Well-being Measures!

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. We were so excited to read about New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's February 1st speech, in which she announced ground-breaking plans for her country to measure its success holistically, using a tool and framework her Finance Minister Grant Robertson is calling, "the well-being budget." In "Stuff," reporter...

The Pursuit of Happiness

The Pursuit of Happiness Taking a cue from a small Buddhist kingdm, Tom Barefoot, A68, urges governments to rethink how they measure progress. By Michael Blanding, illustration by Gaby D'Allessandro "Quick, what makes you happy? If you said economic growth, you are in the minority. When most of us think about what...

How Happiness and Sustainability Connect

This essay is by Laura Musikanski, executive director and co-founder of the Happiness Alliance. Her reflection was originally published on April 25, 2016 at that group's blog site and remains timeless. Blog The best way to predict the future is to design it. Buckminster Fuller. For the last ten years, my life has been dedicating to help design a...

Pope Francis: Powerful People Don’t Want Peace Because They Profit from War

Editor's note: other than climate change, perhaps the most compelling argument to move away from a GDP paradigm and toward a more complex and complete Gross National Happiness framework is to help the world step back from the profits of war. The Ring of Fire Network reported Pope Francis' remarks on this topic in May 2015: "While...

14344769_885173571616357_1519736764423345328_n (1)

The Happiness Walk Hits Mile 3,500!

Thumbs up with GNHUSA treasure, co-founder, and chief walker, Paula Francis! 3,500 Miles and Counting After a summer hiatus, the Happiness Walk - Leg 10 resumed in Santa Fe, NM on September 9th with the goal of reaching Santa Monica, CA by December 3rd. In Albuquerque, the Walk celebrated one full year –...

Huge Gratitude to Linda Wheatley!

The visionary Linda Wheatley Tis the season for gratitude. From a GNHUSA perspective, no one deserves our thanks -- and the thanks of everyone involved in the Gross National Happiness movement -- more than Linda Wheatley. Linda, who resigned from the Gross National Happiness USA (GNHUSA) board in September, was the key force behind the...

The Happiness Walk: Meaning and Joy in Florida

Note: this description of joining GNHUSA's Happiness Walk was originally published at HappinessParadigm.com in September 2015. In September 2016, as the Walk heads from New Mexico to Los Angeles, this essay remains very relevant. Walking the happiness talk! “Trying to be happy by accumulating possessions is like trying to satisfy hunger by taping sandwiches...

"True Well-Being for Animals and People" Presentation by GNHUSA Board Member Beth Allgood

In mid-August, GNHUSA advisory board member Beth Allgood, who is also U.S. Country Director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), shared her ground-breaking research with a group of animal and GNH enthusiasts at a gathering in Montpelier, Vermont. Beth is one of the co-authors of a report entitled "Measuring What Matters: True Wellbeing for...

Pennsylvanian Named GNHUSA's New Volunteer Activist Coordinator

Julia Palmer Knight, our new Volunteer Coordinator GNHUSA has always been a volunteer activist organization. Lately, as the GNH concept gains more traction, we're noticing an uptick in activity around the country. This is very exciting! From volunteers in California working to help transcribe and analyze interviews from the first half of...

Practicing Gratitude Can Help Build the GNH Movement

Surprisingly, not everyone who believes in the urgency of the Gross National Happiness movement also appreciates the need to cultivate personal happiness and well-being. The opposite is also true: personal happiness aficionados may fail to embrace the GNH movement, relying instead on the over-stated belief that "happiness is an inside job." Well, yes, it is...

The Rise and Fall of GDP

A very interesting article on the push against GDP, used as a measure of progress and the development of alternative sets of measures appeared in the New York Times Magazine today. This is highly recommended reading and points to how timely our upcoming Vermont Conference, GNH 2010: Changing What we Measure from Wealth to Well-Being...

A Reflection on Happiness and Well-being, from Vermont to the World

Recently I had the good fortune of being invited to participate in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) 6th World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy held in Incheon, South Korea. I was asked to present the case study of my little state of Vermont’s efforts to integrate components of well-being into policy...

12705292_765101666956882_6959157825039747118_n

The Happiness Walk Makes Local Headlines

One of the goals of GNHUSA's Happiness Walk is generating news coverage of not only the Walk but also of our broader organizational goals in towns and cities all along our route. While we've learned that many individuals walk the United States for a wide variety of causes, editors and producers are often intrigued by...

Supporting Animal Welfare with the Charter for Happiness

Beth Allgood, Campaigns Director in the United States for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, was at GNHUSA's kick-off of the Charter for Happiness in Santa Fe, New Mexico in June, 2016. She published her insightful views on the connection between a GNH paradigm and animal well being at the IFAW website on June 10,...

GNHUSA Board Member Rob Moore Speaks at Economic Democracy Conference

Earlier this month, board member Rob Moore spoke at the Our Economy: Economic Democracy and System Change conference at the City University School of Labor and Urban Studies. Moore spoke on a report GNHUSA published last fall on the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) in Ohio, an alternative indicator for economic progress that includes environmental and...

Intentional Investing and Happiness

Putting your money where your mind is We all feel happy when our investments make money. More money enables us to do things that give us joy, like providing for our families, supporting our communities and of course having fun. While most of us would agree that money can’t buy happiness, we also know that it...

Denmark Has Figured Out How to Teach Kids Empathy and Make Them Happier Adults

By Jenny Anderson, published by Quartz, 8/22/16 "Empathy, or the ability to read another person’s emotions, is a critical life skill. Many fear children are losing it—and that they’ll be less happy as adults as a result. A University of Michigan study of nearly 14,000 college students found that students today have about 40% less empathy...

Ben and Jerry's Foundation Provides Generous Grant Support to GNHUSA!

GNHUSA is pleased to announce that we are the recipients of a "small grant award" of $1,000 from the Ben & Jerry's Foundation. We had requested funding for our grassroots efforts, including the Happiness Walk. The Grantmaking Committee wrote that they were impressed with our project "and felt it warranted some support." We are very grateful...

CONTENT IDEAS:
To submit news material for consideration, please contact us.

DISCLAIMER:
GNHUSA is grateful to our blog contributors. Each essay represents the writer’s individual perspective, which GNHUSA may or may not endorse.

Serious About Happiness

GNHUSA News

Inspiring News