SOLD: Beautiful Happyzine

Charlotte Squire speaking with great enthusiasm at the Auckland Changemakers Convention Feb 2012

Happyzine founder and Editor Charlotte Squire shares the vision, and puts forward the request for volunteer help to set up local systems for the Happyzine Kiwi Local Good News project.

Ok, it’s time to front up.

Again.

There’s some stuff I’m good at, and there’s some stuff I am un-excellent at.

Let’s start with the former.  I am highly creative and I have many ideas.  Give me a challenge and I’ll give you five potential solutions.  I like to talk to people, the more the merrier. I love to network.  I adore a juicy, inspiring story or project, especially if I can ‘Happyzine it’.  When called for, I can persist.  I can write. I can hold a tune.  I’m a passionate parent. I do optimism because I have too – the alternative is bewildering.

Now let’s move to the latter.  I am un-excellent at selling stuff.  Namely, in this case, selling Happyzine sponsorship, no matter how amazing the project.  I am un-excellent at calling people out of the blue in the hope of inspiring them to ‘get’ Happyzine’s ethos within the first thirty seconds.  And just between you and I, I’m just stumpted at how to take this project forward.

You get the picture.  A girl can only do so much.  So I thought I’d tell you about a dream of mine in the hope of it finding the right people to help move it from concept to a gorgeously local yet helpfully national, reality.

What project!?   Well now, let us delve into my vision for the Happyzine Local Good News project:

* The Local Good News project is a system where locally based Good News Reporters feed news about positive environmental and social change happening in their communities, to Happyzine, where it’s published every Friday and shared at a national (and international) level;

*  Good News Reporters are part of local networks and are increasingly known as the right person to call when good news needs to be shared;

*  Communities are enjoying a renewed sense of pride as a result seeing some of their more inspiring news, stories that might have otherwise either never been told, or remained hidden within the pages of small community papers, being enjoyed by a wider audience;

*  Leaders from other communities are learning from and being inspired by the Local Good News stories (actually this is already happening), and occasionally replicating the ideas, adapting them to the unique needs of their communities;

*  Tourism and business is growing in some communities, due to increased positive publicity on Happyzine;

*  Environmentally and socially responsible business sponsors are gaining from reaching their target audiences … who happen to be environmentally and socially responsible readers, under the highly feel-good umbrella of a positive news website

*  New Zealand’s environmentally and socially responsible online media platform and movement continues to develop, strengthen and grow, influencing a new generation of readers who are hungry for intelligent, optimistic media.

I want to see this happen, so let’s cut to the chase.  Here’s my number one request:  I need people with the skills (namely those complementary to mine) and perhaps the resources, to make this dream happen.  So if you can do stuff that I can’t, if you have the nouse to help me take this idea to the place of service I’d like it to sit, I’d love to  hear from you.

I’d ideally like to set up Local Good News Reporters in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Nelson, Dunedin and oh yeah that other super important community: Takaka, initially.  Having said that if the support is there in other communities for this service, then let’s make it happen.

I already have writers in Christchurch, Wellington and Golden Bay.  This is because it’s easy to find positive writers.  For me.  Because I run a good news website.  You see.

So there you have it.

If you have the experience, contacts, nouse, capacity and time to help make a Local Good News project happen for your community, and if you can see the benefits to making this happen, email me: [email protected] anytime so that we can set up a phone or skype chat.

Thanks for tuning in and thanks for being alive,  I truly, deeply appreciate it.

Charlotte Squire

Happyzine.

Tags: Blog, support