This week, the 20 Roots of Progress blog-building fellows will write their first essay of five essays in the 8-week blog-building intensive. You can play a key role in helping them grow as progress intellectuals by engaging with them here on the Progress Forum.

We’re encouraging our fellows to use this community as a sounding board to improve their work. They will come to you with essay ideas—and you can help them by sharing your perspectives. They’ve already started to post questions that they are researching—and your expertise will help them find the best sources and data more quickly. They will post essay drafts—and you can engage with them in shaping both their ideas and in improving the clarity of their thinking and writing. And, of course, they’ll also post their finished essays—which you can then amplify by sharing them in your own network.

To date, much of what has happened here has been sharing great finished writing—it’s been a good place to catch up on all the great work getting done.

But the Progress Forum can be much more: it can be a place where we help each other grow. Everyone here is invited to do what the fellows will do:

• Ask questions on topics you’re researching
• Post about ideas you have that you’d like help thinking through
• Share drafts of your writing before you publish it

The progress community is such a great group of people in part because we value intellectual debate, done in kind, benevolent spirit. We all grow when we test ideas with each other, with a generally sympathetic audience that can help us hone our thinking. Writing doesn’t need to be a solo endeavor: let’s use the Progress Forum to bring a social element to all of our writing!

This week can be the start: please welcome the Roots of Progress blog-building fellows to this community—and help them with your unique insights. Let the co-creating begin!