Happiness Day. Who is Celebrating. How to Celebrate. POSSIBLE ACTIVITIES

Happiness Day

Celebrate Happiness in Every campus and Every community, USA

Help plan next year’s events in this exciting nationwide celebration with your students and community. Contact happy@happycounts. org.

Happiness is as American as Apple Pie. The event will be a national festival/teach-in on American campuses and in American communities.

Who is Celebrating

US campuses offer a great setting for a nationwide Happiness Day. New technologies make possible televised linkages between campuses. The universities were the launching pad for the enormously successful Earth Day in 1970, the much more limited Take Back Your Time Day in 2003, and Bill McKibben’s hugely popular 350 events around climate change in 2009. Media interest in this event is guaranteed to be huge. The positive goals of this event also assure widespread student participation. Already, some 60 campuses have expressed interest in participating.

How to Celebrate

Happiness, or well-being, is subject that allows nearly all disciplines on campus to participate and contribute their knowledge to a teach-in and celebration. Inter-disciplinary teams can work together to share insights as the teach-in develops. Your students will be excited by the opportunity to participate in this event.

POSSIBLE ACTIVITIES

• Campus events should include substantive information and serious consideration of the subject, but can be enhanced by festive activities, planned by student teams.
• Students would be encouraged to take “The Happiness Survey” and colleges would be provided with aggregate scores for discussion, with the idea of increasing well-being scores on each campus, and a sharing of “best practices. ”
• A pre-recorded video of insights from happiness scholars can be shown campus-wide, followed by small group “World Café ” style discussions or “happiness circles. ”
• A handbook can be created and distributed with insights on improving personal happiness, including a focus on generosity, service learning and community participation.
• Events could illustrate these themes—a volunteer activity at a food bank, home building with Habitat for Humanity, for example.
• University libraries can provide displays of happiness books and other resources.
• Faculty and students can organize for-credit elective classes. These might include planning projects for the event. Students in many classes can be encouraged to engage in projects, papers and research leading up to the event.
• Prominent campus scholars can take their knowledge into the local communities to make presentations. These communities might be encouraged to conduct their own happiness initiatives, with support from Sustainable Seattle.
• Students can learn valuable marketing/PR skills as they promote this event.
• Pursuit of Happiness Day can be extended to include high school students and entire communities, as was the case with the first Earth Day.
• Social networking tools can help spread the idea widely and media interest in the day is virtually guaranteed.

YOUR INPUT IS NEEDED

There is no limit to ideas for this project. In the next few weeks we will be collecting input and feedback on this idea, and lining up commitments to participate. Development of the project idea will continue through spring and summer. Please email us to be put on our email list and kept informed as this idea develops at happy@happycounts. org.