by Dawn M. Sanders
Greetings Everyone,
We hope you’ve enjoyed what has been a strange summer with the fingerprints of climate change everywhere. It’s that time of year again – the nights are creeping back, the holiday season is ending, and the kids are flocking back to school, well that is, if their buildings aren’t potentially crumbling down.
I’m especially proud this quarter to have such a high caliber of contributions to the magazine, which will trigger the usual thought-provoking content you come to expect from us in the form of cutting-edge journalism. Our theme is challenging cultural barriers which take many different forms. Our main feature comes from a Zain Zainman from Pakistan on how one young man’s tragedy is turned into triumph. Deirdre Patterson delivers a well-adapted piece from an academic essay she authored on the plight of South Sudanese refugees in Kenya. I have written a long form comparing cultural variants as to how people with additional needs are received within different cultures and a blog I started some months ago. We have a creative contribution from Rupsha Mitra of India in the form of our first installments of poetry – bringing about our new Creative Space. So, as ever I’m thrilled of yet another issue bearing the fruits of a lot of great hard work. We are still looking for 1 to 2 volunteers to fulfil positions for sub-editor and social media manager. So, if you or anyone you know might be interested in the rewarding opportunity to help promote independent media and grow some journalistic skills, please checkout our vacancies page here. Now that this issue is done and dusted, as editor my focus will be securing funding. We literally have enough to fund 2 to 3 more commissions in the last issue of the year and then, that’s it and if we can’t secure reliable regular donations, I regret to say we will have no choice but to suspend operations until adequate funding is sourced to sustain the next year with a little wriggle room for increased commissions. I had a great flurry of worthy potential contributors I had to turn away this quarter, due to funding constraints. So as ever, if you can consider either a one-off or regular donation (however small) it would hugely help us to grow.
Please promote the issue on your platforms and as always, don’t hesitate to provide feedback for what we are getting right or what we could improve on. It is down to myself and Celeste Pearce, my talented illustrator, so a tiny team of 2 to put this magazine together and make it happen. On that score I cannot thank Celeste enough for her extra help, the skilled writers who have contributed some excellent pieces to this issue and of course Maggie, our hard-working web manager for bringing it all to fruition.
Thank you,
Dawn Sanders, Editor
© 2023