August 2020 Community Update!

Hello Community!

I hope you all have had a nice summer. The autumn is beginning to show up here with cooler temperatures. I love the fall - sweaters and jeans and coffee outdoors!

Ive been spending this month thinking a lot about our community. We have launched a number of initiatives (quality, content, leadership) that are having an exponential impact on strengthening our community. It is great and encouraging to see.

One initiative Ive been talking with the CM team about is the Leadership Development Program (LDP). It is off to a very strong start. People seem very interested and engaged. We are working out some kinks and learning a lot in the process. I believe this will end up being a central part of our work on 7 Cups.

One lesson that these new leaders taught me was that we needed to be more explicit about our culture, values, and mission. Several were surprised that we had all conceptualized all of these elements and that there was a strong philosophical foundation that supported the work we do here. It is almost like the culture guide was on a nearby island. We were doing all of the work on 7 Cups proper (the mainland), but few people visited culture island. The LDP built a bridge to that island. Now people can go back and forth between culture island and 7 Cups.

Right now that bridge is a sort of footbridge. We will soon be expanding the LDP so that it can become a major bridge to support millions of people walking back and forth. Part of this involves expanding the accessibility of the LDP to members. Look for more on this soon from @Heather225.

Here is a visual Ive been working on to help capture this circle of growth:

On a different note, Im excited to be sharing more about a new feature that we hope to be releasing in the next several weeks. It is called the growth path playlist. Ill be posting more details later today or tomorrow and would welcome feedback on how we can make it stronger.

Thank you all for helping us learn and playing an active role in strengthening our community. I very much appreciate your efforts and support. Please find updates below from other folks working hard alongside all of you to move us forward!

H:

Hello, lovely people! August was a busy month for project development! As Glen mentioned, the Leadership Development Program (LDP) is in full swing. We started it in July, bringing on a new group of students at the beginning of each month. We are now officially two months into it, and I have been monitoring how it flows and making improvements to streamline the process. I am excited to say that as of last week, we have established a solid structure that will make this program easy to understand and navigate! It now operates similarly to the Internship Program, which has a very steady foundation and great success rate. You can read more about what to expect from the LDP in this FAQ.

I am also excited to announce that the LDP is now open to members! Everyone can be a leader here, and we want to empower you to become your very best! If you, a member, are interested in leadership, check out the last slide in this deck for a list of opportunities!

Big shoutout to @Aleks2 for taking the lead on managing the success of this track! Aleks2 started out at a TA for LDP, and through drive and dedication, he is now a course mentor as well! Aleks is the primary point of contact for all coursework related questions.

Also huge thanks to @SoulfullyAButterfly for working on launching a mentorship initiative within the program, and @Lucy2 who has recently stepped in to work alongside Soulfully to guide the new leaders going through the course!

If youd like to sign up for the program, were now accepting applications for September! Enroll here!

And of course, feedback is how we evolve, so if you have any ideas on how to make the program better, we would be happy to hear from you!

Weve also been brainstorming some fun creative ways for our entire community to collaborate on, and one of them I thought of while chatting with the ambassadors was a music compilation project! Music is powerful stuff capable of universally connecting people worldwide. Being someone who relates very personally to music and uses it to express myself, Ive often wondered what songs you all associate with 7 Cups, so I thought we should collect them and compile our own community playlist! Please hop into this post and make a recommendation: When you think of 7 Cups, what songs do you hear? Very excited to see your responses!

Thank you for lifting each other up each and every day! Im so proud of you!

Programs Update by @SoulfullyAButterfly:

We have exciting news on the Translations Team front, as we have completed the Chinese Simplified project! The remarkable achievement was made possible by 3 team members showing how unity can go a long way regardless of how many people are involved for one purpose! Help celebrate and congratulate our designated team leader for Chinese Simplified @IamCecilia and team-mates @Violiness and @Amberbird >here<

This month, weve reached 87,837 available translations for our 44 available languages. We continue to seek help for Hindi and Spanish (Proofreading Only) and have been working on Turkish and Indonesian language projects as well. Moving forward, we will be actively working on Arabic, French/French (CA) and other languages!

If you would like to help out in these or other languages please consider applying through this form

Our designated leaders continue to help coordinate the project. If you would like to step up and help out by being a designated leader for a language group, please PM @SoulfullyAButterfly.

Exciting news is that we are now considering interested translators who are not 7 Cups users to join the project (and if interested, 7 Cups) in an effort to help globalize 7 Cups and mental health support and awareness. Know someone who might be interested in this experience? Keep an eye out for the interest form to be alerted later this week!

The Content Volunteer Team is excited to keep the Expert Mental Health News and Advice section updated frequently - this opportunity will allow you to not only read write-ups from our great content team but also our expert therapists!

Moreover, content from our Question and Answer Pages will now be frequently published on our social media channels! This will also help not only promote our great community but spread mental health awareness and support.

When there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved - Mattie Stepanek

It is exciting to see the community collaborating towards great things like awareness and support - two of the wonderful things we have!

Quality Update by Evelyne

We are continuing to pilot quality initiative projects that aim to increase quality across the board. The New Listener Support Team, run by @asthebeesays, has started as a pilot program. This team is taking a proactive approach at quality, reaching out to new listeners as soon as they have joined the community in order to make sure they are supported from the very beginning of their listener journey. New listeners are being trained in listener chat basics, site rules and navigation, and proactively addressing any possible difficult scenarios. We are trying to take a deep dive into learning so that listeners will feel more prepared during their first steps on the site.

We are also gathering feedback from the community on the motivations for listeners blocking or ghosting a chat. If you are interested in filling this out, please do so here! We will take all the feedback and analyze the data in order to improve processes where need be.

On a more focused level, In an effort to strengthen our quality project teams and initiatives, we are doing the following:

We are working hard to onboard diverse leaders from all backgrounds and walks of life. @Gracey joined us as a Quality Ambassador this month! She has been here for years, so she knows this community from the ground up. Gracey will be acting as my assistant, helping me with quality initiatives. We are also adding a new Mentor Leader to the Quality leadership team! @JennMarie2 will be the new Mentor Leader for the Safety Patrol Outreach Team. JennMarie will be helping out with training, feedback, and a few other duties to help SPOT run smoothly and efficiently. Welcome Jenn!

We also are aiming to refine the quality mentor training process. Quality Mentors help drive our projects to success, so it is important to have a robust training process. We plan on creating an official Quality Mentor Training Team that will train new Quality Mentors. The team will help them learn the ropes of Quality Mentoring and all that entails, as well as emphasize the important qualities of leadership. Thank you to @AlwaysEli for their help with the initial drafting stages. If anyone would like to join the team that is already a Quality Mentor, please let me know! This team is forthcoming, still a few things to flesh out.

Lastly, working in tandem with admin leadership and @QuietMagic, we are still parsing through Anonymous Evaluations feedback, tweaking, and determining a solution that will hopefully fit the community. If youd like to leave any thoughts about this or learn more about it, please feel free to drop them in my thread here!

If anyone has any questions, ideas, concerns, or thoughts, please drop by my forum section and put them in the appropriate section :) Thank you!

Laiba/Hope

It was an exciting month for our sub-communities 20 sub-communities came together to host the self-esteem challenge which lasted for 20 days. It was great to see such collaboration and teamwork, made possible by the efforts of our sub-community ambassador @Tazzie. Additionally, the ‘sub-communities coverage group initiative was launched to present an opportunity for volunteer listeners to get involved in sub-communities by supporting our leaders with coverage needs. Moreover, efforts were made to organize the general support and relationship sub-community. On the leadership front, 13 new community mentors and one more Community Mentor Leader joined the sub-community leadership team. Our sub-communities continue to strive for more leadership coverage, support and engagement. We are grateful for all those who lead and participate in our sub-communities.

On the forum front, the forum team has been focusing on forum safety, moderation and support. Under the leadership of @Mel and team, our forum team continues to work towards providing support and ensuring that the forum guidelines are being followed. In an effort to further support the needs reply team initiatives, @ListeningSarinn was on boarded as a Project Agent for the Forum Team to work with the needs reply team and further focus on clearing the Needs Reply Que. Additionally, @River (our Forum Mentor Leader) has been consistently posting team check-ins and assisting with forum operations. Last but not least, 9 new forum supporters were onboarded since the last update. We are proud of our forum teams efforts and are grateful for their consistent focus on support and safety.

It has been an eventful month for our Internship Project. @Anusha joined us as an Internship ambassador, we are very excited to see the impact she makes as an ambassador. She has taken over final evaluations processing and final eval reminder emails among other tasks. Her passion and dedication is much appreciated. But that is not all! @anotherfrenchtoastmafiaa and @Magicallykermit58 became Internship Mentor Leaders. Both of them are passionate about the Internship and have been actively working to support the project. Now let's get to our stats! _ listeners joined the Internship program since our last update and 90 interns successfully completed their Internship trials to become active Interns whilst 36 interns successfully completed their Internship to become intern graduates. All this is made possible by the work of our Internship Mentors and the efforts of our Interns.

Last but not least, the teen community continues to thrive. Teens have consistently attended the weekly teen meetings on the listener and member side to provide feedback and ideas. As part of the pop-ups discussion relaunch, pop-ups were hosted in the friendship room along with regular scheduled sessions. Anyone who hosts a pop-up discussion in the friendship room received 50 cheers for each session. It is a fun event introduced to encourage teens to take a more active role in their community. In the teen only zone, ice-cream socials continue to happen thanks to @Hopedreamlove and @aeris156. On the group front, @TheAtticusFinch and @Hopedreamlove have been hard at work to recruit and support our discussion leaders. Additionally, to provide more support to teen listeners, @MistyMagic has developed and announced a plan to recognize those who provide support in the teen listener room. We are excited to see the impact this will have on our listener community.

In random news, we introduced the ‘Soul Searcher and the ‘Super Supporter badge for those who go above and beyond in supporting our platform through reviewing the 7 Cups of searching soul book and following us on social media. On the project tulip front, 70 listeners received tulips since the last update.

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Listener Sharing Circles

In the month of August, we launched the Listener Sharing Circle Initiative. It started to provide an inclusive and uninterrupted space to share ones listeners journey (accomplishments, learnings, challenges, experiences). We are running 4 sessions (2 AM, 8 AM, 2 PM, 8 PM) everyday for adult listeners and 2 sessions (4 AM & 4 PM) for teen listeners. @KristinHelps & @Asruu stepped up to lead the Listener Sharing Circle Team for Adults. A big shout out to our wonderful Listeners Team who discussed and brainstormed to help us revise the session script as per Listener Community needs and demands. We hosted a total 67 sessions in August, 2020.

Member Sharing Circles

Great efforts were made by Adult Support Team Leaders- @cheerfulrose & @cheerymango, discussion hosts, back up and on-spot hosts and the entire community to take these sessions on the next level. I am thankful to all to be proactive to ensure support and uninterrupted space to share for everyone. We added 4 more sessions in August. We are running 12 sessions for adults and 4 sessions for teens. We made changes and revised plans to support our community. We hosted a total 486 sessions during the month. We also added Sharing Circle Streak badges. Learn about them here!

We ran a short Sharing Circle Survey earlier in the month and here is a glimpse of some of the insights we received from the community-

Listener Experiences

I am thankful to all who participated in the Listener Survey & Listener Community Meeting during the month. We received valuable insights and inputs from our community and based on that we made some improvements plans to ensure all your concerns get addressed. Our Project Leaders make all efforts to bring the relevant changes. Like,

@LuluRings stepped up to help us reorganize and restructure the Listener Learning & Journey Subcommunity. They proposed some great ideas to simplify the structure and make the resources and navigation easy for any listener in the community.

@Mel @MistyMagic are working hard to bring more chat supporters in the Listener chat rooms and ensure we have good coverage for ongoing chat support. MistyMagic is also working to develop a follow up culture so all listeners who reach out for support can be followed up and provide further guidance and support.

@PenguinPower31 is working hard on bringing more listener discussions for the listener community.

@CheeryMango, @CheerfulRose, @KristinHelps @Asruu @DonaldDraper @StormyTimes, @compassionateendofarainbow, @sunisshiningandsoareyou, @dtanushree joined hands to draft some forum posts to ensure we minimize the unhealthy cliques in the listener chat rooms and encourage more of an inclusive listener community for all.

@HopeDreamLove helping us to bring more listener community oriented quizzes.

So, our listener chatroom and community leaders and listeners team putting all significant efforts to better the listener experiences.

Member Chat Rooms

The CommunityMod Team brainstormed and came up with some new initiatives to support our members in the chatrooms. They are working hard to keep the troublemakers & guidelines violators out of the chatrooms so everyone gets a supportive and comfortable experience in the rooms. They are working to raise the standards of safety and support level in the member chat rooms. Grateful to all members and listeners who supported them.

Group Support Leaders are working on an improvement plan to revive and streamline the topic discussions in the community and provide support to our existing support team leaders. We would likely to see more discussions on the topics like Anxiety, Depression, Self Harm, Positivity & Gratitude, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Relationship etc. Please stay tuned for the updates from @VickyP on this.

Group Support Leaders also added new room supporters, chat room moderators and doorkeepers to provide all support and help to our community members.

Quality Assurance

On the quality front, @evelynerose added the major progress above. Apart from them, the Verified Listener Program continued to guide and support listeners to become verified listeners. On an average of 40 listeners every week completing the mock chats. Listener Coaching Program providing coaching to averaged 100 listeners every week. Also, the Active Listening Tests (I, II, III & IV) program added more graders to the team to ensure swift grading, processing and badging for all those who completed the tests and passed it with flying colors. Also, those who didnt clear, they get all support and feedback from the leaders so they can re-attempt and pass these tests.

Social Media Team

Thanks to our small team to be proactive with posting wonderful contents on 7cups social media channels. We receive positive feedback from the subscribers of these channels as well as the community. We are glad you all are liking it.

Last but not the least, I was reading Compound Effect by Darrel Hardy earlier and there is an equation that fits well in our community context:

Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = Radical Differences

Thank you to you for being part of the community and helping us in your own way to support each other in our wonderful community. It is good to see how every small effort makes a significant difference.

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