Ecuador: The minister in charge of buen vivir (good living)

fastcoexist.com reported in Ecuador, the man in charge of buen vivir is a former TV journalist named Freddy Ehlers. Sixty-nine-years-old, Ehlers heads his own happiness ministry, a department of 30-odd people, and enjoys direct access to President Rafael Correa. “He asked me to coordinate with all the government to see if our actions are really to give the possibility for happiness to flourish,” he says. “We’re working with all the institutions to promote the idea of buen vivir in which humans have to change the way we live, and the way we act. We are proposing to redefine the world.”

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In practice, exactly what that means isn’t completely clear. But Ehlers, who generally wears a Panama hat in public, does have some ideas, and he certainly makes an enthusiastic spokesperson. One initiative from his office, for instance, will see all schools devote time to lessons in “values and virtues”—honesty, humility, generosity, solidarity—alongside the normal curriculum. “These are things the world has lost, and we believe it is the business of the government to help promote this in schools, business, among the civil servants and in the media,” he says. Read Article