Welcome to Toward a Global Index of Wellbeing (GLOWING)

Toward a Global Index of Wellbeing (GLOWING) is an early-staged project with the goal of building an international team of researchers and end users who will develop, implement, evaluate and render sustainable a global index of wellbeing for use in research and decision making.

How do we go about measuring what makes life worthwhile on a global scale in order to allow for evidence-informed decisions around rapid global environmental change?

We propose a tool conceptually based off of the Canadian Index of Wellbeing (CIW). The CIW framework shifts the focus solely from the economy to include other critical domains of people’s lives that lead to enhanced wellbeing. Following an 11-year process of consultation with the Canadian public and international experts, the CIW tracks changes in eight quality of life categories or domains. Each domain is itself informed by eight indicators or sources of data.

Starting with Kenya

GLOWING is piloting in Kenya, a country on the precipice of tremendous economic development. With this surge in economic activity also comes turbulent social, environmental and health changes. By systematically indexing the wellbeing of the population amidst the changes that are occurring, we can provide policy makers with information that allows them to make evidence informed decisions.

GLOWING held its first partner workshop in Kisumu, Kenya on Thursday March 26th and Friday March 27th, 2015. Feedback from our partners will form the basis for the domains and indices for GLOWING:Kenya.

Access relevant background documents.

Learn more about the international team partnering on GLOWING.

If you would like to be apart of this project please contact us.