February 2012 eBrief

Wikiprogress highlights

Key contributions this month

• Wikigender hosted an online discussion on Empowering Rural Women. Read highlights from the discussion, including GPRNet member Leigh Gatt on the issue of measurement. Full transcript of the discussion is available in PDF format.
  
  
• GPRNet member Beat Huser added two new indicator projects: MARCO indicators: a progress initiative that uses 75 indicators grouped into 5 key topics to measure the quality of life for the people in Waikato. Waikato Regional Council - regional indicators that show key changes to ecosystems in the region.
  
  
• New article on the Occupy movement started; calling for contributions on inequality, unemployment and civic participation
  
  
• Call for papers from the Expert Meeting on Social Capital Workshop organized by Maastricht University
  
  
• In the lead up to Rio+20, issues of sustainable development are once again in the spotlight. See updated initiatives in the UK, Canada and Ecuador.
  
  
• Report released by Save the Children has found that nearly half a billion children are at risk of devastating and irreversible damage from malnutrition. A Life Free From Hunger: Tackling Child Malnutrition has found that every hour 300 children die because of malnutrition.
  
  
• In the first ever online discussion, Wikigender asked how can social networks foster gender equality? See the results of the online discussion here on the Wikiprogress Prog Blog.
  
  

From the Community Portal

• "Resilient People, Resilient Plant: a future worth choosing" was released this month from the UN Secretary General High Level Panel on Global Sustainability. The report was written for a child born this year who will come of age in 2030; it explains how we got to this point in 2012 and how the Panel recommends to fix it. Read highlights from the report
  
  

• Bronwyn Bare, a nurse working in palliative care in Australia has recorded the most common regrets of the dying dying: first on her blog, Inspiration and Chai and more recently in her book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying - A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing, (Balboa Press, 2011). Her findings from conversations with people in their last 12 weeks of life have resonated strongly with current discussions on subjective well-being.
  
  

• Forget about GDP. The real question is are we happy? In 1968 Bobby Kennedy stated "GDP measures everything except that which makes life worthwhile”. In recent years there has been an explosion of activity around the world with organisations developing new and innovative ways of measuring progress.
  
  

• This month the UNDP released the 2012 Caribbean Human Development Report finding crime is one the main challenges threatening economies and livelihoods.The region is home to 8.5 percent of the world’s population, yet it concentrates some 27 percent of the world’s homicides.
  
  

• The most recent Week in review
  
• Update on progress from Wellbeing Wales
  
• Wikigender asks: how can social networks foster gender equality?
  
• Davos: African economies essentially rely on women
  
• New UN report on resilient people and planet
  
• Social media for anticorruption: lessons from the trenches