Christinaswwworld Unlimited

Pharrell Williams' 2014 hit Happy song and the  24 hours of Happy  video have sparked a meme that's even more fun for high school kids than the Harlem Shake was in 2013. Graduating seniors at Chiang Mai International School have danced their goodbyes in a Happy montage, that keeps me grinning ear to ear (and not just at the moments my oldest son is in it!) But Pharrell Williams isn't the only force moving us toward greater happiness these days. Fascinating new research on happiness is now available, about what it actually is and how it actually comes to be in our lives. The "Happy" movie is well worth the $2.99 to rent it . Right after I watched it I made my kids sit down and watch it with me - the practical information in this little gem of a movie made an immediate impact on our lives. Happy - A Documentary Trailer from Wadi Rum Films on Vimeo . Another inspiring must-see if you value happiness is the Economics of Happiness documentary rel...

Last week a friend and I  invited the Mae Sot trash dump community to share their experience and learnings with each other about raising pigs, in order to surface the practical gaps to be addressed in planning for a possible Phase 2 of the Piglets for Progress initiative.    What they shared offers a super interesting read, with fascinating insights that I'm still chewing on.  Read more  at the  Piglets Blog   about the event and how we facilitated the conversations between 100+ people whose language we don't speak. 

There’s a crisis with the air quality at the Mae Sot trash dump that is affecting both the families and the pigs. The people are not able to work, which means there is now also a food crisis. A number of pigletsforprogress supporters are working together on facebook to do something helpful.  Gratitude to those who've contributed for a delivery or rice and cooking oil - details of the group effort are in the comments here:  https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152699139078242&set=a.89826248241.108359.504778241&type=1&theater

. . View the presentation Soon to be online at Ci2i Global , I've written about the work I've been doing for the past several years as a case study. Click the image above to see the presentation I gave about it. The text below appeared in a booklet of case study background information which participants at Ci2i Global's  Learn/Share Lab for Co-creative Impact and Innovation  also received earlier this month.  -------- Career case: designing frameworks for co-creative international development Presenter: Christina Jordan @christinasworld Learn more :    Lifeinafrica2.org | Evolutionize.it | ci2iglobal.com | pigletsforprogress.org   Ci2i Global Founder Christina Jordan’s career as a serial social entrepreneur in international development has spanned several continents, online spaces, container organizations and initiatives to impact globally marginalized local communities since 1999. She is also a passionate activist for colla...

Last weekend some of my closest friends here in Chiang Mai came along to the Mae Sot trash dump, to help survey 50 recipients of new piglets to raise through the Piglets for Progress initiative. My friend Gillian Caldwell has written about our trip on her blog. Some salient results from our survey are discussed on the Piglets Blog . Along with us were my 9 year old son and 2 other children, 8 and 12. While it was interesting to expose them to the concept of life in such extreme poverty conditions, they had a hard time breaking through the language barrier. Note to self: next time my son comes along, pay more attention to nurturing a connection with some of the children there. Some toys might help!

If we want people to take responsibility for their own progress, we must first help them believe that they can.  (from Nurturing Progress in Marginalized Communities  at the Evolutionize It blog.) I've had a series of conversations in recent months, with a group of displaced Burmese people who live at a garbage dump on the Thai side of the border with Myanmar, in Mae Sot. You can read about them at the new Pigletsforprogress website, which I've just set up to help launch a crowdfunding campaign that will buy the trash dump community families some piglets to raise, if successful. Details (and a bit of me) in the campaign video below: Piglets were not my idea, and I've really not got the first clue about raising pigs, or whether they can really be successful as a poverty alleviation tool. More than half of families living there already raise pigs, so this is not a new idea coming in from outside. For me, the point is that the community came up with the idea b...

Exploring my benelux surroundings, Dordrecht is a darling town I've enjoyed discovering in the Netherlands. It's such a friendly place - local families socialize on front porches and terraces. Though it's not a super tiny town (worthy of 2 train stations!), everyone knows everyone. A man who spoke with me on the street for a moment told me so. He knew right away that I was a stranger since the don't get many tourists in Dordrecht. He thought maybe I'd come for the little fair that was in town that weekend. Altogether a lovely late afternoon. In case the embedded slideshow below doesn't show up, there are some photos on flickr I've shared over here .