Established by a team of passionate advocates for increasing mental health in New Zealand, the Wellbeing Game aims to take the "itus" out of Monday and instil happiness and wellbeing into the life of every Kiwi employee.
Co-developed with Community and Public Health at the Canterbury District Health Board, the Wellbeing Game (TWBG) is an interactive and fun web-based activity logging game designed to improve wellbeing by encouraging people to be more aware of the things they do to support their mental health.
Throwing conventional GDP indicators for "growth" out the window, TWBG is based around the 'Five Ways to Wellbeing': Connect, Keep Learning, Be Active, Take Notice, and Give. According to co founder Carsten Grimm these are a new set of evidenced-based principles meta-analysed by the new economics foundation for the UK Government Foresight Project.
Using the Five Ways to Wellbeing to record and reflect on their wellbeing activities in an online community, Grimm says the game helps those playing it to improve their mental health and promotes easy ways to build mentally healthy behaviours into daily activities
A team of three, TWBG brings a vast array of experience and knowledge from the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand and previous academic, educational, health, and service delivery roles. The ultimate goal according to Grimm? To accumulate happiness or wellbeing, one hour at a time. "Our ambition is to successfully develop and scale TWBG into a sustainable venture to promote wellbeing in New Zealand."
