March 2021 Community Update!
Dear Community,
Hope you all are doing well! My kids are back at school full-time now so all of a sudden I have a much quieter house. I hope school, work, and everything else is getting better for all of you.
Quick updates on my end. The apps continue to evolve. Every week or two we are releasing a new update, so please download the most recent versions to see the changes we are making. The community and expert growth paths are off to a very strong start! Check them out when you can. I wanted to highlight the relapse prevention growth path by John Norcross, a leading psychotherapy researcher. This path is great for anyone struggling with slipping (eating, drinking, or smoking slips or any sort of addiction). Please also check out these awesome welcome videos from our crew: Grace, Obs, Laiba and H (here is one from me) We will be adding other leader welcomes soon!
One last path update: soon everyone will be able to make their own private paths. There will be 3 options: private, unlisted (you can share it with others with a link) and public. If you do not have the path builder badge then you will only be able to make a private path for yourself.
Heather (H)
Hey, lovelies! I know many of you have been asking for some more one-on-one time with me, so I have introduced my “Open Office Hours” every Thursday at 6PM ET! Check out this post for details.
We’ve been hard at work building out the Custom Growth Paths. Even the Admins and Ambassadors have been creating (for example, you can see mine on Being Brave). If you’re liking these paths, we want to know what you’re enjoying, and what kind of impact they have had on you! Anytime you complete a path you’d like us to know about, please fill out this quick survey! It would mean a lot to us, and to our Path Builders who have been putting so much time and effort into creating them!
And for the Path Builders, I would like to ask you to please add this step to your paths so we can increase exposure to this survey to collate as much valuable information as possible.
The Step is called Growth Path Feedback and if you can’t add it through the link, you can search for it in the editor! (You are also welcome to creat your own step with the survey link!)
Quality Specialist: EvelyneRose
We are rolling out more and more safety quizzes and discussions! Thanks to @Power for all your hard work on making sure our Safety Awareness Team is keeping the community informed and proactive in the pursuit of keeping a safe and caring environment.
The Anonymous Evaluations Team is continuing to expand. They are always looking for new team members! @RebekahRoyal and @LuLuRings are heading AE Team, while @Midnightraven999 and @Asherwolfice head the Anonymous Feedback Team. We hope this initiative continues to spur quality endeavors. If you’re interested in joining, please contact the leader of the respective team.
Programs Coordinator: SoulfullyAButterfly
The Content Development and Marketing Program (CDM) for the 7 Cups Academy has resulted in several great content articles to be published soon! We expect to widen the categories covered in the Expert and other site sections.
Beginning next quarter (April) the Content Team will be restructured to include formal focus areas including Growth Paths, other content areas, as well as formal editorial assistant positions.
On the Translations Project end, we have had lots to celebrate about with the great work of our leaders proactively leading site translation efforts, with the Portuguese site translation project led by @optimisticDay8079 standing completed (help celebrate here). In addition, we marked the successful completion of our first App translation project here.
Beginning next quarter, the Translations Project will formally have app projects too so please keep an eye for further announcements!
Subcommunity Coordinator: Tazzie
Our subcommunities continue to evolve and flourish. With support from our ambassador @Mel and the leadership team, we have successfully onboarded new forum supporters
@CheeryMango has been generously investing their time in supporting subcommunity leaders across the board with building growth paths on various topics.
We are continuing to do well with new community events and activities . More leadership developments, growth paths and events are in store for next quarter!
Teen Coordinator: Mimi
What a month it’s been for Teenie Town! The chains never stop turning, and I just wanted to congratulate our Project Leaders, Agents, Listeners, Members, Hosts, Moral support figures! Everyone! For being proactive and having one aim in mind - How do we help make the Teen side better for everyone?
@Asherwolfice has been working diligently and closely to support the Teen Group Support end, where we are working on improving rotational rooms and hosting weekly feedback discussions to improve the quality of the Group Support area for Teens.
If you’ve noticed, Teenie Town’s population has been going up and up! Welcoming many new faces, and some returning faces. Our daily check-ins in the teen listeners room continue to thrive as well as more amazing listeners are stepping up to become leaders of the community. @cuteOrange213
Teen side hosting of popups has seen a rise. We have started a Popup Meetup Thread for people to voice their opinions/suggestions about the popup discussions here. Feel free to PM @DonaldDraper for any question(s) you might have about popup discussions.
The teen discussions team has been working on bringing more topic discussions to the community as well as strengthening the daily sessions for both members and listeners. @hopedreamlove
Catch up on a few of the serious topics here; down at the CM station! Drop your great ideas here in our community box! Help me create a compassion growth path - HERE!
Laiba
In 7 Cups academy news, we evaluated the Group Dynamics and Leadership Development Program and reduced the requirements to join the program. Additionally, the program is now open to members. Apart from that, the academy programs continue to function as usual and our LinkedIn verification initiative has so far verified/recommended the work on 19 academy grads.
This month has been mainly focused on creating custom growth paths. I have created the study motivation, managing anxiety and preventing burnout at 7 Cups growth path. Moreover, the community and I worked together to form the Leadership Basics and the Watering Hope Path. It has been an incredible experience working with the community and learning from your ideas and contributions. I am hopeful that the paths created will help and support many. Please do check them out.
Obs
This month we set up the Mod Help Center which hopefully our chat rooms moderators may find helpful in providing all the support to the members in the group chat rooms and moderating the chat rooms.
We also started a new initiative 7Cups Rising Star where it is an opportunity for community members to collaborate with community leaders and nominate someone of their choice whom they feel are suitable and shine in a role if they will get the chance.
Also we rolled out some initiatives to ensure a supportive and therapeutic environment in the regular chat rooms like: Community Fun Activities and Support Checkins.
On another quick note, we have two new group support mentor leaders who will oversee specific parts of the group support to ensure we all have a good time in the chatrooms. And, we recognized more than 340 community leaders for their wonderful contributions in the month of February and March. Please drop them a congratulation or appreciation message here.
Thank you for being with us and for being a part of our community!
Thanks for the exciting update about this month. Can't wait to see what the warm weather and what April will bring as well.
@GlenM Thanks for sharing this update! So many wonderful things to come 
@anotherfrenchtoastclub thank you Toast!
Thank you for this awesome update :) so happy I could lead the portuguese translation team into finishing the project
@optimisticDay8079 I very much appreciate the help with translations! I think they are one of the most significant ways of scaling care. Thank you for your thoughtful work!
@GlenM
thanks for the updates *~^ cups have been full of lovely updates and exciting news, hopefully we'll continue to have the most heart warming news every each month all together ^^
Thank you glen for the amazing work you do!! Btw, you mentioned having the path builder badge, is there a way I can get it?
@BeigeMoonlight
hey there❤️ Please check here(click me!) and scroll down to read point number 2 on how to access that badge...
Thank you!!
@BeigeMoonlight
anytime!❤️
@GlenM
I love seeing faces to people behind the scenes. I love this place. I started off as a memember and vowed to only have one account, but I have become a listener and enjoyed conversations with others and have several long-term listeners already. I love also seing the diversity of the 7 Cups and always wanting to improve the site. I have fallen in love with this site and all that it represents. Thank you for providing a safe place. <3
😊
@GlenM it would be really useful if we could FILTER the calendar events based on tags. Otherwise it's overwhelming and difficult to find anything.
@StarlitSky4762 thank you for this suggestion! We'd like to, but that calendar is a third party calendar so we have little ability to modify it. We have thought of building our own, but that turns out to be a pretty big project - bigger than I initially thought/hoped. Doesn't mean we can't tackle it, we will but it'll be a while out as we have more urgent items to address.
@GlenM why don't we swtich to using a different 3rd party calendar?
@StarlitSky4762 do you have a good one that you can recommend? If it is fairly easy to integrate, then we can definitley look into it!
@GlenM I'm not really sure, but maybe @Sher217 @Tazzie or @FirstLight4762 have some ideas
@StarlitSky4762 @GlenM
You could use Google calendar, then apply 7cups own set of tools to it. I'd look into Google's developer API for modification options. I'm not aware of how versatile Tockify's options are, but a quick fix (hopefully) can be applied by dedicating a calendar to each sub-community. Example: Within the Personality disorders room, you can integrate a button which links you to the Tockify calendar; only Personality Disorder events will show up. Furthermore, there can be a "main" calendar which includes every event from each sub-community. Within the "main" calendar parge there could be a list of clickable buttons which link you to the desired sub-community calendar
7cups is a great site, but could really benefit from a reformed UI and communications system. As of now, things are arranged in a way that requires most leaders and organizers to use outside methods to maintain their groups. Respectfully, this seems to result in unneccesary bureaucracy, and for unpaid volunteers, that's a lot of effort. It would be very beneficial to reform how listeners communicate and organize so it's as simple as possible (A more effortless process to organize means higher motivation to engage in volunteer work). For example, integrating a control panel for support room leaders would phase out tedious usage of other third party tools to track each listeners job. Replacing door keepers with a simple "Approve" button by a moderator or support room leaders eliminates another step for room supporters
@StarlitSky4762 @GlenM
An addition to my prior post:
In case Tockify have a feature to use a master/central calender, you could use a work-around by creating a simple script (hopefully simple). When a user creates an event within a sub-community, the script could make a duplicate event for the main calendar page, almost as if it's "copying and pasting" from one calendar to another. So with every initional event scheduling for specific sub-community calendars, another event is automatically created for a "main" calendar. This is a solution to keeping a main calendar displaying all sub-community events while essentially having an option to filter for certain sub-communities or varrying events. On the "main" calendar page, a list of clickable buttons displayed on the side can redirect a user to the desired sub-community/category events calendar.
Example:
I schedule an event for the Personality Disorders dedicated calendar -> A script duplicates all the event details onto "main" calendar -> Two of the same event now exists within the Personality Disorders sub-community calendar and the "Main" calendar webpage.
@StarlitSky4762 @GlenM
Here is the Google calendar developer API: https://developers.google.com/calendar
Here are a few other suggestions to consider inspecting:
https://time.ly/
https://eventcalendarapp.com/
@FirstLight4762 thank you for sharing.
@GlenM what do you think of this idea?
Hi @GlenM I was wonder if you had the opportunity to take a look at the calendar and possibly implement some changes?
