Our Story

Welcome to the
World Happiness Lessons Program!

I am Bella Bagdi, the President of the The World is Better with You Foundation, and the initiator of Happiness Lessons in education.

As one of the seven billion people on Earth, I am convinced that we are all responsible for a happier world around us.

We can, for example, learn how to nurture our well-being and share this knowledge with the people whose lives we influence and have an impact on our children, our students, our colleagues, our friends and family.

That is why we created our Happiness Lessons Program.

Because in our vision about the future...

…the young, the middle-aged and the elderly live a meaningful life
…people have goals and they fight for them
…people can use a range of coping skills when facing the difficulties of everyday life
…people can savour small pleasures in life
…people are able to preserve harmony in their relationships and act not only for their own success
…people take responsibility for making the world a much better place with their way of thinking and work
…love, helping others, forgiveness, and gratitude are core values

With the launch of the Happiness Lessons Program in 2014 I and my team wanted to contribute to the forming of this future.

Years of...

... Planting - First steps

First I designed a 15-week Happiness Programme and conducted a test with more than 500 participants. Based on the results of this study I started a free 10-month Happiness Course for adults and we launched Happiness Clubs in Hungary, but these Clubs spread quickly and soon we had participants all over the world. Among the participants were many teachers and they initiated a similar course for children in schools. So with a team of professionals, teachers and psychologists we developed a 10-month, positive psychology based Program in 4 age groups (3-6, 6-10, 10-14, 14+) and an accredited training course for teachers.

... growth

The first Happiness Lessons in schools started in 2014, and since then we have grown tremendously. In the 2019/2020 academic year more than 1300 registered institutions took part in the Program with 7000+ teachers and 100 000+ children involved. And for our next year we have received 1450 applications! Still growing stronger!

The Patron of the Programme

Prof. Dr. Emőke Bagdy

Professor Emeritus
University lecturer at Károli Gáspár University, Budapest
Supervisor
Specialist clinical psychologist
European psychotherapist trainer
Co-author of the Happiness Lessons manuals

Prof. András Oláh

Happy School Award - Applications

Since 2016 we have been rewarding educational institutions with the Happy School Award. The condition of getting the title is the inclusion of Happiness Lessons into their Curriculum.

As of now the Happy School Network has 1347 members, schools, kindergartens and even a university faculty and we will start the coming academic year with 1454 institutions in our community. We are so proud and grateful to all the professionals, school leaders, teachers and parents who support us and trust our Program to work with their kids.

Happiness Lessons Handbooks

For children ages 3 to 6

For nursery and preschoolers and their carers to plant a positive mindset from the beginning.

For children ages 6 to 10

For elementary students and their teachers/parents to foster those seeds of happiness, growth mindset, positivity and wellbeing.

For children ages 10 to 14

For secondary students and their teachers/parents to strengthen those happiness skills and to support flourishing.

The Hungarian Happiness Lessons Manuals for professionals and parents were first published in 2015. We offer manuals for teachers and parents and workbooks for children. These handbooks are packed with interesting and challenging activities, exercises and tasks that help deepen the skills they learn throughout the course.We also have card games and a boards game to accompany the manuals and bring in even more playfulness to the happiness lessons.

The English editions are to be launched in 2021.

Happiness Map of Hungary

In 2016 we drew the first Map of Happiness in Hungary. In May and June we conducted an online survey including 5332 people and using verified psychometric questionnaires we assessed the level of happiness of the population in Hungary. The study was led by Prof. Attila Oláh, cooperating with the members of the Positive Psychology Research Team of Eotvos Lorand University (Prof. Andras Vargha and Marta Csengodi) and the colleagues of The World Is Better With You Foundation.

The analysis of the results shows that mental health is strongly related to overall well-being, to coping ability, to the variety of happiness-sustaining strategies, to the ratio between the daily positive and negative experiences and to the scale of the level of happiness.

Since 2016 we have drawn the happiness map of Hungary every year, publishing it on 20 March, the international day of happiness. The standardized, psychometrically verified questionnaires are used to measure the psychological immunity, the well-being and mental health of the Hungarian population.

According to the 2020 World Happiness Report, Hungary has moved up 9 places on the rank.

We believe that optimism
can be taught and learnt!

Martin Seligman, the world-renowned researcher of happiness, one of the most remarkable representatives of positive psychology states that optimism can be taught and learnt.

The introduction of happiness-enhancing activities into public and adult education as well as into other community institutions would be of paramount importance.

We are working on creating the possibility for more and more children, parents and teachers worldwide to have access to the Happiness Lessons Programme so that we can create a future which is sustainable, full of joy and much better to live in for us and for our children.