Dear Readers,

In March 2016, we launched The Local Voices with your support. We’re extremely humbled by what you’ve helped us accomplish. Over the past eight months, your generosity and trust has allowed us to share nearly 100 stories with more than 120,000 readers in more than 100 countries. Thank you for trusting us with your stories, which have had a real impact on so many people’s lives.

As we look ahead to 2017, we think it’s time to try a bold new approach that will further strengthen the voice of newcomers in Sweden. We want you – our readers – to help us take this step by helping us find the stories that matter most. So we’d like to invite you to help us create our year-end holiday-themed feature story.

The winter holiday season — including Lucia, Nobel Prizes, Christmas, and more —  is a big deal in Sweden, in no small part because it offers an excuse for celebrating and socializing in the darkest depths of Sweden’s long, cold winter. Let’s work together to help create a common holiday memory we can share with our community of readers: newcomers, Swedes, and others around the world.

Here’s how you can join us:  

Step 1: You help us decide the theme for our story

We believe that most holidays, wherever you are in the world or where ever you come from, are about one of the following:

2) Quirky Traditions: That thing you do once a year

3) The Feast — Food and Drink: What's on the menu and why?

We want your input on which of those three options should be the theme for our holiday feature story. We'll be running an online poll on Tuesday, November 29th from 9.30am to 1.30pm CET. Check Facebook and Twitter during that time for details.

Step 2: You decide the people

Once you decide the theme, we’ll find people who want to share their experiences and perspectives on the chosen theme. Again, we’ll present you with three (3) options, and give you the chance to tell us which person’s story you’d like to read. Again, we'll run another online poll — this time on Thursday, December 1st from 9.30am to 1.30pm CET.

Step 3: We produce the story you asked us to write…

…and in so doing create a holiday memory for us to share with the newcomers, Swedes, and others around the world that make up The Local Voices family.

Help us make this holiday season truly about your experiences. You’ve already helped shape our vision, and we really hope you can join us in making this holiday wish a reality.

By the end of our holiday feature story collaboration, you’ll have helped us pioneer a new way to further empower our community of readers by developing a process that lets you help us define the stories that matter most. And we look forward to using this process even more in 2017 so that The Local Voices becomes an even better channel for strengthening newcomers’ voices in Sweden – and beyond.

Sincerely,

Jamil, David, & Paul

The Local Voices Team

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