December 2021 Community Update!

Happy New Year!

Every New Year I do a little year end exercise with my family. We do a retrospective on the last year. We revisit goals and hopes we had and talk about ways we have changed. Then, we envision the new year and map out goals, hopes and dreams etc. The following year we revisit what we outlined. We don’t take it too seriously. It is mostly fun. It can also be good to talk through any surprises that surfaced. Like - I thought X would happen, but Y happened instead.

If you all would like to participate then you can share your thoughts here.

Heather (H)

As we approach 2022, I am reflecting on everything we’ve accomplished this year. We’ve doubled down on safety, scaled leadership (we now have 16 active Ambassadors!) and introduced the Academy, just to name a few achievements. Have you reflected on your journey this year? You might be surprised to see how far you have come!

We have recently streamlined our feedback process through the creation of a one-stop form for site/feature suggestions. We received 30+ submissions thus far, and I’d like to highlight some of the items we reviewed that we can action:

1. We’ll be removing the Crisis mention on this page ASAP.

2. Updated broken link on the Crisis help page.

3. We received ideas for optimizing the Sharing Circle space, and we will be working on creating a pop-up box or similar feature to host the rules. Stay tuned!

4. Some of you signalled a desire for team building activities / game nights / friendship making oriented events and activities. We’re always happy to support more group activities. If you have ideas, or you would like to get involved in organizing an event (team work makes the dream work!), please contact ASilentObserver for Group Support or Listener Chatroom track or CheeryMango for Subcommunities.

5. Having a sort of meet-and-greet, like group chats, for people who have been there for under a week. - See above for the contacts on how to get involved, if you’re an interested or aspiring leader! The more people willing to pitch in, the better the chances are of these kinds of ideas taking off and sustaining!

6. Update the Coaching emails. We will be tackling this as part of our Q1 OKRs!

7. We will also be doing our best to give you all advance notice of any future changes that may impact certain domains and the community broadly.

Obviously this is just a high level overview. Anything not mentioned tech-wise is not possible at this time. For smaller items, or items I am unclear on, I have been reaching out individually. If you want to inquire about something you submitted, feel free to drop me an email heather.nelson@7cups.com

Looking forward to another great year serving you!

Laiba

In Academy news, the academy team has been checking in with graduates to get feedback on academy programs to improve our Alumni experience. Additionally, we had academy meetings for trainees, grads and mentors to get constructive feedback regarding the academy to help us improve our academy. We have been working with academy leaders to tighten the academy programs and improve trainee experience. You will see more changes announced in the next month's update. You can also submit academy feedback here.

Moreover, we updated our academy certificate font so that all letters of the font can be easily read and we updated the dimensions so it perfectly fits an A4 paper landscape. The Academy Hub rooms were made pop-up and are now available to be used for sessions. @Anotherfrenchtoastclub and @Ouicherie hosted Academy Event: Secret Santa Squad event for the holiday season. Lastly, expect to see more social media posts for 7 Cups Academy in the coming year! You can see our social media channels here.

Obs

On the Group Support, we rolled out the Group Support Feedback Survey to get the community’s feedback on their experiences in the chatrooms in 2021. If you haven't taken it yet, please click here to share your thoughts. Also, we posted a short survey on Neurodiverse in order to improve and increase support for our neuro-diverse group of the community. Also, we were working on creating an action plan for 2022 and other items to better the group support. We will share more updates in detail soon.

From the Listener Chatroom track, the key update is that we made Chat Support Training compulsory for all Mentors, regardless of track, in order to improve the Chat Support coverage for the listeners community. For more information, please read here!

In the Leadership News, we onboarded two Ambassadors: @rachsxo and @amazingnutella24 as well as @Peaceloveandpaws as the newest Mentor Leader in the Group Support Team.

And, on the events front, this holiday season we organized a bunch of different events to celebrate, spread joy, share our wishes, compassion and support together. Gift of the Gratitude, Group Support Marathon: New Year's Eve Edition and Christmas Party organized by Commod Team.

SoulfullyAButterfly

During this month, we have continued to work on several topic pages that connect our articles, topic-based questions and answers, sub-community, and growth paths. We will be continuing to do so as we move forward into the New Year! To join us in creating more content and getting your work verified/recommended, join the Content Volunteer Team by applying here

In more content news, our Q&A Approval Team has expanded to 11 team members and we have cleared around 3K community submissions including the approved answers that are now published! Team Lightship continues to showcase our community spirit online - we now have 20 lightshippers and the team is looking forward to meeting more interested teammates and leaders!

Speaking of social media, we now have a new role for everyone interested in social media and marketing! The Marketing Assistant role will help us scale our social media presence while promoting quality content and other updates on our official social media channels. To learn more and apply, please click here.

In translation project updates, we are finalizing our French, Arabic as well as Chinese app projects! We have also updated the Spanish app project this month. A big thank you to all of our translators who stepped up to help completely translate these projects - some special mentions go to @Kel33blu and @OrganizedChaos25 for translating and proofreading the French app project, @Aishabm @butterflymona2562004, and @MMES for being active members of the Arabic app translation team, and @jovialSunshine5049 for helping with the Chinese proofreading being finalized!

We continue to work towards translating 7 Cups to more languages - if you are able to commit some time to help complete our translation projects, you can apply after reading our most recent Help Wanted listing post here

EvelyneRose

Happy New Year to all! We’ve had a great year! Listener Coaching Team was restructured and is going strong. Care Team has become a quality track team and has more than doubled in its purpose to provide care to listeners. We also restructured the Anonymous Evaluations Team and gained new Quality Ambassadors @Mango3 and @RebekahRoyal! This month we worked on creating an outreach team for listener coaching visibility! If you need a Coach or want to practice skills, please reach out to @Mango3! We also have addressed safety issues and continue to further that knowledge through the Safety Awareness Team. We will continue to build up our quality initiatives. Please reach out if you are interested in joining!