In order to bring a social transformation of societies through Gross National Happiness, nine international participants are in the Country to understand and experience Gross National Happiness in-depth. The international participants along with Bhutanese youth will be creating a network of ambassadors for Gross National Happiness around the world. The week-long programme, ‘GNH and Inner Dimension of the Social Transformation’ began today.
Kemi, a speaker and a life coach by profession from Australia, is one among the nine international participants. Visiting Bhutan for the first time she says she is a firm believer of Gross National Happiness. “I think it is a very unique opportunity for anyone participating in anything like this. I think we are at a time in humanity where we need to do a good thing differently and the more people that are on the same page and exploring these questions and possible answers are to these questions the better the world is going to be,” she added.
Respect for each other, individual, planet and how one works in partnership with nature, culture and community to nourish each other and the planet is what Gross National Happiness means to Kemi.
Meanwhile, former education minister, Thakur Singh Powdyel, said Gross National Happiness is like a northern star. “It is the people, the citizen, men, women and children who make the society, who make nations, who make the world and the individual is the primary unit, the fundamental unit of the society and as long as the individual is good, as long as the individual is positive and pure inside, these people who make the society, who contribute to the society can actually transform society. So the social transformation begins with the individual personal transformation“
Dr. Saamdu Chetri, the Executive Director of the GNH Centre, said most often Bhutanese fail to understand how happy they are. “Last year what we did was, we had international youth camp in Bumthang, where we invited some 25 youth around the world and there were people from as far as Alaska and after 21 days, they didn’t want to leave and our Bhutanese youth understood what happiness is.
“They realized that these people who have everything are not happy at all. Happiness is with us because we are so close to nature, we are still connected with our families and relations. So this matters much more than money,” added the Executive Director.
