Incredible Edible is built on three fronts: community, education and business. The community part is how the people there live their everyday lives. The educational element is what they teach the kids in school and what skills they can share and teach each other. The business aspect is what they do with the pounds in their pockets and which businesses they choose to support.
They have created economic confidence locally and invented a new sort of tourism: vegetable tourism. They have increased the share of locally produced food in the shops, and 49 per cent of food sellers say their bottom line has increased because of Incredible Edible initiatives. They have launched the campaign ‘Every Egg Matters’, to encourage people to keep chickens and sell their eggs locally. An online map shows where they are being sold. They started with four local producers; now they have more than sixty.
Whether it is three fronts or six factors of happiness, they all seem to be mutually reinforcing. And Todmorden has done it all without a single strategy document, without a single penny of government support. And the initiative is spreading throughout the UK and throughout the world.
In more than a hundred places, people have stopped thinking of themselves only as customers and have begun to act as citizens. In more than a hundred places, people are rethinking how we can reshape our communities and our lives. In more than a hundred places, people are proving what cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead believed:
‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’
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HAPPINESS TIP:
USE THE BUILDING BLOCKS
Combine the six factors with each other.
By now, you have an advantage in developing ideas about how to help people, about how to show more kindness and make the world a happier place – your world and everybody else’s. Combine kindness with the five other factors we have been looking at in this book. You may try kind togetherness, for example: invite someone new in town for dinner. You may spend kind money: think about where and for whom an additional ten pounds may bring most happiness. You may show healthy kindness: do a run for a good cause. Offer someone a night of freedom by helping them out with babysitting or by cooking meals they can put in their freezer. Develop trust by being the kind stranger who makes someone believe that there is still good in this world. In other words, start putting the pieces together.
BE MY EYES
The aim of this book is not to belittle the challenges we face. I am painfully aware of the struggles of many, how difficult times are and how big the stakes for much of humanity.
But these are not the days when we can afford to reach for fear, mistrust and cynicism. That will never bring us towards a happier place.
What will bring us forward is a spirit of trust and cooperation and the realization that we are each other’s keepers. What will bring us forward is being freed of fear and showing kindness to strangers. What will bring us forward is redesigning our cities to ensure health and happiness and removing the price tag on quality of life.
Now is the time to look for the good in the world – and, for that, I need your help.
My aim in this book was to take you on a treasure hunt, and I hope you will agree that we have uncovered some caskets of happiness gold. But I also hope you will agree that there are so many more out there to be found.
For that, I need you to be my eyes, to continue this pursuit of happiness. To show the good that does exist in this world and to bring it into the light so that, together, we can help it spread.
Let’s put a positive spin on the phrase ‘If you see something, say something.’ If you see something that increases the happiness of you, your community or the world as a whole, talk about it, write about it, film it, photograph it – and pass it on.
At the Happiness Research Institute, we will be following the hashtag #Look4Lykke on social media. Tell us what works when it comes to improving quality of life. In what ways are people and societies paving the way to happiness? We are looking for micro-libraries, community gardens and all those things which we may have had no idea even exist. We are listening to the people and the ideas that have a positive impact on you and on our world.
Most importantly, find out how you can have a positive impact on your world. On our world. We need more dreamers and doers. We need more creators of kindness, heroes of happiness and champions of change.
This is the outlook that each and every one of us needs and can feed into.
The way the world is going, some might call this false hope – but there has never been anything false about hope.
And remember: there is no point in being a pessimist – that shit never works anyway.