Hi there, I’m Stephanie. Here’s a little background on The Pollinator…
There’s so much information out there on how to live sustainably – some good and some not. It can be unclear, overwhelming, and too much to sift through between everything else going on. I end up doing a lot of this research anyway, but what I found was that, even though resources seemed so familiar and accessible to me, I frequently came across people who had unanswered questions or were so overwhelmed, they didn’t take any action.
So I started The Pollinator, originally as a monthly newsletter and now as a website (plus a new and improved newsletter). The purpose is to collect and vet the information I come across every day and curate the most useful, boiled-down versions to share with others. I’m not a content creator, nor do I really want to be one. I find the world is becoming a bit saturated with eco-content creators (which honestly isn’t a bad thing), but I didn’t want to add more of the same. I wanted to create a resource that will keep readers connected with the best of everything I’ve found.
Most of the information on the site is a summary of information that will be directly linked or otherwise cited. Once in a while, I’ll create an infographic or write a piece myself if I can’t find a cohesive resource elsewhere. I try to be very clear about what’s mine and give credit to what isn’t mine – the intention surely is not to make this appear as all my own. There are a lot of great, reliable resources out there, and I hope The Pollinator can gather and highlight those.
A note on the format switch: I used to write monthly newsletters, which was a lot of fun at first, but became ~unsustainable~ after about a year. I was spending 3 weeks out of the month creating them and they were starting to stray from the original mission. I found myself writing too much and not having a great way to point readers to the resources I wanted to. They were pretty long, since I organized them by topic and there was pressure to pack everything I knew on the subject into that one issue. There was no way for subscribers to go back and look at previous issues they had missed. The information wasn’t centralized and didn’t feel accessible.
So I switched to this site, which I hope will serve everyone, myself included, better. This way, I can constantly update information, quickly add new resources, and still send out a newsletter to tell readers what’s changed. As mentioned in the Start Here page, this site will be dynamic and hopefully a resource that you can come back to again and again.
Happy reading!