Join us for a WLD celebration - and making a difference in West Leeds

I should start this message with an apology. I realise we probably don’t communicate with our supporters anywhere near as often as we should.

My apologies for this - and it’s certainly something I’m keen to put right, as we really value your support of independent community led journalism.

Firstly I have a date for your diary. We’re celebrating our 11th birthday and the incredible work of all our volunteers with a special get together at Bramley Villagers Club in Broad Lane (6.30pm) on Thursday, 4 June.

We’d love you to join us so we can thank you for your support, too.

The event will be informal. There will be food and refreshments and we will be presenting badges and certificates of achievements to our community reporters.

If you’re free to attend, please RSVP to our community reporter support worker Jean Hollings on jean@westleedsdispatch.com (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), so we can keep on top of catering numbers.

Here at WLD we don’t monitor our success just on the number of views visit the site (page impressions) - although at the time of writing we have had more than 819,000 page views so far this year.

And although we’re very proud of it we don’t measure based on the number of articles we publish (we had a record 42 last week - more than half by our community reporters).

Our success comes from the impact we have in our community. Let me share some more figures with you. The number of people attending a group for women who have been late diagnosed with ADHD roughly treble to 27 for its next meeting - thanks to community reporter Noah Roberts’ article.

We’ve heard from other groups and organisations who tell us people have attended their activities for the first time following our coverage.

So far this year, there have been more than 12,500 ‘clicks’ on links from readers taking them to planning and licensing applications on Leeds City Council’s website.

Links to council reports have been clicked on almost 1,000 times by readers.

And it’s not just the council. Pudsey Wellbeing Charity’s website has been visited more than 250 times thanks to us. We referred more than 200 people to G&H’s apprenticeship page. It’s all about connecting people to what’s happening in the community, empowering people to become more active - and to make a difference.

That’s what we think good journalism should do. Make a difference to people’s lives and galvanise the community. It should add social value.

We hope to see you on 4 June. By supporting us you’re playing an invaluable role in helping all this happen and we couldn’t do it without you.

Thanks you.

• John Baron, Editor and co-founder