After having received several Curies during my Steemit journey, I can attest to the powerful impact it can have on a Steemian, for both their wallet and their confidence. As many of us have witnessed in our own Steemit experiences, a meaningful comment or healthy upvote can significantly boost our perception of the weight of our words. This influence has an extraordinary ripple effect as it surges through the platform - directly touching the plankton or minnow, secondarily reaching out to the community, and finally strengthening the platform that is bolstered by each individual piece of this crypto-community puzzle.

It comes as no surprise then, that Curie would not only search and reward the individuals of Steemit, but also look for significant ways to support the communities that nurture those individuals. We recently discovered the application for Curie Community Building Support and were thrilled to submit our application, as we firmly believe that our community is one that strives to build the platform in the same intentional, individualized way for which Curie is known. The following paragraphs will answer all the questions from the application.

On April 21, 2018

During a Witness Chat hosted by @shadowspub, several tense conversations occurred highlighting the need for younger Steemians to be better prepared for Steemit. It seemed that the overall mood, in my opinion, was that the general concensus was that the lack of preparation and limited understanding of Steemit policies was due to the underutilization of the resources that were available. While I agreed that there was truth to that, I suggested that we might better serve the individual, community, and platform by taking a more pro-active approach in training new Steemians. While it would be ideal if every Steemian would "read the white paper and understand", it appeared to be a more effective approach to find new Steemians who were hungry for real growth, knowledge, and longevity on the platform and equip them with the best training that we could provide. During that chat, I made several suggestions for an organized effort, decided to try to lead it, and asked if anyone else would be interested. A group of Witness Chat attendees "raised their hands" and the Welcome Wagon @welcomewagon was born.

A few weeks ago

In a conversation where a fellow Steemian was asking how they could support Welcome Wagon, she pre-empted my answer by stating, "I believe that you should ask for what you need, and ask often." That struck me as very wise instruction. Too often, we are afraid of offending someone with our requests, and we hesitate to be bold in asking for assistance. Last month, I purchased 1000 SP of Steem for Welcome Wagon, and delegated 100 SP of my own Steem to Welcome Wagon. Though I am willing to pour my own investments into this project, purchasing delegations is expensive. I would love to leave the Steem in the account to grow. When giving upvotes from that account, I never take an upvote for myself, but rather spread it around our students, graduates, and staff that support Welcome Wagon with enormous amounts of their own time and energy.

Humbly but boldly

Since we are supporting an ever-increasing number of students and staff that 1000 SP would go a long way in honoring their contribution and rewarding their efforts to make Steemit amazing. We would be requesting the maximum of 1000 Steem/month in the form of a delegation for the two-month timeframe, because it would make our votes that much more financially rewarding for Welcome Wagon members. Though the maximum request is for 1000 SP per month, if I could, I would request at 10,000 SP delegation! My boldness in that statement has everything to do with the fact that I believe in this project whole-heartedly. I know that it will continue to make meaningful changes in the Steemit platform, one recruit at a time. It would also be ideal to support the recruits and graduates over a longer period of time. Currently, we support with 100% upvotes the first week, 75% for the second week, and drop down to approximately 10-20% after a four-week period based on their content quality and posting frequency, and commitment to supporting their community. As new students are selected each week, it's necessary to use a sliding scale to make room for new recruits. As we teach our recruits to support their selected Steemit communities, we hope that as their external support increases, we can lessen our internal financial support in order to apply it to those newer students who need it more. However, with a higher SP, we would be able to extend that timeframe a little longer giving our graduates a bit more time to grow and build their support systems.

Growing exponentially

Our community started with approximately 10 members, and since April, we have grown to 38 members- both staff and graduates, usually adding 1-2 new recruits each week. Through our learning curve, week by week, we are retaining more and more members. Right now, we have about 65% retention rate that gets higher with each new week. In the beginning, our efforts were not as fine-tuned as they are currently. However, as we grow today, we are seeing more interaction, more support, and more genuine desire to form a coalition of genuine community cheerleaders. As a matter of fact, we received high praise from @shadowspub, an influential community leader who is well-known for her massive committment to community, education, curation and support. Her remarks that Welcome Wagon is the most underrated success story on Steemit can be found here.

Finding and treasuring those diamonds

The retention rate of Steemit is approximately 8% right now. As we continue to train our recruits and provide them with the tools that they need to succeed on Steemit, their passion for building community increases, and we can see the retention rate changing right before our very eyes. We select passionate, interactive, talented individuals and encourage them to stay and find their niche on Steemit. We continue to hear that if it wasn't for Welcome Wagon taking the time to pour into them, they would have left the platform in defeat. When I see their excitement and connection and talent being displayed, it's a bit of a shock to realize how close we were to losing yet another talented and under-recognized Steemian.

Growing and thriving

After their training with us is completed, they are encouraged to reach out to new discords and communities that speak to their specific passions, while using the Welcome Wagon community as their stable foundation. It is humbling to see how the graduates stay and look for ways to be a part of the vision. Two weeks ago, one of our graduates @eveningart became one of our newest mentors (SteemPeer) and has begun a brilliant job of training the next generation of Steemians. Last week, another graduate @anutu began one of the most professional looking curation blogs that I have seen, highlighting the excellence of his fellow Welcome Wagon members. Our graduates consistenly post the highest quality content, earning Curies right and left. We believe that as we grow, more graduates will link arms with us in the effort to affect the bigger sphere of Steemit, and our influence will continue to spread and ignite across the platform, strengthening Steemit as a whole.

Thank you!

Thank you @curie for continuing to support plankton and minnows! Your dedication to the newer members of Steemit inspires and motivates us to make this a community that stands out from other social media platforms. I appreciate you taking the time to consider this application @randomwanderings, and if you have any further questions, I can be reached on discord at @dreemsteem#0695. Thank you so much!

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