I had finished hosting a marathon of three online classes for poly leader development. I was a little frustrated at the low turnout - only 3 attendees. However, I was determined to do my best and pass on what I could. During those 6 hours of teaching and learning, the four of us bonded. After I was done with the official "class" stuff, we broke into an informal discussion about our own experiences with community organizing. We shared or joys and frustrations with each other.
We were surprised (ok, not really...) at the common themes around what was frustrating each of us on the organizing front. I've vented about them on my site, so I won't go into deeper detail here. The end result was that we wanted to create tools that would allow the average person to make an impact if they wanted to be a part of the larger poly movement or community.
We chose to develop a site that could allow people to connect with fellow poly people for friendship, mentoring, or potential relationships. By providing a safe place on the internet for us to meet and interact with others who share our desire to have open, honest, and loving relationships, we are taking the next steps towards bringing about greater acceptance of polyamory with the general public.
Over the three months that followed, the number of organizers on our team doubled. We connected with additional aspiring leaders that were willing to help us build and test this site. We also welcomed over 170 people to assist us in testing the social networking portion of our site to make sure that it was stable and usable enough for the public launch today.
All this in three months. Even with the changes that suddenly appeared in each of our lives (ranging from job and relationship changes to laptops sparking up and dying), we were able to keep our commitment in launching this site on time.
Our work is far from done. This website is an ongoing, evolving project for us. We look forward to the future that we are building for ourselves and those around us.
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