Thanks for sharing this info. Being quite new here, and recently relocated to Germany from Argentina, your words resonate with me a lot and I’m very curious about your experiences and ideas.
What kind of projects do you have in mind when it comes to amplify their voices?
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Thank you for your thoughtful message and for sharing your journey. It’s inspiring to connect with someone who resonates with the work I do.
I lead the Instituto GUETTO, an organization I founded in 2019, which is dedicated to addressing structural racism and creating pathways for Black and Indigenous communities to thrive, especially through education and workforce development. Among our key projects is the Escola da Ponte Para Pretxs, which has already trained over 50,000 Black and Indigenous students in areas like languages, programming, and socio-emotional skills to improve their career prospects. Another impactful initiative is the Mapa Preto da Educação, a dashboard of racialized educational data that informs public policy and promotes antiracist practices in schools.
A new project I’ve been conceptualizing focuses on what I call solidariedade orgânica—a deep exploration of how Black, Indigenous, and poor communities foster collective support and resilience. It involves listening sessions and participatory research to uncover and amplify their narratives of solidarity, mutual aid, and resistance in the face of systemic challenges. This would not only highlight their lived experiences but also create a repository of actionable insights for policymakers and civil society.
I’d love to hear your perspective and perhaps collaborate on ways to amplify these voices across different contexts. Let’s keep the dialogue going!
Wishing you and your family a joyful and bright Christmas!
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I came across this paper Why degrowth should be disentangled from the wellbeing economy
It does name the Wellbeing Economy Alliance.
I wonder what is your opinion about it, and how do you relate to economic growth, and limitarian policies such as wealth caps, and rationing of the material footprint? Do you think we can keep the current “way of life” as advanced by capitalism, or should we give up the notion that economic growth is linked to prosperity and wellbeing?
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I read the available abstract and snippets, so there may be information that I’m missing in the meat of the article, but the argument makes sense to me. WEAll appears to be a “Big tent” of mobilization that isn’t explicitly anti-growth, anti-capitalist, and leans toward anti-political, whereas degrowth is more focused and defined.
Uncoupling makes sense to me. That doesn’t mean that one can’t participate in both, but I think that it does mean one should expect a broader diversity of ideas in WeAll, and less of an adherence to strict priniplces.
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Tagging @francesrayner in this thread too!
Thanks for starting this conversation @nelacadi and everyone following. We have been chatting about this topic/paper just yesterday. It is something we will be responding to briefly for now- but we will be engaging further on going forward. Would love to also discuss at our upcoming Members Call on the 19th February. 
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Thanks @thobile !
We had a good chat about this in the team.
We strongly believe that overhauling our economic systems will take a whole ecosystem of complementary movements and changemakers. In our diverse world, there’s no one model, framing or approach that’s going to work in every context.
The Wellbeing Economy Alliance aims to bring together schools of thought such as degrowth, doughnut economics and human rights economics that share a similar vision of an economy with the wellbeing of people and planet at its heart. Our ambassadors and members come from a range of movements and locations because they believe we are stronger together.
We advocate for a post-growth approach because growth-orientated economies do not meet the needs of people and the environment. And we’ve yet to see a convincing analysis of how we can live within the boundaries of the planet while rich countries pursue growth. A wellbeing economy focuses on meeting these needs, nurturing what benefits people and planet while phasing out harmful practices. We acknowledge that some lower-income countries might benefit from further growth, depending on how it’s generated, who benefits, and its purpose.
Extractive capitalism is at the root of so much of what is wrong with our economies. While many in our movement identify as post-capitalist or anti-capitalist, we’re aware that discussing capitalism as the primary problem can trigger varied reactions in our highly polarised societies. In some contexts, leading with an overtly anti-capitalist message may immediately position you as opposition. We default to framing that allows people to step out of their existing ideas and connect to our shared values.
In the face of rising authoritarianism and widespread unmet basic needs, we see value in framing that appeals to a broad base. The wellbeing economy concept offers a positive vision for redesigning economies around what truly matters. Of course, as any concept comes closer to implementation there is a very real risk of co-option which we need to guard against. A key part of this is ensuring there are strong voices in the movement using more radical framings.
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The MERGE session on Monday was really exciting, and I see WEAll are a main partner. It looks like a huge project, but the main thing I took away from the meeting was the effort going in to analysing what people are already doing (movements, policies, metrics, academic analysis) and showing how they overlap and align around unifying goals and ideas.
The MERGE website says it is working with other similar projects, and they all appear to be EU grant funded. This surely has to be the best funded, most current, and most politically relevant collaboration in the world - and everyone engaging with WEAll has a direct line into it.
My point is, MERGE seems to be working hard to map out the whole ecosystem of complementary movements and changemakers. It is my understanding (hope?) that they will then attempt to pull all the information together into a cohesive and consistent structure, and subsequently present recommendations to political leaders that reflects as unifying a message as is possible. Are they the single most authoritative and powerful voice when it comes to how the various movements align?
Degrowth, post-capitalist, ubuntu, sustainable inclusive wellbeing, ‘a good life’ - we all have our favourite framing, but there is a unifying theme (and I don’t actually think it is entirely absent in capitalism). Can MERGE articulate these unifying ‘shared values’ in a way that everyone buys in to? Will MERGE become the collaboration that leads to an unstoppable momentum?
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Hi Thobile. Where can I find information about the Members Call?
Hi Frances and everyone that has so far contributed to the post! IIt is helpful to hear everyone’s contributions. I hope eventually I will be able to put all the pieces together on my mental puzzle, but for now what is non-negotiable for me is the power of alliance building and focusing on shared mission and values (there’s enough division and polarisation in our world…). Anyway, looks like an important discussion to have so on the 19th so I will try to be there and up-to-date with all the messages.
take care everyone 
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Tagging my colleague @Margreet who is more involved in the project in this thread too Oliver, some great points made here.
Hi Judy,
Apologies, only seeing this now. Not everyone on this platform are members. So you should have received an email? Otherwise please share your email address with me so that I can ensure you are getting the communications.
Hi @Oliver, you’re right that MERGE is all about ‘bringing evidence’ and ‘movements’ together within an EU context, both from an indicator as well as a policy perspective. The main language used in MERGE is “inclusive and sustainable wellbeing”. It’s great for WEAll to be involved in this project. The specific focus is on the EU institutions though and getting buy-in from policymakers is still a challenge at this point, so I wouldn’t necessarily say that MERGE is the “single most authoritative and powerful voice when it comes to how the various movements align”, but it’s certainly an important pathway and building block.
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Hi - What is MERGE? can someone share a link?
There’s loads to go through, I wonder if WEAll would be able to present it to us in a webinar?
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@Margreet , It looks like they have more experts and more money than anyone else (21 million Euros buys a lot of clever professionals), and it’s essentially research commissioned by the EU! Surely some very powerful decision makers are paying attention to it?
I know @Oliver - the thing is that the EU is such a large institution that even when one part of the EU commissions research, that does not necessarily mean that this is part of mainstream EU thinking unfortunately. Sadly, the political direction of the EU has changed quite a lot following the recent election and also given the global political context. There is a large focus on ‘competitiveness’ rather than wellbeing. This is by no means to dismiss the value of the MERGE consortium but just to be realistic about the challenges of political decision making…
Hannah Arendt identified ‘Vita Activa’ as a combination of 3 fundamental human activities: LABOUR, WORK, ACTION, in her book The Human Condition. In agreement, efforts in all three contribute to the whole.
The book can be read for free, via this link (and includes a useful introduction): https://monoskop.org/images/e/e2/Arendt_Hannah_The_Human_Condition_2nd_1998.pdf
This looks interesting Vlad, and I will return to read it (for pressing matters here, limit me).
Thanks for sharing.
I just wanted to contribute to this discussion post. Each and every one of us has a power that is truly like gravity. Through inspiration, charisma, imagination and vision we can become like that of planets and stars attracting what is necessary to transform and alchemise this world to one of wholeness.
I believe in order to create a well being economy we need to build from scratch instead of endless patch work on a house destined for demolition (the patch work is using the same mentality that created the cracks in the first place).
I suggest a pioneering social adventure, a large number of people who have moved onto land that is owned by a trust purposefully for the well being of life (no one individual is the owner of the land but is with the people).
I feel one of the main issues with taking brave steps towards building a beautiful future for all is over thinking, this is a “social” enterprise not a car engine or something mechanical, we are dealing with life. Imagine you’re about to go on a date and you plan to the nth degree on how you’re going to walk, what to say, how to express at the right time, what to think, relationships don’t work like that. Get into the dance, flow and joy of life, yes there will be knocks and bruises, but roll with the punches, embody a beautiful being don’t turn up at the party in a white coat and clip board (unless its Halloween). I believe in hope, in life, in love, in dance, in music, in wonder and magic.
I’ll leave a link to a book/film I made (I left a link to it on another post I did, but if you missed it here it is). The film is an artistic expression of a well being economy (very similar to Kate Raworths Doughnut Economics), it presents a way forward. When you click on the link scroll down https://therosebridge.com/
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Hi @James - At the risk of being accused of overthinking, return to the land is not very pioneering and is much easier to say than to do… If a large number of people (how large?) were to abandon cities and start moving back to rural communities, well… how would that work? Where would they live? What jobs would there be for them to provide them with some money so they can pay for basics… Unless we are talking about living without so much as electricity, there will be bills. And in most climates there will be a need for heating in the winter, for clothes, tools, building materials… That all used to be done locally, from materials at hand, but those skills are long gone. We may have to relearn them… but that’s not an overnight process.
But on the other hand, I believe that we need to build a new thing too, and then gradually transfer from this existing system to the new one. How I imagine the new system is: a whole new set of businesses that provide goods and services that we need to be able to satisfy our needs (not so much the wants, but needs), collectively owned and supported by people who contribute to it in whatever capacity. They would be funded by some new type of community funding vehicles (as opposed to VC vicious capital vehicles). Their profits can serve to fund the regenerative work necessary for recovery of the Web of Life and cleaning up pollution. This means that returns of these new collectively owned, supported and funded enterprises to their communities would not be monetary, but ecological.
The situation that we, industrialised humans, need to be in is the one where we heal and clean much more of the planet than we damage with our activities and for that we need to change everything we currently do. Starting with how we provide what we need.
Thoughts?
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