In this week’s episode of News Drop we talk with Carole Olinger from WPandUp.org about mental health, WordPress, and #HeadToWCEU
Love WordPress news but hate reading my name is doc and this is doc pops news drop I’m here this week with Carol Olinger from wpn up to talk about their new project head to WCE you Carol how are you doing today hi hi doc I’m doing
Pretty fine and thanks for having me on your show I’m excited and I just I I can’t help but to notice the two wapas right behind you can we can we see those guys for a second oh yeah where are those from one of those is working us
Right exactly one of one of this is working as and if I’m not mistaken it was Philadelphia and actually I haven’t been there but it was a gift from my husband who brought it from me because I was so sad I couldn’t make it that a
Year and the other one is from wordcamp europe in paris from 2017 yeah alright well we’ll tell us about WP and up what what is it and and what what do you do there sure so I for me I’m I’m pretty new with all of you enough it’s totally
Exciting for me and Tommy peanut is actually a registered charity inside the UK and the most important mission is to support and to promote positive mental health inside the WordPress community and so mental health issues can arise from a variety of different pressures and WP nob is pretty much aware of where
This all can come from and has designed different health hubs so for example we have physical health hub a mental health hub and then there is a skills hub and there is also default is the business health hub which is a very important one and WP knob is providing different tools
To support the WordPress community members like their there is education there is training there is expertise support in different ways and of course also raising awareness for all these topics so actually it is about to provide a holistic and individual support on many levels so let’s talk about your next your next
Project will your first big project with W peanut head to WCE you what what’s that about it’s a very exciting project that I’ve been hearing off I think about six weeks ago so it is it has been the result of a team brainstorming of wpn up during word
Camp Europe this year in in Berlin in Germany and it was actually inspired by the amazing efforts that has been taken by Marcel Boltzmann I’m not sure if you have been hearing of that but Marcel has been walking from his home town near Rotterdam in the Netherlands over 700
Kilometers to Berlin to attend wordcamp europe in in germany and yeah this had a lot of visibility and a lot of community members were actively supporting Marcel and in a financial way but also on social media and we were waiting for a need for him when he was arriving in
Berlin and I was a huge inspiration and so many people were talking about that so he was actually doing this large hike to raise funds for another charity project which is called CC donate or donate WC excuse me the natal you see and this amazing project is helping
Attendees all around the world from the WordPress community to to be present at events so it’s sending them to world camps where they could actually not afford to be present with their own financial financial Moya I don’t know English but um yeah anyway this sort of the WordPress community
Tries to be very inclusive but some at some point there are limits to that so not everybody can just travel to word camps where they invited to speak already where they would like to speak even if what comes are meant to be local I think it’s absolutely important
That there is a diversity in voices that that are going to share their knowledge and also in attendees so ourselves raising funds for for this charity project and my team colleagues at WP enough thought it would be a great idea actually to to maybe that in in in a
Similar way but walking 3,000 kilometers from Berlin to Porto would probably have been too much of an effort so they came up with the idea to do that by bike and this project is actually meant to raise awareness for physical and mental health inside the WordPress community and also
To demonstrate how these two are interconnected so you’re going to be able to follow the progress of the riders along their journey why they are preparing for the big adventure but also during the 30 days of biking there’s going to be a documentary filmed so
There’s going to be a TV crew with us for the 30 days and and also there’s some footage filmed in between and in during the press and there’s gonna be live streams during the 30 days and also the writers like myself we’re gonna share about how we gonna evolve like
Mentally and physically during the preparation how long is that it so you said 30 days how what’s the distance yeah it’s 3,000 kilometers and we’re gonna try to accomplish that long distance in 30 days and it’s gonna our journey is gonna bring us through six countries so we’re gonna start in
Germany in Berlin and then we’re gonna drive through part of the Netherlands through Belgium to France through Spain and from Spain to Porto and so the most exciting thing about the route at the moment is that we are planning to do the full camino of francis through Spain so this means
We’re gonna do this this famous pilgrim road starting from Pamplona to Santiago de Compostela Wow by bike gosh that sounds great so so the project is several people gonna be riding bikes to raise awareness for mental health issues and free wpn up their biking from Berlin to where
Wordcamp europe was last year to Porto which is where work camp Europe is gonna be this year is you mentioned Marcel Boltzmann we we chatted with him last year before and after his hike is he gonna be happy all have you talked him into riding a bike per part of this
Project of course I mean like I said Marcel was the hugest biggest inspiration we could have for this project so we wanted to make sure from the start that he can be involved if he liked to be involved and I’m in close contact with Marcel and so we were
Chatting a few days ago and so I am regularly keeping him updated about the route and about the evolution of the project and he’s very interested at least in joining us for part of the journey I mean I’m not sure if he’s if we can ask him to stay away from his
Family another 30 days second year in a row but we would absolutely love to get him involved at some point and so far he would love that too so I’m pretty comprehensive as you can imagine a project of this scale needs a lot of planning and so from the logistical side that that’s
Actually where I came in and the safety of our writers and their Val being is a priority number one so there’s really a lot to organize and so at the moment I think we are we are well set up for everything that is organization but if people from WordPress community and even
Outside want to get involved as writers we were publishing a few days ago a post or it’s it’s a page where people can register their interest to join us as writers so the URL would be a hat to org slash go and there is a forum where you
Can register your interest and then that will help us to plan a bit a bit more from which countries people want to join us and that’s also it is also a good point where I wanted to say that we are currently planning the details of the
Route and we are trying to develop a plan where riders can join us from different countries and also for for different durations so there’s going to be a possibility to join us for one day there’s going to be possibilities to join us for three days and there’s also
Going to be a possibility hopefully to join us for the full Camino through Spain which is like an exciting adventure right and so that would be one way to get involved like biking with us that would be the main goal to have not only the riders that will do the full 30
Days that are from the wpn top team but to have as much community members joining us every now and then at different stages as possible it should be community effort and we would love to get as many people involved as we can reach out to so another way to
Contribute would actually be to donate to the chair and also we are always looking for partners and more information on that can be found on the official website of WP and up dot org so there’s different ways of getting involved and if you hear this and you find and you have a great
Idea to get involved in some other way please feel free to reach out to us via the slack channel the WP and op dot org slash slack and there’s also an email address which would be support at WP and op dot org well that’s fantastic and I
Do want to suggest also checking out WP and org there’s a podcasts there’s list of events there’s the the hubs like you mentioned there’s a lot of good resources there so it’s it’s excellent work and caring Carol thank you so much for joining us today for this for this
Episode looking forward as it gets closer to two wordcamp europe i’m looking forward to maybe checking back in with you guys and seeing seeing how things are going yeah there will be awesome and maybe you can join us for a ride and thanks for having me again it was a great pleasure
Thank you very much girl bye bye thank you bye bye you