Imagine with me a Tacoma where we make an effort to buy some items on our shopping list from local businesses instead of the grocery chains or big box stores. What if you just picked one item every month to switch to a local provider? You probably never even realized what a huge difference that would make in our city.

I am working on a plan to have an online marketplace where you can shop locally online from businesses all across Tacoma and Pierce County. It’s a huge endeavor but if we can achieve this, it will create jobs, stimulate our local economy and even lift people out of poverty. Many small business owners teeter on the edge of poverty and so many people are capable of providing goods and services are not even starting businesses because there are too many barriers and they don’t know about all the resources we actually have to help them.

Part of my mission with this newspaper and the Art Bus is to help us appreciate and support each other and our dreams. How many people would love to work for themselves doing things like designing clothes ot selling homemade goods? How many people are stuck in dead-end jobs and still can’t reach financial security?

The reason we have a financial section, wellness section, art section, music section and a calendar section in the newspaper is because you need to see this glimpse into our potential. We also have a weekly newsletter called Happy Friday that has even more local stories and news. Soon we will begin publishing our own news program on our social media channels.

Speaking of our social media channels, I need you to all go and like, follow, subscribe and all the things. When I bought the newspaper, all the socials had been deleted and we had to start building our audience from zero. We have made good progress but we need your help. We know there are thousands of Weekly Volcano fans out there but its hard to prove without the support of our social media channels. Plus we are producing some terrific content on there and we have even more coming so you won’t want to miss it.

I just returned from a diplomatic mission to Morocco with Tacoma Sister Cities. Check out the photos and story. We are also working on a mini-documentary about the trip which we hope to release soon. If you aren’t subscribed you might miss it! It was an incredible trip with incredible people so I would hate for you to miss out on that! We also have some great Fred Finds, Phoenix & Friends and Record Prophet episodes coming up that I am sworn to secrecy about but trust me you will not want to miss a single episode.

If you would like to get involved with our mission as a content creator, volunteer or it you want to join the wait list to have products for sale on our shopping platform, email me at Angela.Jossy@weekly-volcano.com.

I would love to hear your story ideas and scoops on people doing amazing things that deserve the spotlight. We aim to inform, delight and inspire and you can help us do that! Send news tips to: newsroom@weekly-volcano.com.