A. What is quality of life? 1. Europe (Alex C. Michalos) -- 2. North America -- 3. Africa (Irma Eloff) -- 4.South East Asia (Yunsun Chung) -- 5. South America (Graciela Tonon) -- 6. Middle East (Abdellatif Bouazza/Hicham Ait Mansour) -- 7. Australia/Oceania (Max Kelly) -- B. Logic and limitation of players.-8. Humanitarian Action (Gareth Owen) -- 9. Development Aid (Jan Vandemoortele) -- 10. Private Sector/Corporate Social Responsibility (Joan Ai) -- 11. Governments (Enrique Delamonica) -- 12. Faith-based institutions (Ulrich Hemel) -- 13. Academia (Viktor Jacupec) -- C. Present and future promises -- 14. Empowerment through Design Thinking (Joan Halpern) -- 15. Assessing and Assisting leaders to thrive (Hiva Mann) -- 16. Behaviour change based on behaviour insights (Tim Houlihan) -- 17. Removing obstacles and adding fuel to fire the rocket of personal change (Dan Ariely) -- 18. Prototyping Purpose for Power (Elizabeth Augustin/Cornelia Walther) -- 19. Community development for and through quality of life (Rhonda Philipps) -- 20. Healing individuals and communities through tradition (Jaha Cummings) -- 21. Localization in action, investing in local organizations (Sabba Almubaslat) -- 22. Storytelling to create community cohesiveness (Tracy Brandenburg) -- 23. Democracy beyond paper (Isabele Ortiz) -- 24. Holistic Social protection (Enrique Delamonica) -- 25. From Inequality to Inequity to Universal Access (Alberto Minujin) -- 26. Measure to treasure, the right things (David Gordon) -- 27. Equal chances beyond gender limitations (Gabriele Koehler) -- 28. Creating a new user interface (David Nobles) -- 29. Reversing the position of humans and technology (Chris Covert) -- 30. GigaMe – Universal access to learning (Chris Fabian) -- 31.Artificial intelligence and Aspirational Algorithms (Cornelia Walther) -- D. Visions for social change -- 32. The Humanitarian of Tomorrow (Gareth Owen) -- 33. Overcoming the burden of bureaucracy (Yvonne Helle) -- 34. Revamping the United Nations to inspire change (Marielle Sander) -- 35. Shaping Leadership that matters (Sabine Bhanot) -- 36. Healing Communities (Jaha Cummings) -- Conclusion.

This handbook provides an extensive overview of the links between quality of life and social change as pursued in not only humanitarian and development work, but also in the private sector and academia. It combines theoretical and practice-focused chapters and addresses socio-economic, environmental, and political/governance aspects as well as communication and human behavioural factors that favour or hamper social change dynamics. The handbook showcases vast diversity both in the authorship---which includes practitioners from a wide range of sectors, and academics from various disciplines---as well as in geographical contexts and regions. The chapters cover a wide range of methods and tools, which facilitate an inclusive understanding of the relationship between quality of life and social change. They show connections between micro (individual) changes and the dynamics that derive from them at the meso (community), macro (country) and meta levels (planet) of quality of life, and the social change processes sustained through time. The chapters demonstrate that quality of life and social change mutually condition and nurture each other. The handbook overall provides a holistic perspective to social change processes that includes both material and non-material aspects relating to quality of life. This comprehensive and one-of-a-kind volume is of interest to a wide readership, from students and researchers of social development, quality of life and well-being research, to development workers, policy makers and other government officials. The handbook is bundled with an interactive online course. .