Support Team Plan - A Collaborative Effort

Hello everyone,

Today I am pleased to announce “Support Team Plan - A Collaborative Effort”. It will be applicable for both sides.

Before getting to know what the Support Team plans are, let’s understand why we will be trialing it. For that let’s take a quick look at some insights.

We collected the data of all the sessions that took place over a period of 3 months (October - December) to figure out how well-balanced our support sessions and community discussions hosting are. We noticed that there is a huge disparity.

In the period of 12 weeks, on a weekly average, the following count of sessions happened for both sides: (Please note: it excludes Sharing Circle, Support Room Check-Ins, Community Room sessions)

• Adults: 51
• Teens: 20

The major contributor for each side was:

• Adults: 50+, Trauma, Family & Caregivers, Personality Disorder, Healthy Living, Mindfulness, Anxiety, Self-Harm, Support Session, LGBTQ+ shares 398 sessions count i.e. roughly 33 sessions per week.
• Teens: Anxiety, Depression, Healthy Living, LGBTQ+, Special Events, Support Session shares 184 sessions count i.e. roughly 15 sessions per week.

(Again please note: They only reflect the collective share and not individual ones, if we look at individual topic sessions, they are not enough to ensure support coverage for all members in all time zones.)

Many focus areas of our subcommunities lack or are low on the number of support sessions offered in relevant topics. This data shows a huge disparity between the support sessions taking place on various topics. To ensure sessions take place on a variety of topics and provide better support to the community members, we need to take some steps. One of the key challenges we are facing to ensure better coverage of these sessions is the lack of hosts.

The Group Support Team is working on host recruitment to bring more coverage on different topic sessions. But also we will be reassigning and reallocating our current team strengths and bringing them together in order to bring some balance and better support on various topic-based support sessions.

How will the Support Team Plan work?

Step 1. We will be grouping our efforts into broad groups of support teams in order to bring more support and sessions coverage.

A. For Teens:

• For the first phase, initiating two groups of the support team where
  • Mental Health Team cover the topics Anxiety, Depression, Eating Disorder, Self- Harm, Trauma, Positivity, and Gratitude
  • Lifestyle Team cover the topics LGBTQ+, Healthy Living, Student Support, Relationships and Friendships, Family and Caregivers, Hobby Zone
  • Teen Zone Support Team will continue to operate independently.
• For each team, there will be at least two support team leaders where one will focus on scheduling, second on applications and if there is a third, they will take care of the feedback area.

B. For Adults:

• For the first phase, there will be 6 groups:
  • Group 1: Family & Caregivers, Relationships & Friendships, Student & Career, 35+, 50+
  • Group 2: Positivity & Gratitude, Hobby Zone, Healthy Living
  • Group 3: LGBTQ+/MOGII, Disability, Support+, Young People of Color, Around the World
  • Group 4: Self-Harm, Addiction, Eating Disorders
  • Group 5: Personality Disorders, Bipolar/Schizophrenia/Psychosis, Trauma
  • Group 6: General, Anxiety, Depression, Mindfulness
• For each team, there will be at least two support team leaders where one will focus on scheduling, second on applications and if there is a third, they will take care of the feedback area

Step 2. All team members (Room Supporters, Chat Room Moderators, Support Team Leaders) of the individual teams will act as team members for their broader group team. For example, a Chat Room Moderator in Relationships & Friendships will act as a Chatroom Moderator for all of the teams in Group 1.

Step 3. Group Teams will ensure at least 1-2 sessions of each topic session taking place every week. The goal of 1-2 sessions is for the initial phase only. Once we will have more team members in these group teams, we will increase the session counts.

Step 4: We will monitor the progress of this plan as:

• 1-2 Sessions (per topic per week)- Doing OK
• 2-3 Sessions - Doing Good
• 3-4 Sessions- Doing Wonderful
• 4-5 Sessions - Great going!!

All discussions can take place either in their individual-focused room or in a Support Session. It will be up to the Group Team to pick.

Every host will receive 150 cheers per discussion as a token of gratitude for offering their hosting help.

Pros of this plan:

• All topics will get balanced coverage i.e. facilitation of support on diverse topics.
• An opportunity for leaders to collaborate and get to know each other and their teams and collectively work towards increasing support as one team - Group Support Team.
• An opportunity for hosts, room supporters, chat room moderators to learn more about diversified topics apart from their focused groups. Increasing their knowledge and skills to support members.
• More leadership opportunities to everyone i.e. every leader will get more opportunities to level up in their leadership journey.
• Better communication and problem-solving as a team.
• Serve as a united team working towards a common goal of providing better-quality support

Please let me know if you have any questions in this regard and any and all help would be much appreciated. We will keep iterating the process as we receive more feedback and suggestions.

Also a big shoutout to the Group Support Team and Community for their constant feedback, support, and efforts to bring improvements. Special thanks to @lulurings @PuzichkinCat @AnnaTess and @Heather225. 🙏