19th May 2022
By U.P.R.I.S.I.N.G Chairman Nath Lockley
Wow! How has it been a whole year already?
A little over 12 months ago, I was posting in other Facebook groups for UFO sightings and paranormal groups and I was finding more and more people becoming disheartened with the subjects. They were posting their opinions or their evidence and they were being immediately belittled and made to feel stupid by others in the groups and so they would delete their posts and leave the group. I hated this as these people could have legitimate evidence, or may have in the future and would now not feel safe to share it. I found myself spending more and more time reporting bullying comments and trying to convince these people not to give up on the subjects.
I was talking to Luna about this and how bad it made me feel to see every day and so she told me I should start my own group, a safe place for these people to go to share their ideas without fear of ridicule.
So on the 19th of May 2021, I created the U.P.R.I.S.I.N.G Facebook group and immediately started inviting these people from other groups. I honestly assumed that maybe we would get around 100 people to join, but within a few weeks, as word spread, the numbers started growing QUICKLY! As the number of members grew, we had to add more and more mods to help keep the group a safe place. And as I write this we have over 2700 people in the group. We have had quite a few join that didn’t seem to get what the group was about, or that found the rules hard to stick to and so they were removed.
We now have a huge community of amazing people and a great team of admin and mods and I feel humbled and amazed every day at what we have been able to create. I even see more and more groups seeing our popularity and success and copying our rules, which is fantastic. This means people will feel safer coming forward and sharing their experiences without fear of being belittled, regardless of what groups they are in.
I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank each and every one of you, every member of the U.P.R.I.S.I.N.G group. YOU are what made this group the amazing place it is. This is, and always will be, YOUR group. I can only hope that you are all as happy with it as I am. This group has seriously changed my life. The paraverse Live show would never have happened if it wasn’t for the group so I also want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has watched or listened to any of our ever-growing shows.
So now, we can look towards the next year. What’s in store?
Well, thanks to the success of the recent sky watch, we will definitely be organising more chances for us to all meet each other. We are already in the process of planning the next skywatch and there are even rumours of camping trips to places such as Rendlesham forest etc.
We look forward to meeting more of you in the near future, and again, a huge thank you from me, Luna and the whole admin/mod team. We love you all!