November 2022 Community Update!

Dear Community,

I hope you all are well! Hard to believe that the end of the year is already upon us. I tell my kids that the fall/autumn goes quickly, but each year I am again surprised by how quickly it goes.

I live in the Southeastern US and will be driving up to Massachusetts for the holidays. I wish all of you that are traveling a safe trip and peaceful and fulfilling times with family and friends.

We have all been working hard this last month. I wanted to take a minute to recognize our Huddle, Group, and Sharing Circle leaders. As many of you know, group support is becoming a more primary part of the work we do.

There is a good amount of research that shows that group therapy is just as effective as individual therapy. This has best been captured by Yalom’s group therapeutic factors. The key factors are knowing that you are not alone, instillation of hope, and interpersonal learning. Group lets us learn together and lift one another up. There is a sort of magic that happens in group. I have led or been involved with groups on inpatient units, partial programs, drug and alcohol recovery programs, in small groups in shelters, and, of course, on 7 Cups! I’m always struck by how connecting in a group helps us heal and grow.

So a BIG shout to all of our group and huddle leaders. You care deeply for your people. Your pour into them and they in turn pour into one another. It is beautiful to watch. From the bottom of my heart, T H A N K Y O U ! ! !

(and one plug - if this interests you and you want to learn more, then check out the group support program in the Academy to learn all about the therapeutic factors and gain experience in leading groups)

Heather (H)

Happy Holidays!! We’ll have plenty of forum and chatroom events to celebrate and be together. Keep an eye on your alerts and the community events and group support subcommunities.

As always, we continue to incorporate feedback submitted through our official form by raising tech items to our dev team for consideration and relaying all domain/project/team -related feedback to the respective leads. Everyone who provides an email will receive a confirmation response from me. If you have any questions about your feedback specifically, you can reach me at heather.nelson@7cups.com.

I’m excited to announce a new feature: the timeline! On your path (https://www.7cups.com/path/) you can access your timeline which combines data from your profile and progress page to easily track activity on the daily. It’s particularly helpful as it shows your historical wellness test scores, and it’s all private!

When you’re done reading this update, please hop over to give congrats to our leaders who were featured this month in our Leadership Spotlight series: SirenOfSerenity and mamtasha22

We’re always looking to recognize the talent in our community! If you know someone who demonstrates great leadership qualities, please nominate them.

Laiba (Hope)

In the past month, the Academy team has been focused on updating and improving our academy programs to improve trainee experience. After voting from the community we updated our group focused program name to the group support program which we believe to better represent the programs content. Additionally the academy team has been working on updating the Leadership Development Program content to make it more engaging and accessible to the trainees. Look out for an update on that soon!

The Academy team is recruiting outreach and group focused project agents. Some are already in trial, few more seats are still available. Moreover, we have a new ambassador for LDP, @Dreamtouch! We are super excited to have them and look forward to their contributions. Also, in the light of community feedback, peer trainings were made available to all listeners regardless of lived experience being mentioned on their profile.

Lastly we introduced milestones corner to celebrate every milestone a trainee/intern makes that gets them closer to their graduate.

Obs

From Listener Group Chats front, we organised and hosted Thanksgiving Event and I appreciate all who were able to join and participate with us. Also, we are planning an Appreciation Series for Listener Group Chats Leaders to be hosted in December. We will keep you all updated on its progress. Also, a big thanks to @yourbuddy30 to strengthen the Teen Chat Support System. If you are a teen listener and need ongoing chat support, you may find it helpful. Other than that, Listener Discussion Team working hard on bringing more listener learning and fun discussions for the Listener Community.

Also this month, we started reviewing and working on strengthening the Adult-Teen Listener Program. I appreciate all Adult-Teen Listeners and Teens to share their feedback and suggestions. As we make progress on this front, we will continue to keep you updated and iterate the process and increase the support for our lovely teen community.

In the Group Support news, we rolled out some key changes to the leadership to strengthen and align our efforts to bring more compassionate support on various mental health topics. Also, we were working on bringing more support to our Veteran members. In the efforts towards that goal, we introduced Veteran Support Session that is happening every Wednesday at 8.00 PM Eastern time.

SoulfullyAButterfly

This month marks the end of Season 2 of Huddles, our latest group support type which involved 10 Huddles or topics where the same group of people met every week and built closer connections while exploring similar experiences. This season has helped us learn more about how we can develop supportive relationships within the community and we are excited to launch the next season of Huddles soon, with further upgrades to the structure!

Our Huddles facilitators worked really hard over the last 8 weeks to ensure quality support and deeper exploration of their respective Huddle groups. A big shoutout to @FrenchMarbles who led the Anxiety Huddle, @AffyAvo who led the Disability Support Huddle alongside Marbles, @SirenofSerenity who led the Self-Care and Compassion Huddle, @EmotionsListener who led the LGBTQ+ Support Huddle, @amiablePeace77 and @soulsings for leading the Mindfulness Huddle, @Heather225 for leading the Stress Management Huddle, @MelodyOfTheOcean and EmotionsListener for leading the Student Life Teen Huddle (our very first teen huddle!), and @gentleFox20 for leading the Social Anxiety Support Huddle. We also had great experiences with the Writing for Wellness and Positive Focus Huddles which I had the pleasure of leading.

Moving forwards, we will continue to maintain the connections formed and hope to share the power of Huddles with everyone else.

Another great new feature now available on your personal path or timeline page is the latest Journaling Feature - this journaling tool is also completely private and will log any journal entries made into your timeline. You can add images and format entries too. Explore more here. We will be sharing different prompts and suggestions for entries soon, and will be excited to hear how you utilize this tool!

EvelyneRose

A lot of our focus this month has been on structuring and building. We have worked hard on building up the teams with strong leadership. New to our Active Listening Grading Team is our newest Ambassador @Harsvin! Harsvin has done an excellent job working on guides for the team and we look forward to seeing what she will accomplish moving forward.

We also have revamped the Quality Mentor criteria to match the current flow of the site. We have adjusted a few of the criteria, but we also are officially dropping the requirement to join/be on Safety Patrol starting tomorrow December 1. All incoming QM will still be required to learn how to flag profiles however. This will allow for better flow and prioritizing of time. If you are interested in becoming a Quality Mentor, please reach out to me!

CheeryMango

As the year draws to a close, we look forward to a time filled with fun and celebration! Traditionally, we celebrate the holidays in the communities in December by hosting events and parties. I will be sending out more information on upcoming events to those who are interested in hosting them. Watch your alerts for exciting news this year as we work to get the community more involved in the holiday fun!

The subcommunity leaders were given an opportunity to share their thoughts and feedback on the ongoing forum restructuring earlier this month. As part of the meeting, our Head of Product offered insights and information about what's upcoming. We are in the process of organizing a public meeting to discuss and share the same and as details are finalized, we will share the information with you.

A new initiative to recognize the valuable contributions that our subcommunity leaders continue to give our communities was launched. The name of the initiative is the Persistence Project. If you have seen a hard-working subcommunity leader that you believe should be honored with the badge, please fill out the form here.

All forum supporters, community mentor and community mentor leaders are asked to fill out the Subcommunity Leadership Check-In Form for the month of November so we can keep updated on what’s going on in your team and roles and see how we can offer our assistance.

We are looking to expanding our Leadership team and welcome all those who are interested in helping out with processing applications, helping communities with engagement or hosting events to apply HERE. Please reach out to me if you have any questions.

Thank you always for your continued support in the subcommunities!