The Wellbeing in Developing Countries (WeD) research group held a lunchtime seminar, Wellbeing: Challenges to International Development, at the Palace of Westminster on 21st February 2008, to disseminate the key findings from their five-year research programme. In this seminar, four briefing papers were presented which argue that international development needs a practical concept of wellbeing if it is to reach and then go beyond the Millennium Development Goals to confront the major and interlinked challenges of poverty, conflict and sustainability.

The seminar was chaired by Rt Hon John Battle MP, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Overseas Development (APGOOD), with Simon Maxwell, Director of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) as a discussant.

The key findings from the WeD research are discussed in the briefing papers and include the need for the integration of wellbeing audits into development practice.  These audits are a means of engaging with the realities of the lives of poor people and more effectively promoting the factors that enable people and communities to thrive. Adopting this wellbeing perspective and approach changes how we think about development policy and forces us to ask: ‘How are we to live together in our neighbourhoods, and nation states, and in the global community?’

For more information, please contact Dr Allister McGregor: j.a.mcgregor@bath.ac.uk

Briefing Papers

• Briefing Paper 1/08 Wellbeing, Poverty and Conflict
  
• Briefing Paper 2/08 Wellbeing Indicators: Measuring What Matters Most
  
• Briefing Paper 3/08 Wellbeing and the Rotten Foundations of a Development Success
  
• Briefing Paper 4/08 Social Policy for Sustainable Wellbeing

Press release available

John Battle, MP (Chair), Allister McGregor (Director, WeD) and Simon Maxwell (Director, ODI)
Picture by Earl Smith