Happy New Year! December Community Update!

December Community Updates

Dear Community,

Happy New Year!

2020 is thankfully coming to an end and we are all starting a new chapter. 2021 is going to be a significant year for us on 7 Cups. Much of what we have been cooking up in the background will be released and I’m excited to share it all with you. Here are the quick highlights:

-New app should be released in January! A big thank you to all of you that have been helping us test it. Together we’ve squashed a lot of bugs and made some great updates. I appreciate your thoroughness and thoughtfulness!

-Growth path playlists will be launched mid-January! People that are trusted users will be able to create their own growth path steps and their own growth paths. Steps will also be able to be remixed into different paths (think like a playlist on spotify or youtube). Additionally, we will be reaching out to scientists, authors, and other experts to create their own growth paths on 7 Cups. Researchers will be able to learn how to better help people through building out therapy protocols on the growth path.

-Chatbots for training - several of you have helped us test a new member chatbot that acts like a person going through a relationship breakup (a major issue on 7 Cups). We will be introducing this training bot, a mentor bot, and hopefully a much better Noni in 2021.

-Better member to listener matching - I’ll share more detail on this soon. I’m excited about how this will work and think it’ll be a great help.

-Launch of the 7 Cups Academy (see more from H below)!

7 Cups is an impact service. In 2021, we will be transitioning to an impact platform where other organizations and researchers will be able to build their own growth paths to make their own impact. Collectively, through tight collaboration, we will see our impact amplify.

As we wrap up this year, I’m sending you all beams and a hot cup of tea (or cocoa or coffee). I’ll be thinking of you all and our community tonight as we ready for the new year!

With gratitude,
Glen

Heather (H)

Hi, everyone! I hope this month has been kind to you, and whatever you are celebrating this month, that you are enjoying yourself. I know this year has taken a toll on many of us here in the community, but I am so proud of you all for hanging on. As Glen mentioned, 2021 is going to be a big year for us. There’s lots of good stuff to look forward to, and one of them that the Community Team is spearheading is the 7 Cups Academy, building on our success of the Internship Program and the Leadership Development Program to create more pathways for education and quality improvement. Stay tuned for more details in the coming month. We’re accepting applications for the first of the new programs right now (see Obs’ update for more).

If you haven’t checked out the Leadership Development Program (LDP) subcommunity yet, take a look! We recently welcomed our first Mentor Leader to this track, @anotherfrenchtoastmafiaa - please give them a shoutout!

In the new year, I’d like to encourage you all to start off strong with a healthy ritual! Some of you may remember--or be currently participating in--the 3 Key Things thread! We've got thousands of people doing a lot of work on the site, so we created this thread to help all of us see the good work that is going on. Let’s make a New Years resolution as a community to share what you do each day (on and off Cups) and appreciate each other!

Thank you for being a part of our community. I look forward to enriching connections with you all and for us to continue to grow together. Happy 2021!

Laiba

On the sub-communities front, we worked on strengthening leadership and providing support to all forums. 7 Cups Therapy and Support Plus were added as new sub-communities! Support Plus houses, ADHD, OCD and Autism Support forums. These were the last of forum sections that needed extra support. Now all of our forum sections exist within sub-communities. This is a step forward in providing support and leadership to these areas. Additionally, the Holiday season was celebrated passionately through hosting multiple festive activities by our sub-communities. Lastly, 11 Forum supporters and 8 Forum Mentors/teen stars were added to the forum leadership team. Also, 4 community mentors/teen stars and two project agents joined the sub-community leadership team. We are grateful for the efforts and leadership of our sub-com/forum ambassadors, @Tazzie and @Mel.

In Teen news, we continue to host daily check-ins in the teen listener room. Additionally the discussion leader team is working on maintaining daily fun sessions in the friendship room. To further support/celebrate our teens, we launched a birthday and cups day celebration project so that we can be a part of their special days! Lastly, a new year teen side party is set to happen this Friday.

On the Internship front, 82 listeners joined the program, 52 listeners completed their Internship trial and became active Interns. As for project tulip, 58 listeners received the tulip badge since last update.

Thank you to all of our leaders for all their hard work and dedication throughout the year and to the users who took the step to seek support as that too takes courage.

EvelyneRose

The Anonymous Evaluations Team is going well! We have two teams now- a robust AE Team, and the complementary Anonymous Evaluations Feedback Team that gives out the feedback. If you are a mentor and are interested in getting involved, please contact @Midnightraven999 on how to apply.

We also are trying to restart safety initiatives. We will be hosting safety discussions and safety quizzes to help listeners and members learn helpful safety practices.

On the Safety-Quality hybrid front, we are consistently working on making sure to keep the site safe and quality high. The Listener Coaching Team is doing an excellent job with helping listeners grow their skills, while the Safety Patrol and SPOT help us with keeping the site safe.

Ayesha/SoulfullyAButterfly - Programs Update

Our Programs are doing really well. The Content Volunteer Team has had the addition of several new team members who have done outstanding work to maintain the quality of our Question and Answer as well as Expert Content Pages. I am happy to announce that we now have enough work to accept and onboard anyone interested in joining the team. Interested in sparing some time to help use research as well as writing to promote mental health awareness and support? Please sign up by clicking here

Our Translations Project has been going well and we are working on expanding the translated terms to help enable full translated coverage - please PM @SoulfulfullyAButterfly if interested in helping out.

And some of you may know, the 7 Cups Dev Team has been working hard to launch the new 7 Cups App very soon.

To ensure continued global support, we would like to translate the core features of the new app too, and for this purpose, we have selected the Hindi language, to begin with as a trial. We’re looking for volunteers ASAP so please check out this post for requirements and to fill out the application form!

Obs

In the Group Support News, this month we launched a Group Leadership & Dynamics Development Course. It is one of the courses 7Cups Academy will be offering to the interested learners. GLDD will be focused to provide learning opportunities and live experiences in group structure, dynamics and development. The first batch will be starting on Jan 04, 2021. Application is open to join!

At the Sharing Circle front, we awarded the Sharing Circle badge to 62 onspot hosts to honor their consistent support & efforts. Also, 22 Hosts bagged Sharing Circle Certificate for hosting 25+ sessions during the quarter (Oct 01- Dec 24). We are grateful to all hosts and participants for making Sharing Circle as the safest and uninterrupted space to share.

At the Group Support Team end, we onboarded 11 room supporters, 8 community centered moderators, 2 global mods and 6 Support Team Leaders for different support teams. More to join the Group Support Team in the pipeline!!

Also, we organized and hosted a 3 weeks holiday event in the group support. It was a fun, compassionate & supportive experience. I appreciate all the members, listeners, hosts for taking part in these events and supporting each other. We will be working to bring more events for the community.

And, in the December Community Spotlight, we spotted 250+ Community Leaders who went above and beyond to support the community through their persistent efforts. Happy holidays everyone!