We’re doing cool things!

For the last month, we’ve been working with the amazing Youth Action Fund. They’ve provided us with a platform and resources to expand our mission.

Recently, with their support, we were able to table at Florida Atlantic University to start building up our new task force.

With the task force, we want to help mobilize people who want to make a
difference by offering volunteer opportunities and even providing resources for people who want to do their own organizing.

If you’re interested in joining, sign up here!

What’s Happening South Florida?

A reminder to join Pana Social!

Pana Social is the first-ever hyperlocal social media platform! We’ve built it to connect South Floridians like never before. The platform will help creatives find
creatives, list local job postings, and help Floridians find and work
with each other.

We’re officially over 200 members and growing, get in while the going is hot!

Inspired by the golden era of Twitter, we want to bring social media back to its
roots, making it something useful and connective. We want to give
people the tools to reach their community.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Check out Pana Social!

How to Help after Hurricane Melissa

Right before Halloween,
hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica, marking the strongest storm to make
landfall on the island nation in 174 years. The 185mph storm, one of the
strongest Atlantic storms in history, hit near New Hope, claiming trees, power lines, and causing landslides.

The shear damage may have a slow and arduous cleanup, officials say.

“There
is no infrastructure in the region that can withstand a Category 5,”
Prime Minister Andrew Holness said. “The question now is the speed of
recovery. That’s the challenge.”

Jamaica relies heavily on tourism, with some estimates saying that it makes up over half of its GDP. Much of its tourism infrastructure was affected.

“Overall, just about 60%, perhaps, of our tourism assets were affected by the
hurricane,” Edmund Bartlett, Jamaica’s minister of tourism, told NPR.
“The extent to which the damages were done ranges from extreme in one
instance - in only one instance - to moderate and in a much lighter
way.”

Even now, weeks after the storm, the recovery effort is ongoing and will continue for the foreseeable future. Florida is home to the largest population of Jamaicans in the
US, at over 312,000, so supporting the recovery effort may support your neighbor’s family, or maybe your neighbor themself.

Here are a few ways you can help:

The Jamaican Women of Florida (JWOF) is collecting relief items, including canned and non-perishable foods, tarps, and generators. For the full list and drop-off locations, see this post.

Global Empowerment Mission is accepting donations and requesting volunteers to help assemble emergency kits at its Doral warehouse.

The Fort Lauderdale Diaper Bank is accepting donations and material support. Visit this page for drop-off locations and additional information.

Beyond these, the Miami Foundation has an awesome post highlighting many other organizations in the Caribbean and abroad.

Subscribe to the Pana Post!

Have you checked out our Substack, the Pana Post?

Some stories require more depth and analysis, and that’s what we’re doing over on our Substack!

Here’s a taste of what we have cooking over there:

Why Local News Matters

Part of my role at Pana MIA is to disseminate local happenings, news, and
things important to our community. Do we have any events approaching?
Maybe a meaningful local election is around the corner. What’s happening
with the Miami bridge project? The tri-county area is busy, heavily
populated, and near impossible to keep up with.

To accurately navigate the world around them, people need to be informed.
This is the role journalism plays in a functional society. Journalists
serve as watchdogs for power, challenging and unearthing corruption, and
in turn, protect the interests of the layman. But that role is not only
under attack but also shrinking.

Since 2002, the population of the US has increased by over 100 million, while the number of journalists shrank by 75%. A joint project between the journalism platform Muckrack and the nonprofit Rebuild
Local News unveiled just how bad the situation across the country is.

In 2002, there were about 40 local journalists per 100,000 residents, down
to about 10 now. In Florida, the numbers are even worse, with just
under 6 local journalists per 100,000 residents. Palm Beach County is
one of the worst in the entire country, with just over two and a half
journalists. Broward and Dade are better, but only Broward is above the
national average of local journalists, with 8.7 journalists per 100,000
residents....

Read more about it when the piece goes live! Make sure you subscribe!

If you want to hear more, you’ll just have to subscribe!

We’re also going to be hosting other publications based in South Florida over there! South Florida is an untapped community of artists and creatives. There are so many different independent publications uplifting that work, but they don’t receive the attention they deserve. Keep an eye out for a new and refreshing way to discover local publications from all over South
Florida!

Subscribe to the Pana MIA Post!

Pana MIA Project Incubator

We’ve realized that for Pana MIA to scale its impact, we need to resource and platform changemakers and visionaries. Have an idea for a creative project that brings people together? Schedule some time in our calendar where we’ll chat about ways we can support you in bringing this idea to life.

Introducing the first creative project powered by Pana MIA:

Heatwave Visions

Heatwave Visions Journal is a publication featuring local South Florida
multimedia art, including fiction, visual art, poetry, and photography.
Heatwave Visions Journal was created to provide accessible ways for
emerging artists to get published and to cultivate a strong sense of
community among creatives in South Florida. Follow the journal on Instagram to learn more and stay in the loop about open calls and release dates.

If you’ve read this far, you must really care about our mission and the work we are doing.

If you believe that our platform will help local communities connect and thrive, consider supporting us monthly.

Membership tiers range from $10 to $25 a month. We really appreciate your
contribution to making Pana MIA a sustainable, independent community,
free of corporate interest.

Learn How YOU Can Support Pana MIA !

Don’t have the disposable income? Help Pana MIA become a local staple. Tell everyone about us and use our directory, or consider volunteering.

Thank you for supporting our project!

In Community,

Anette, Clari, y Tessa

Pana MIA Club Team

But in case you don’t remember us, allow us to reintroduce ourselves.

Pana MIA Club is South Florida’s 1st hyper-local connection platform. We are building an open-access, intuitive platform
that seamlessly connects you to all things locally based in South
Florida. If you’re interested in supporting and learning more about our
work, [click here].

Friendship. At its core, that’s what Pana MIA is about.

According to Anette, it laid the foundation for her and Clari’s friendship.

“After a chance meeting, Claribel and I met and formed one of those life-altering type bonds. The kind that changes your perspective on
everything around you, even yourself. It inspired us to expand our
thinking around what was possible for each other and our community that
we had grown to love.

We entertained a powerful question– What if?

What if more people could feel this kind of support, this kind of community? What if we could build that infrastructure for social connection, specifically for South Florida (even though we had no idea how )?

Fast forward three years, and we’ve now built South Florida’s first hyper-local directory, platforming hundreds of projects, creators, and businesses.

That’s where we come back to you.

We’re entering our year of growth, expanding on our initial mission, and working
to continue building connectivity throughout South Florida.

The Future is Local— and we want you to be a part of it!

Re-Meet Our Founders!

Our lovely Anette and Clari are the reason we’re here today. To them, like most of us, South Florida is home. A beautiful place full of weird and interesting people. A
cultural pot. It’s that culture that inspired them to start Pana MIA.

South Florida, like much of the US, struggles with community bonds. American
individualism pushes many of us to look out for ourselves and maybe our closest loved ones. But communities that look out for each other are communities that thrive, and Anette and Clari set out to build that.

We’re expanding our team!

We’re happy to introduce our new Editor-in-Chief, Tessa! She, along with our communications team, is with us to help us expand our reach and mission.

She’s a Florida girl at the core, living in Broward her entire life. She joins our project to connect our diverse community.

Her background is in journalism, running her own queer newsletter, but
she’s also worked in organizing, non-profits, and is a craft bartender.

Now, she joins Pana MIA to help our growth!

What’s Happening South Florida?

We’re excited to announce Pana Social!

Pana Social is the first-ever hyperlocal social media platform! We’ve built it to connect South Floridians like never before. The platform will help creatives find
creatives, list local job postings, and help Floridians find and work
with each other.

Inspired by the golden era of Twitter, we want to bring social media back to its roots, making it something useful and connective.

We’re so excited to share this with you, and can’t wait to see you there!

Check out Pana Social!

The Pana MIA Post

We’re reporting news now!
An informed community is a strong community, and so we want to highlight
things going on around the three South Florida counties.

We’re going to highlight stories like the ongoing Miami bridge project, local
politics, and businesses and organizations doing good work in the
community.

On the aforementioned Bridge Project

You'd better be okay with traffic in downtown Miami, because it’s not getting better anytime soon. The Florida Department of Transportation pushed back the
“Signature Bridge Project’s” expected completion date from 2027 to 2029,
and the proposed budget increased from $818 million to $866 million.

Officials say that the project will improve congestion for drivers and
pedestrians, as well as “redefine the Miami skyline with six sweeping
arches.”

Locals aren’t so excited, comparing the same arches with McDonald’s signs.

“With this latest delay, what was to be a five-year project has bloated into a
decade-long $840 million bottleneck,” Transit Alliance Miami executive director Cathy Dos Santos told the Miami New Times. “What that means is four more years of lane closures and traffic delays for the residents who rely on one of Miami-Dade’s busiest arterials. Instead of letting us drown in traffic, Tallahassee could listen to the nearly 80 percent of Miami-Dade voters who support mass rapid transit solutions and fund
capital investments through the New Starts Transit Program – not defund
the program as they did during the last legislative session.”

We’re also starting a Substack!

Some stories require more depth and analysis. To that end, we’re planning on going deeper into stories that we think deserve it here!

For example, there’s a massive anti-LGBTQ+ movement in Florida, going back
to at least the first institution of “Don’t Say Gay,” now manifesting in
the removal of pride art on streets around the state. This would
require deeper insight to fully grasp the powers as play. In comes our
Substack!

Subscribe now

Our Pana Pub Sampler

Another project splintering off of our newsletter is the pub sampler.

South Florida is an untapped community of artists and creatives. There are so many different independent publications uplifting that work, but they don’t receive the attention they deserve. Keep an eye out for a new and refreshing way to discover local publications from all over South
Florida! COMING SOON

Other Updates:

Pana MIA Project Incubator

We’ve realized that for Pana MIA to scale its impact, we need to resource and platform changemakers and visionaries. Have an idea for a creative project that brings people together? Schedule some time in our calendar where we’ll chat about ways we can support you in bringing this idea to life.

Introducing the first creative project powered by Pana MIA:

Heatwave Visions

Heatwave
Visions Journal is a publication featuring local South Florida
multimedia art, including fiction, visual art, poetry, and photography.
Heatwave Visions Journal was created to provide accessible ways for
emerging artists to get published and to cultivate a strong sense of
community among creatives in South Florida. Follow the journal on Instagram to learn more and stay in the loop about open calls and release dates.

If you’ve read this far, you must really care about our mission and the work we are doing.

If you believe that our platform will help local communities connect and thrive, consider supporting us monthly.

Membership tiers range from $10 to $25 a month. We really appreciate your
contribution to making Pana MIA a sustainable, independent community,
free of corporate interest.

Learn How YOU Can Support Pana MIA !

Don’t have the disposable income? Help Pana MIA become a local staple. Tell everyone about us and use our directory or consider volunteering.

Thank you for supporting our project!

In Community,

Anette, Clari, y Tessa

Pana MIA Club Team