The I Am Resilient Project is always evolving and over the past few months, we set some big goals for 2020. The ethos of our community is to create a safe space for people to share their stories and a place where people can feel inspired and hopeful to overcome the challenges that they are going through. We currently publish stories on our blog and social media about once a week. We share an informative blog post once a week and we inspire and create dialogue through our profiles on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Each week we are growing and we couldn’t have done it without all of you.
To help us stay accountable and so that you can be excited with us, this post highlights some of our goals for the next year.
GOALS
Feature 2 to 3 stories a week. Submissions for stories are beginning to flow in and we are committed to sharing stories on most Mondays. With the influx of stories that will soon come in, we would like to feature between two and three stories a week. What can you do to help us? If you have a story to share, you can submit it here. Perhaps you know someone who has a story to share, you can share our project with them. We are mostly growing through word of mouth from people who believe in what we have created.
Launch our Podcast. Our Founder, Blair Kaplan Venables, and our Project Manager, Alana Kaplan, are bringing stories of resilience to your ears. Every story deserves to be told and the conversations that happen around these stories can be life-changing. Do you want to be a guest or do you have a suggestion of who should be a guest on our show? Email blair@iamresilient.info and share your ideas with us.
Launch our Newsletter. We have a lot of great content and by curating specific topics, we want to deliver Project news right to your inbox. It wouldn’t be more than once a month (unless there is something really fantastic that you need to know right away). Make sure to sign up on our website so you can receive these newsletters.
Portraits of Resilience Tour. This goal might be one of the more ambitious goals for the team but we are going to try and make it happen. On this multi-city tour, the I Am Resilient Project will host live events where community members share their stories of resilience. These events will be fundraisers for the communities that they are held in and will create a safe space for people to share, listen and just be. We have our Whistler event scheduled for April 7, 2020, and will announce a date for Pemberton in the new year. We are also hoping to hold events in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, New York and Los Angeles. For this tour, we will need community partners so watch our website, social media and newsletter for a call out. If you are located in any of these communities and want to help out, please email blair@iamresilient.info.
Speaking Engagements. Blair is focusing on spreading our message across North America. In 2019 she has the pleasure of speaking across Canada and she plans to continue with that mission. You can learn more about the topics Blair speaks about on her website and she still has some availability in the first half of 2020.
Publish the first I Am Resilient book. This project all started with the idea of sharing stories in a beautifully published coffee table style book. We would like to wrap up 2020 with launching our first book which will showcase 52 stories of resilience. These stories will be from people all over the world and if you submit your story to us, there is a chance that your story will be published in the book.
As you can see, we are kicking off the new decade with some serious goals. Each of these goals has been created to help people move through their challenges, heal their wounds and create a community. Life can be hard and unpredictable but when you have the support from others, it can help ease the pain.
If you believe in what we are building, thank you. This project is built on passion (and off the side of Blair and Alana’s desk). We hope to grow, make waves, tell stories and help more people. You can help us do this by sharing what we have created with your friends, coworkers, family, neighbours and social media following. You can share this blog post, any blog post, our website or any social media posts with anyone you want.
Happy holidays and Happy New Year. Cheers to the next decade being full of amazing milestones.
xx Blair Kaplan Venables