The League of Pragmatic Optimists Launches in Wellington

The League of Pragmatic Optimists (LOPO) is launching the first chapter in the Southern Hemisphere on Wednesday 10th October, in the Lounge at Southern Cross from 6.30 pm. Join your LOPO hosts Chelfyn & Helen Baxter and Elf Eldridge to support local projects and ‘engineer serendipity’. RSVP - http://lopowellington1.eventbrite.co.nz

The Wellington LOPO Launch Projects will be:

● Wellington Vertical Garden - who said cities have to be grey? Creating living walls, green roofs, and vertical vegetation plots among the urban landscape.

● Chalke - Six degrees of education on subjects such as thrifty gardening and zombie special effect makeup. http://chalkle.com

● pasture Harmonies - how can ‘NZ Inc’ become the global custodians of responsible pastoralism? http://pastureharmonies.org/

● LOPO Wellington - help make the League of Pragmatic Optimists a force for local and global good.

The League of Pragmatic Optimists is a meeting place in cities and towns across the globe where people who want to make the world better can meet, generate ideas and projects, get inspiration and a recharge, find collaborators and have their neurons tickled in the cause of improving the story of humanity.

Another way of looking at it is as an exercise in ‘engineered serendipity’ – a mechanism for diverse people and ideas to bump into each other and create (and deliver) projects that aim to improve things.

LOPO has eight core principles

1. An unashamed optimism of ambition about the future 2. A pragmatic focus. Chapters meet to help people do, not just talk. (Or, if you’re a mouth on legs, you probably won’t be invited back) 3. Members involve themselves in projects that are ‘bigger than me’ 4. There is a strong belief that ideas become more powerful when they are shared, not protected 5. Your stories and opinions are nice, but your evidence is better 6. Making mistakes is OK, but not trying is irresponsible 7. Members strive to police their own cynicism, and keep it in check 8. LOPO is a-political and diverse. All stripes are welcome but don’t come to promote your stripes + one (loosely enforced) ‘rule’: ● You cannot leave a LOPO meeting without adding at least one item to your ‘to-do’ list – and your ticket into the next meeting is that list with at least one task crossed off.

Where are we today?

The LOPO subscriber list is growing daily and chapters are ready to be set up across the globe (e.g. New York, Boston, Sydney, Singapore, Madrid, Auckland etc).

Where we want to go?

We aim to have a chapter of LOPO in every city and major town on the planet. Our priority is to grow the network both online and physically to create critical mass, providing tools for people to set up chapters, attract members, organise meetings and events, make partnerships, kick-off and deliver projects.

Want to join us? Thought you did.

Website: http://leagueofpragmaticoptimists.org Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LeagueOfPragmaticOptimists Twitter: http://twitter.com/lopoptimists Submit your project to the LOPO Wellington team for an upcoming event! Email: Helen Baxter - msbehaviour@gmail.com