Cool, so, Create Happy. This is one of our
magazine covers and our podcast host, peeking
out from behind it. And yeah, this is just going
to be a presentation on what is Create
Happy, what exactly have you signed up to, who is
going to be running this thing. Yeah,
we'll just get started.
Sweet, so this little cute photo here is myself
and our co-editor and our former co-editor.
This has taken, I believe, last year at an event
that we went to, and two of our wonderful
co-editor team. So a couple of notes before we
get started, please keep your mics off
to avoid background noise. Cameras on is
optional, but we really would love to see your
faces.
If you have technical difficulties, like Lisha
said, she is your girl too. And please
keep the chatting on Zoom to a minimum, but we
have a telegram group chat, which is just
like a platform for messaging, and we will send
that link. Lisha, if you could get that
link and pop it in the chat, that would be
awesome. And that's where we will do most
of our connecting outside of this course with you
guys. Sweet. So, what is Create Happy?
How did we start? Where are we today? There's a
whole lot that I could go into, but I'm
going to keep it short. So Create Happy started
in, it has its roots in a program that Mandy,
our mentor, ran quite a few years ago, which I
joined in March 2022. And that was a photography
program for young people who wanted to learn
about photography and well-being and all this
cool stuff in between. So this was in March 2020,
and I was about 11 years old, and I
joined this program. It was all online. And I
eventually became a mentor for this program,
which kept going throughout the years. And we
were running this program, and we noticed
a huge frustration between our young people, and
that was how they were being represented
in the media. And so we were just like, well,
what can we do about it? And started a media
platform, where we were like, well, if it's not
us, who's going to do it? And who's going
to tell the stories of young people correctly? We
had no idea what we were doing at the start,
and we still really do not. But we are growing
and learning. And we've now been going for
two whole years. It's actually our birthday
today. So happy birthday to us, which is a
really exciting milestone. And yeah, so we've
grown a whole lot. And we're just excited
to share our knowledge with you guys and help
share all that to the world. So we've done
a whole bunch of interviews over the last two
years, and that has included that has resulted
in 220 articles and over 60 young people who have
written with us. We have we are multi
award winning, which is so awesome. And
throughout the years, like people have been so
generous
and have supported us in so many ways. And we
really just want to get the word out there
that young people are not like lazy or stupid or
whatever you may see in mainstream media
quite a bit. And we actually have stories to tell
and things to be celebrated and we can
unite together through journalism. And by telling
our stories, there's a power to be
heard in that. So we have published that is not
three to four editions. It's actually eight
editions now. And we are working on our impact
edition, which comes out March 21. I don't
know how many of you found us through create
happy and how many of you found us through
your school or university or however you found
us. But we have been working on digital magazines
for the past two years. And we are currently in
the process of setting up our podcast, who
is going to be hosted by the beautiful human who
you saw at the very start presentation.
And yeah, we've just got so much that we want to
do and so much Mahi to be undertaken. We're
very, we have lots of dreams. And so this course
is about teaching young people about
journalism, but also about bringing more people
into our team. So if you guys are interested
in joining, joining create happy, this is a great
starting point for you to learn how to
pitch articles, how to collaborate with our team,
how to lead and create happy and heaps
more. But if you're not, that is totally fine
too. This is going to be a great opportunity
for you to learn about journalism about media and
about the industry. Yeah. And we've been
to so many awesome events with create happy. We
regularly attend festival for the future.
We have gone to awards nights and things to cover
different stories. Cassie is one of our
people who has attended a lot of those and that's
been really awesome. So joining create
happy you get so many opportunities to connect
with people and learn and gain opportunities
that you probably won't elsewhere, which is an
amazing, amazing thing. And we've had so
many people who have been generous to share those
opportunities with us. Cassie, do you
want to talk about what it's been like joining
create happy? So Cassie was that one of our
alumni from last year's Compassionate Journalism
course, which is awesome. Cassie, do you want
to talk about how that was for you? Yeah, so
around this time last year, I was in the position
that most of you are in, which is mostly just
confused and curious and wanting to know what
this mysterious organization was about. So I
joined the course and it was very, very,
very, very beneficial. And even just at the
start, I was like, wow, I can actually get
a lot out of this. And then I worked and worked
and worked and just kept getting more and
more and more involved. And now fast forward
here, I'm helping to host it and I'm co-editor
and I'm doing all of this amazing mahi. And it's
been wild. There has been a lot that
has happened. I've been to a lot of events. I've
been roped into a lot of things by Lola,
whether I liked them or not. But it's all been
very beneficial. I did Festival for the
Future, which was a massive festival of young
people, of activists, of mentors. And I met
so many people through there, expanded just my
network of people that I knew massively.
I'm really glad that people who are here that
you've designed to be here today because there
is so much so you can get out of it. And I really
hope that you find it as beneficial as I did.
Awesome. Thank you so much, Kessie. Yeah, we're
really excited to host you guys today. It's
been a bit of a last minute planning, but we're
excited to bring this course back for
2024 and we can't wait to see what you guys get
out of it.