February 2022 Community Update!

Hello Community!

I hope you all are well. It has been cold here and is now starting to warm up. The birds are singing and the daffodils are blooming. I enjoy the variety of the seasons but am always thankful when spring comes. I hope things are warming up for you!

I was talking to a friend several months ago about getting to the “new normal.” He said I worry about the “never normal.” The idea is that there will be more and more waves of challenges that we navigate as a global community. It seems like we find ourselves in the midst of another time of uncertainty. It is natural and good to look for solid ground during these times. 7 Cups, for me, is a rock - a solid group of people that reliably care for one another and look out for each other. I hope you find safety and strength here as we navigate through another period of uncertainty. We are in this together. We are thinking of you.

I want to thank all of you who have helped build out a growth path. The H Prize competition has ended. We are compiling the numbers and will start the expert judge review process soon. Stay tuned for details!

Additionally, I’ve been thinking more and more about flourishing lately. Part of flourishing involves having a sense of purpose or meaning. If you are interested in an exercise to help find your life’s purpose, then check out the one posted here. It can be interesting and help you better find your path in life.

Last, a big thank you to all of our listeners for being that safe haven and rock for so many. You never know who that person is on the other side of the chat. The compassion you provide is very powerful. As a community, we lift up tens of thousands of people each day. Let’s keep up the good work and get stronger and smarter through this period - just like we did through Covid-19. I’m very proud of all of you and what we have collectively accomplished.

With gratitude,
Glen

Heather

Hello, my friends! I know times are especially difficult right now, and I just want to take a second to express my gratitude to you as a community. I have noticed over the past couple years that as we navigate all the changes and hardships of our world, our community support system seems to grow stronger as we rally together. The level of resilience we as a collective community are building up in spite of everything is endlessly inspiring. I am so proud of us!

This month we highlighted two outstanding community contributors under our Leadership Spotlight: DonaldDraper and lovelyWhisper66

If you’d like to nominate someone for demonstrating great leadership qualities, please fill out this form!

Every month I review submissions to our Feedback form and present you all with an overview of the high-level items we are able to act.

One of the bigger items we are working on is updating and aligning our guidelines across the site (thank you to Obs for helping lead this!). The goal is to compile them all in one easy to the reference area. Stay tuned for more info on this. Items from the previous month are queued up to be processed.

Anything not mentioned tech-wise is not possible at this time. If you want to inquire about something you submitted, feel free to drop me an email at heather.nelson@7cups.com

Laiba

In Academy news, we started with orientation sessions for academy trainees and it has been a success. We have been working on finding coverage for academy orientation sessions. We updated the Academy Project Agent role to now include hosting academy sessions as a focus. We have been doing outreach for the role. If you are interested, apply here. To raise awareness about academy sub-communities, we started experimenting with sending specific academy sub-community-related alerts to academy trainees and graduates of that program.

Last but not least, a new ambassador @IcedEthan was added to the academy leadership team! They have already started working on their new role by facilitating the launch of the Internship weekly progress reports in the forum, more on this will be announced soon!

Obs

In Group Support News, we introduced the Support Team Plan - A Collaborative Effort but still didn’t implement it fully yet. The first grouping is done and thanks to @Sher217 for proactively taking lead on this and making it happen. We will be grouping other teams too as per the grouping plan.

In the Teen Community news, @Erato joined us as Community Mentor Leader - Teen Community to bring more support and structure to the teen community. If you haven't met them yet, please feel free to check in with them. Also, shout out to @kyleBorg and @29amy for working on the ideas to bring more support in the Teen Chatrooms and @emotionalTalker2260 for creating lovely and compassion-filled supportive forum threads. I am proud of our teen community and teens for looking out for each other and growing strong together.

While on the Listener Chatroom news, we introduced Listener Community-powered discussions that received positive feedback so far from all who attended them. It is easy, simple and any listener can host. All listeners may like to give it a try and have some lovely discussions with their fellow listeners in the listener chatrooms. Also, like to give a quick shout-out to @amazingnutella24 and @brightsunset61 for improving the Chat Support Queue response rate. It improved to 95% now which is a great accomplishment for the Chatroom team in order to bring more ongoing chat support to the listeners’ community.

SoulfullyAButterfly

The content world has a new leader - please join me in congratulating and welcoming our first project agent @Bre4Me who will be working closely with me and will be writing and editing content, supporting and mentoring content team members, and coordinating with other needs including working closely with marketing assistants. Congratulate them here.

We have been regularly updating our expert mental health news and advice section with Content Development and Marketing Program trainee/graduate, as well as other content team members, work - if interested in joining and contributing, feel welcome to PM me. We have also covered developing content for all our topic pages that serve as an amalgam of all content (articles, Q&As, growth paths, community) that comes under them.

In terms of marketing, we are working on a new social media strategy and will onboard the next group of marketing assistants very soon.

I have also announced the re-launch of the Power of the Pen group chat-based event which will now regularly be hosted - this is a nice group activity-based writing session that you can join to enjoy the power of writing and reflection. The first re-launch event will be held on the 2nd of March - more details here.

Our translation projects have also had a milestone achievement with the Hindi site being completely translated and proofread - shoutout to @FriendlyAnju777 for playing an important role in this completion and all our past/present translators who contributed to this project! Our translation projects are still up for applications - please read the most recent Help Wanted to post here.

EvelyneRose

This month was focused on quality roles! The Anonymous Evaluation Team added 4 new team members! The Listener Coaching Team had a record amount of requests culminating at 158. The Care Team has The Quality Mentor criteria were reviewed and we have revamped it to be more in line with other tracks. Want to help make a difference in quality? Apply here!

CheeryMango

From the subcommunities team, we have a few highlights from the month of February!

Firstly we’ve onboarded three project agents to the subcommunity leadership team to help with faster onboarding times to our subcommunity roles. A big congratulations go to @KyleBorg,@rrretsuko, and @Sher217 for stepping up to assist us!

Secondly, in leadership, we have onboarded 5 Forum Supporters, 9 Project Agents, and 1 Teen Community Star in our various subcommunities. You can congratulate them here and if you’re interested in getting involved in our subcommunities you can view our master list of leadership roles here and consider applying for one.

Thirdly, an update regarding the ongoing forum restructuring that was mentioned this month. This will be an ongoing process for the next few months and if you notice any issues with your posts or forum functions, please do reach out to me or flag any posts that may be experiencing issues. A follow-up post regarding the forum moderation will be given later this week. Please look out for that post.

Lastly, a massive thank you goes to our community leaders for making our February events such a success! It’s not too late to participate in this month’s events. You can participate in them here and stay tuned for the events for the month of March!