Generous News

Inspect A Gadget

2011-10-03T12:36:20Z

It’s perhaps tempting to think that our Generous efforts are now ubiquitous. That we’ve made our mark. That all of us are now doing the simple, small things in terms of reducing our energy consumption that will make a cumulative difference to the planet we all share.

But a report from the "Energy Savings Trust ":http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/says otherwise. It says that our energy bills and emissions are still rising, largely due to our addiction to gadgets.

Even though we might be switching appliances off at the plug, insulating our houses and turning off the lights, it seems that our love-affair with gadgets means our energy bills and emissions are still rising.

Read more about the report – “The Elephant in the Living Room” – here.

And check to see whether you’re doing all you can by committing to our energy-saving actions here":http://www.generous.org.uk/actions/home.

Photo credit: manning999

Can money can make you happy after all?

2011-01-11T15:52:46Z

Most of us were raised to think that money and stuff can’t make us happier. It’s one of the main instincts that led us to set up Generous online. But some research coming out of the States suggests that perhaps money might well be able to make us happier – though not in the ways we traditionally think.

“If you think money can’t buy happiness, you just don’t know where to go shopping,” says Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and author of Predictably Irrational. “Most people just don’t know how to use money to buy happiness.”

Money, and to a lesser degree, stuff, can make us happy if it promotes the experiences that make us happy, like personal growth and social connectedness, says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside. “Money can buy happiness if you spend it right.”

And here’s how they reckon our spending can maximise our happiness:

“Spend on experiences, not possessions,” says Professor Lyubomirsky.

Spend on personal growth and social connections – French lessons, gym membership, salsa lessons, joining a society; stuff that gives a sense of achievement and connects us to others.

Spread it out – take a few small breaks away instead of one global blowout of a holiday (anticipation and recall of an experience or purchase can be more positive than the experience itself)

Give your money away. “When you give money away, you become happier,” says Ariely. “There’s something incredibly satisfying about helping others that makes you happy.”

Food for thought? How does this all fit with living a Generous life? Please join the debate by signing into your Generous account and leaving your comments below.

Read the article in full here.

Flickr photosource – thanks ‘World of Good’

Build a little birdhouse in your soul

2011-01-11T12:25:33Z

So sang They Might Be Giants way back … and now the Diocese of York, led by the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, is kickstarting its 2011 ‘Year of the Environment’ by sending a bird nesting box to every church and church school in the Diocese.

As Archbishop Sentamu says: “I want every Christian, every church in the Diocese of York, to pledge to make a difference to their environment in 2011. Whether you decide to use a bicycle instead of cars, or put up your bird box in your churchyards to increase biodiversity, everything you do will make a difference to our world and how we care for it.”

Perhaps we ought to tell him about Generous?

Read more on the York Diocesan Year of the Environment here. And for this story in full, click here.

Related Generous action

Look after the birds in your garden

Grow Zones – Joining Forces To Get Growing In Your Garden

2010-12-15T10:18:34Z

Grow Zones is a community project bringing help and inspiration to your garden, wonderful food to your table and adding friendship and purpose to your life. Sounds incredibly Generous to us!

A Grow Zones team clubs together to share skills, tools and produce to eliminate food miles and turn gardens over to permaculture at whatever level you want – from a redesign of your whole plot to simply helping and sharing with someone else’s once or twice a year.

The Grow Zones crew will provide any interested groups with all the resources, ideas and inspiration they need to get going.

They cite five good reasons why Grow Zones is a great resource if you’re wanting to start a community growing project on their website. It’s well worth a read. Generous and compelling.

The idea gets people growing; it introduces the idea and practice of permaculture; it’s an organisational resource; a community-forming project; and Grow Zone groups even benefit from insurance cover for their group activity on their plot.

What’s not to like?

Click here for much more and to register your interest now.

The most Generous man in England?

2010-12-13T12:05:59Z

A university researcher called Toby Ord – earning not much more than the average salary – is committing himself to giving away £1m over his lifetime to help address global poverty.

In order to do this, Ord is living off little more than £300 a month. In just the last year he has given more than a third of his earnings – that’s £10,000 – to charities working in the poorest countries.

And he still eats out once a fortnight.

Ord is convinced that most people in the UK could achieve without having to make much of a sacrifice.

“What’s really important in our lives,” says Ord, speaking about how the decision affected him and his wife, “is spending time together, chatting with our close friends and reading beautiful books and listening to beautiful music, and we’re really lucky to live in a beautiful place and there are lots of stimulating cultural activities around. With all that you can’t really ask for much more.”

Staggeringly, the BBC states that ‘Ord and his wife will have given away a sum that equals the average price of a house in the UK, just at a time when they will have bought one themselves.’

But Ord is unfazed: “It’s not that amazing. I’m not that impressed by this, but I’m glad that people feel it’s a good story. The median income is £18,000 so I’m not living off anything less than the median person in the UK.”