Project Description

With more than 80 volunteers, 250 unique stories and 37,000 page views in our first month, there is a clear social desire for a more empowering and inspiring news source - reflecting all sides of humanity.

When nearly seven billion of us wake up each morning, we do so naturally with intentions of bettering our world – yet for all of our daily achievements, discoveries, compassion and love, we are bombarded with little other than war, death, hate and depression.

Our World Today (a not-for-profit), www.ourworldtoday.com.au is about sharing the interesting and inspiring stories of the world, sharing the positive side to humanity. We hope to create a community of individuals and organisations working together for a more inspired, happy and positive world.

Our World Today Inc (a not for profit online news organisation) was founded in 2010 by Mike Worsman and myself. Mike has a degree in Journalism and worked in TV news in country S.A, before moving to work in media for the Royal Adelaide hospital.

I have an undergraduate degree in Media Management, post grad in Journalism and currently studying a Masters in Sustainability.

After backpacking solo through Africa and helping to create a radio station in Uganda, working at Australia’s immigration centres and with new arrival communities in education, I have seen some pretty amazing stories.

At the hospital Mike saw people’s lives being saved every day, yet it was that one case where someone did not make it, that would make news.

We know amazing things happen each and every day and we want to share these stories.

We launched our full site on the 1st August 2011, are located in Adelaide Australia, but are working with student journalists from around the country and world. 

Our funding goal is $10,000, which will be used for the bare minimum operating costs to keep sharing these stories with the world. This will simply cover our office expenses, payment for writers and promotion to make sure we reach the masses, and can gain more funding to employ journalists to share these stories and grow as an organisation…

Since our launch we are already achieving an average of 1000 unique visits to the site every day, but plan to grow this through our building community (partners and ambassadors), which includes reaching out to NFP organisations and philanthropists from all over Australia, media partnerships (including Radio Adelaide) and social media through our amazing volunteer network of over 80 people Australia-wide.

To add to this our office is located in the heart of Adelaide with hundreds of ‘passers’ by each day.

Our goal is to reach 10,000 unique views each day by June 2012, have 500+ annual members, partner with a University in each Australian state/territory and employ (by 1st January 2012) 4 journalists at 3 days per week.

We will be a leading example that ‘good news’ can sell, can make a positive difference and is wanted by society.

There is so much research around how your ‘environment’ and ‘thoughts’ does impact how you act. Collectively this creates the world we live in. Imagine if everyone could surround themselves with the good in the world, rather than the negative. Imagine if every paper, news website and TV bulletin showed a balance between the positive and negative in the world.

Our news hopes to empower society, showing people how they can help make a difference, and inspire them to achieve their dreams.

Being online allows us to share these stories across all medium. We make use of audio, video and print mediums - with no time or word limit, we allow for a freedom in journalism.

We have linked up with universities across Australia already (UniSA, Monash Uni, Griffith Uni and Uni of Sydney) and realise we have an amazing opportunity to promote ethical journalism to the next generation, as well as the realisation to share the good in the world, and bring back that human element to journalism. Our aim is to be recognised by the big players in news, and promote them to act in a similar way to us, and share (or at least provide a balance) of the good in the world.

There is still a long road ahead, but we are dedicated to inspire and empower people through the medium of news.

www.vimeo.com/27120696 - It's the start of something BIG!

Our news will always be free.

We are not religious nor have any political ties.

Check out some of our amazing stories:

www.ourworldtoday.com.au/news/article/a-smile-to-go-viral-dancing-tommy