Welcome to SEEKJOY®
This project is a hybrid lifestyle "brand" endeavoring to catalyze a loosely defined and primarily un-affiliated community of humans working through conscious self-betterment to build a more wholesomely sustainable future for the generations to come via art, activism, and social entrepreneurship.
The brand's symbol is that of the lone gull, rooted in the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
Long story short... Jonathon Gull is outcast from his flock for pursuing the joys and limits of his personal capacity for flight.
The older gulls who are responsible for his banishment insist that flight, for the seagull, serves only as a means of maintaining the daily routine of retrieving food from nearby ships in order to live as long as possible. The seagull unwilling to accept this idealogy is not welcome in seagull society. Jonathan did not accept this idealogy.
The seagull’s physical form is not designed like the hawk’s for dynamic flight at high speeds. However, through commitment and persistence Jonathan learns to control his wings by just the slightest movement of individual feathers. With this understanding, Jonathan gull is soon able to control his flight with precision at high speeds nearing the threshold of terminal velocity.
After years in exile spent alone pursuing his own truth, Jonathan is called back to his flock by a new group of younger gulls which have begun, like him, to pursue these joys in flight. Though never fully welcomed back into the mainstream of seagull society, it is clear by the time Jonathan gull leaves these young students that a world of possibly has been opened for future generations both near and far.
The story of Jonathon Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach is available at your local bookstore. There are also several audiobook readings you can find with a quick search on Youtube.
All in all, SEEKJOY® is on a Mission.
We're calling for radical social change and pledge to catalyze immediate efforts towards the long-term, sustainable cohabitation of all people, nations, and cultures. Funded by the people, we are non-violent peaceful protectors working through a platform built on the principles of social entrepreneurship. We support independent art, thought, media and expression and are at all times open and receptive to your feedback.
Community Initiatives
The basis of our work comes in the form of what we're calling SEEKJOY Community Initiatives (SCIs) which are publicly displayed in the Community Network. These initiatives can be anything from a social-entrepreneurial business to a media campaign, an event, an action...
We do our best to "define" them, but these SCIs often have a pretty wide scope and remain ever-evolving. That said, each has a couple of standardized components: A "#Hashtag" that can be used to follow and interact with the SCI across various digital platforms, a list of "Primary Goals" summarizing the purpose, and a "Call to Action" suggesting ways the community can get involved.
SCIs are conceptualized, organized and launched on a rolling basis. If you have an idea for an SCI we'd love to hear from you and collaborate to make it happen! Feel free to contact us via the community network and we'll get the ball rolling.
View Active Initiatives
Unlike a traditional non-profit organization SEEKJOY® is a "business" and our initatives, goods, merch and services are modeled on the principles of social entrepeurship.
Social Entrepreneurship, as defined by the community on Wikipedia:
"Social entrepreneurship is the use of start up companies and other entrepreneurs to develop, fund and implement solutions to social, cultural, or environmental issues. This concept may be applied to a variety of organizations with different sizes, aims, and beliefs. For-profit entrepreneurs typically measure performance using business metrics like profit, revenues and increases in stock prices, but social entrepreneurs are either non-profits or blend for-profit goals with generating a positive "return to society" and therefore must use different metrics. Social entrepreneurship typically attempts to further broad social, cultural, and environmental goals often associated with the voluntary sector[3] in areas such as poverty alleviation, health care and community development."
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_entrepreneurship
With the above general definition of Social Entrepreneurship at it's core, SEEKJOY® is organized around several key concepts.
Community Goods
It seems there is a constant battle fought between those trying to do good and finding a means to support that work when it comes to "money". Many artists, activists, and small non-profits struggle to find a balance in this war and we're here to assist.
We have a section of our online marketplace setup to sell goods and other products that have been created by humans trying to support their work in the community. There is no single "category" of good, the marketplace expands as people reach out to ask if we can help sell their work for them.
SEEKJOY® produces the necessary "product images" and usually will capture some type of story about the artist and/or peice of work which we then showcase in the markeplace. In exchange, SEEKJOY® receives a small commission and uses the funding to offset the costs of continuing the service.
Explore Community Goods!SEEKJOY® Merch
We're walking a very fine line trying to both end the rampant consumerism of our time while trying to be supported financially to do so.
We'd love to spread our message, but ordering a batch of t-shirts and stickers just isn't what we're about: the world has enough t-shirts and the process of manufacturing stickers and the materials used is nothing to be proud of.
That said, the niche of materials we're OK using in our "merch" are those destined otherwise for the landfill and we're OK with manufacturing if it's done via alternative energy so... That's how we do things. On occasion you'll find non-repurposed materials used in our merch, but usually it is because the "new" material is one that should be used across an industry in terms of it's sustaianability. One example of such a material would be hemp, which is used in our "HempHanky" as part of the #BringBackTheHanky initiative.
View some of our Merch!Creative Services
The niche we serve has needs. One of the things we're always coming across is a need for help with a variety of "Media" related things such as websites, video production, photogaphy, social media stuff...
Years ago we had served everyone in need of these things, but we're now confining our work to artists, activists and small non-profits working towards radical social and environmental reform.
Instead of billing for things hourly at a rate a service might be worth from a traditional "agency" perspective, we have packaged (and continue to package) a selection of micro-services which are frequently needed by people in our defined niche. These creative services are then streamlined and facilitated by various transactions in our online store.
The goal of these services is to make things like design, marketing, communications and web development more accessible to people working for good.
View Creative ServicesSEEKJOY® Events
We believe in community-based events and their power to bring people together.
When possible, we endeavor to organize hyper-local community-building events, festivals and gatherings such as the SEEKJOY Convention and a variety of small "pop-up" style open mics, forums, twon hall discussion, etc.
The Event Section of website & online marketplace has yet to be launched - stay tuned!
Broad-based Public Support
We have needs in order to work harder, better, faster and stronger. When we have a need for something we post a "Product" in the Wishlist Section of the online marketplace in the hopes that a wonderfully amazing human being (like yourself!) might consider helping us acquire the item and/or arrange to have it donated.
The "price" of a product in the Wishlist is the amount we think we'll need to acquire that item. We are very committed to the idea of "Buying Used" and will take the budget provided for an item through a Wishlist contribution and source the item in the local market via Craigslist and other used platforms. Please note! "purchasing" at item from the Wishlist will NOT mean you receive that item! It is a contribution to the cause!
Another means of generating support is the Community Fund created for those who wish to simply support our work in the field. Contributions will directly allow us to continue serving our community of independent artists, individuals, activists and non-profits through the various initiatives we've launched on our website.
Consider the Community Fund like a "GoFundMe" style endeavor that allows us to avoid the outrages charges associated with many online fundraising efforts. Unlike with many online fundraising platforms, the only amount reduced from a contribution and/or sale in our marketplace is the standard credit-card processing fee.
Explore the Wishlist!