by Betty Van Volkenburg, Publisher
The Singles Courier and The Singles Center

• On Singles Ministries
• On Single Role Models
• On our Gift Galleria and Members Affiliate program
• On our Singles Magazine
• On Inspiring words for today, or any day

It’s been about six weeks since my last Publisher’s epistle but it seems like much longer, from all that I’ve been struggling with since Labor Day.

September turned out to be Hell Month when my computer hard drive gave up the ghost and I was told by a Computer Repair shop that they could not retrieve all of my files. Fortunately I was able to find another expert who was able to retrieve almost all the files and am finally getting back on track – always get a second opinion! Some web site plans have had to be delayed but here is an overview of what I’ve been doing in my "spare" time and what’s coming:

In the interim, when I was not gnashing teeth and ruminating, I worked on setting up a Singles Ministry at my Episcopal church. God just wanted to be sure I didn’t get bored.

If you’re curious about what a Singles Ministry looks like you can visit our startup web site 

We’ll be following lessons learned at the Solo Flight conference over Labor Day weekend. Visit their startup site.

In my research I found one of the best Singles Ministry sites is at St. James Methodist church

With September and part of October being lost in cyberspace the annual Role Model program has been delayed, but I will still be conducting that campaign to find candidates. Non-profit organizations will be canvasses to submit nominations but I’m asking or subscribers and visitors to take the time to tell us about a single person they know who is a community volunteer and someone they consider a role model for other singles. The nomination form is in our Community Wing

I’m in the process of locating a generous Sponsor to fund this program so it can be expanded to be able to give grants to single individuals or groups to help with their Community Involvement activities. This is a long term plan that may not come to fruition until 2003, but it will happen – count on it.

With all the other technical difficulties I didn’t need this – the PayPal shopping cart processing for our Galleria had changed but my attention was distracted elsewhere and it slipped by me. I’m in the process of changing each set of coding for the 200 Pay buttons in the Members Galleria, and in the public version of the Galleria. But, that should be finished this weekend and advertising and marketing can begin – in time for Holiday shopping.

The upside of this is that now the Shopping cart is more compatible with Affiliate Programs so an Affiliate program will be installed and members can make money on the Galleria sales too.

Our format will be expanded to include daily features, new original articles just for singles, multimedia, and voice communications. The test version will appear December 1^st with the official launch day as January 1^st 2003.

We’re always looking for new free lance writers, so if you are a writer or have good writing skills, check out our Writing Guidelines

As I was working through my accumulated list of Things To Do I searched for some words of inspiration in the Religion department of our Magazine and came across this article by Reverend Lance Robbins. It seems like good advice for almost any situation. Not to give away the punch line but – the word ‘Just’ is a key word in that title. Sometimes I forget that.

Until next issue –

Betty Van Volkenburg
Publisher,
The Singles Center
Singles, The Magazine for Today's Single
The Singles Courier