What Is Take10 And Why Do We Need It

take10 is a vision, still a little blurry, but growing clearer with each passing day. It's a shared dream with a shared purpose, and it now incorporates no less than 15 people with a passion and a determination to fulfill that dream. We started with ten like-minded individuals, lost a few, gained more. We launched on May 1st, with little more than our own unique idea for supporting each other and supporting other progressive writers along the way.

Our team covers the spectrum of issues, from environment to women's rights. We cover those issues that matter the most to us, and each of us does it in our own unique way. Our team doesn't share a website and we don't have a 'standard' format or voice. What we have is an amazing, dedicated team of non-conformists, all supporting each other's right not to conform.

Our first three weeks have been something similar to a wild ride on a whirlwind of thoughts, ideas opinions beliefs and expressions. About half of our team has been writing for a long time, with a hundred years of publishing and editorial experience combined. The other half is made up of people who should have been writing all along.

Our business model has slowly but surely been writing itself as we go. We realized that without really setting out to do so, a huge part of our day to day activity has been spent nurturing new talent. Since our inception, we've provided nearly a dozen people without formal writing experience with the technical skills to start a blog of their own. We've mentored, encouraged, supported and promoted these new writers, giving them the skills that they need to make their voices heard.

Over the long term, we now see ourselves becoming a launching pad for new progressive voices. We've come to realize that there are many unique and persuasive voices out there, people with passion and talent, who just lack things like technical ability, marketing ability or, sometimes just confidence in themselves. We're in the process of revamping our mission statement, to include our desire to move in that direction.

While our overall mission is to help steer the national conversation to the left, we've now incorporated into our vision the idea of "filling the blogosphere with voices for change," because it's needed. Our idea is to do that by continuing to present original essays, articles, op-eds and works of  investigative journalism from our own core team. Along with that, another goal we've had from the beginning is to support others who are doing the same. We created LOVE (liberal online voice exchange) to help promote other liberal and progressive bloggers, share their work and hopefully help them build a larger following as well.

Through our research (looking for blogs to promote during our weekends of LOVE) we discovered that many of the progressive and liberal blogs that were running during the 2012 election season are now defunct. With the 2014 midterm elections right around the corner, there's a real need for new voices to fill the space that was left behind. Because of that, we've adopted as a part of our mission, the goal of helping new voices get heard.

While helping others develop the skills they need to make their voices heard takes up a good deal of our time right now, we envision that the day will come when those new writers will be able to train other new writers, paying it forward, so to speak. Eventually we will create a virtual army of liberal, progressive warriors, armed with the skills they need to do battle against the extremist right wing agenda.

Our group has also made it a part of our mission to reach across as many demographics as possible. Our writers range in age from under 21 to over 65. You might know it, but we've worked hard to put together a team that includes someone that almost everyone can relate to.

We have ten full time writers:

Dylan (environment and racism)
Randa (waking up in america)
JEM (So, what's the good news?)
Josh (The Straight Dope; Ending the War On Drugs)
Kraig (Treal Talk; our travelling blogger)
Gina (satire, women's issues, surprise us)
Charles (labor and economy)
Marty (Just a mom in Michigan)
M.k (our new cranky senior)
Nicole (Don't get her started)

We also have guest bloggers, including Jan Stowe (one pissed off woman) Kyle (green living and tech) and Barry (political theory and history) and we cross post with other progressives, including Sighed Effects, the Progressive Dude and Brass Knuckles Progressive Radio.

We're not quite a month old yet, but we're growing daily, bringing in new followers on facebook and twitter. We're looking forward to developing a main website and launching a campaign for the 2014 election cycle, which we will be calling "take10 wants you to take 10".

When our campaign kicks off, we'll be asking our followers to commit to helping 10 people get registered and vote this November. It's a lofty goal, but we think we can do it!

We need a record turnout in 2014 to counter the tea party movement, and help move this country forward.

We wanted to share our mission and our goals with our followers, because we believe that you will be on board with us and our big ideas. The other part of our team I haven't mentioned is you, our readers, followers, tweeps and facebook fans. If you like what we're doing, please tell others about us. Share our posts and our facebook page, follow us on twitter @take10us.

You can help support and encourage our writers, new and old, by leaving comments on their posts and sending feedback to our page. If you're following us on facebook, please remember to click 'get notifications' so facebook will show you our posts.

Thanks for making our first few weeks amazing. Let's see what we can create together in the future.

image credit the Guardian