May 2022 Community Update!

Dear community,

Happy end of the school year!

My oldest kids are going to be seniors, my middle child is officially a high schooler and my youngest is going to be in the 5th grade. They are all thrilled to be heading into the summer. I’ve also been hearing many of our ambassadors and other leaders talking about wrapping up exams, graduating, or getting ready to move forward to the next stage in life.

These changes remind me of a type of therapy called narrative therapy. The basic idea is that we can better understand ourselves and others if we look at our lives as stories that unfold. You can look back on the different stages of your life and see them as chapters. You can even give them chapter titles. Each chapter is usually a change. A change can be moving from childhood to adolescence, or adolescence to adulthood, going to school, graduating, starting a new job, or having a child etc. The key is to find the thread that is woven through all of the chapters to the present moment.

Then, from that vantage point, you can begin to imagine positive chapters unfolding in front of you. Where does the story go? It is okay to let your mind really imagine possibilities.

I do this with my life, my family, and 7 Cups all the time. It helps to bring you hope and can also help give you direction as you imagine possibilities and figure out which future stories most resonate with you.

On a related note, we will soon be releasing a journaling feature that will help with this storytelling and also help provide prompts to help you better understand the path in front of you as your life unfolds. @soulfullyabutterfly has been doing a lot of research on this front. Look for more on this soon.

Happy Summer!

Glen

Heather

Spring cleaning, reorganization and updates aplenty!

Let’s start with our big safety update! We have finally figured out a way to upload screenshots for reporting purposes.. Google forms has a feature to upload files into privacy-controleld folders. This means all report forms now accept direct image submissions, so we as a community can discontinue use of third-party sites (ex. Imgur, Gyazo, etc. we do not consider Google a third-party in this case). Here's the announcement post:

https://www.7cups.com/forum/SafetyKnowledgeat7Cups_181/7CupsSafetyToolsReportFormsMore_1371/NewIntegratedScreenCaptureReportingSystem_278073/

We rolled out a fresh new reference post on who to contact, admin-wise, including email clarifications and basic forms.

Speaking of fresh posts, if you ever come across outdated content in the forums, please reach out to anyone on the Admin or Ambassador Team so we can ensure we’re providing the most current and accurate information.

Last but not least, we’re still going strong on the Leadership Spotlight initiative! Please take a second to learn about this month’s community champions: @BubblegumWings1234, @cheerfulIcecream and @EmotionsListener!

Laiba (Hope)

The highlight of this past month for the academy has been the integration of google classrooms in academy programs to add more support to the trainee experience. We hope that this will further improve the academy trainee/intern experience for all enrolled. You can read more it here. We have also been adding more documents to the academy notion wiki. The new three additions are 7 Cups Academy - Handy Links, Academy FAQ and Academy Leaders Masterpost. You can find these here. The goal of the notion wiki is to have all academy information that is required by an academy trainee or prospective trainee to be easily accessible. We will keep updating and adding to it as per need and recommendations of our community.

Moreover on the recommendation of @StarlitSky4762, we have created a flyer for the Leadership Development Program that you can view here. If you have requests for flyers related to academy or if you wish to create flyers or social media content for academy, please contact Hope.

Obs

In the Group Support news, we were working on updating roles application, training and guides to make it simpler, easier and better. We implemented first phase of optimization and updates and now will work on second phase. In the first phase, room supporter, chatroom moderator, global moderator, doorkeeper applications and related training guides and forms updated. Please check here for more information.

On the feedback front, @Kieran000 is hosting community meetings to gather the feedback and brainstorm to problem solve various challenges. @sher217, @kieran000 and I are working on this front. Here are some of the updates post, if you didnn’t check them yet. (Post I, II, III). Also we were reviewing Support Sessions Feedback and taking measures to address any not so good session experience of the users. We are committed to offer an uplifting and comfortable space to seek support and share.

On the Group Support Roundtable front, we will be soon sharing the May Edition. It is encouraging and uplifting to read the thoughts and stories of those who are going above and beyond everyday to bring more support and compassion in the chatrooms. Also, I appreciate each one of you for being here with us and joining hands to scale up the support. If you notice any room supporter, listener, moderator doing a good job, please submit your feedback here with us. It will be shared with them.

SoulfullyAButterfly

The Content Team contributed to the Mental Health Awareness Month via therapeutic prompts under our “Power of the Pen” initiative. To find these opportunities for reflection, click here.

This month, we have also launched several new growth paths - these include self-help guide based paths for Educators as well as First Responders now listed on the self-help guides page. We also have our very first listener training path contributed by experts (also accessible to members) called “Training Path on Assessing and Accommodating Preferences by Dr. John C. Norcross & Dr. Mick Cooper” - we hope to use this path to train listeners, especially long-term listeners, on how to use preferences as part of the listener-member relationship in the upcoming months. 2 more expert paths related to Spirituality were also launched this month:

This quarter, we are also working on adding more content relating to some new topics under the Mental Health News and Advice section - if you would like to write an article, you can consider joining our ongoing Article Writing Marathon to experience a guided writing experience.

Lastly, our latest Translation Projects needing help are listed here.

EvelyneRose

We added four new Quality Mentors to join us in our listener quality journey. If you are interested in becoming a Quality Mentor, you can apply here.

We are also working on restructuring our Active Listening grading system. In conjunction with @ASilentObserver and @Jenna, we will be redoing how test processing works. Please see update here!

We still need a few project agents for Anonymous Evaluations Team and Safety Patrol Outreach Team, so if anyone is interested, please contact me!

CheeryMango

From the leadership aspect, we’ve onboarded 20 leaders in the various subcommunity roles. You can congratulate them here. If you are interested in joining one of the leadership roles in the subcommunities, you can view the masterpost here or contact @CheeryMango (Adults/Teen), or @KyleBorg(Teens) to get assistance on figuring out which role works best for you.

If you are a subcommunity leader, please ensure that you complete the monthly check-in form to let us know how you’re doing in your roles.

We celebrated Mental Health Awareness Month with Team Lightship and the Content Development Team. Thank you to all of the leaders and community members for hosting and participating in this month’s events.

If you notice or experience any difficulties while using the forums, please feel free to leave your comments in this thread to help us track them. Thank you for continuous support and patience as we implement these changes in the subcommunities.

Lastly, please join us here in congratulating @theriverissinging as our newest Subcommunity Ambassador.