Updates on the 7 Cups Foundation 10/10/19
The 7 Cups Foundation is our non-profit arm that we have been growing to help solve the global mental health crisis. We have several projects we are working on through our Foundation, which you can explore here. One initiative Glen announced last April is the collaboration with Global Mental Health at Harvard: Empower.
Empower will allow community health workers to get clinical skills and competencies training in mental health topics, bringing more access and support to those living in remote or underdeveloped areas. Watch the video or read Glens original post here for more details.
So how do we do this? Like with all non-profit programming, we need funding to get it started. We have had meetings with several organizations and philanthropists, which are ongoing. Because 7 Cups is a community, we want everyone to know about this amazing project and to be involved in helping the world have access to mental health care. We are excited to launch a crowdfunding campaign in November to raise both funding and awareness about Empower. We realize not everyone may be in a place to donate, but hope most of the community is interested in helping us decide on some of the details and promote the campaign (and if you want to donate that is also great).
The 7 Cups Foundation has partnered with Alex, a filmmaker (who made the Empower video linked above) who will be leading the crowdfunding campaign, they are also a listener! Say hello to @Fancifularrow55 !! You will see Alex posting in this subforum about the campaign and updates on Empower.
Please stay tuned for more info and for ways you can help us make this campaign amazing.
Awesome stuff!
@Jill7cups This is brilliant! I really hope everything works out well c:
Hi hi @Fancifularrow55! Pineapples on pizza, yay or nay? 🙊🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕
@Erato
Yes🍍🍕
@Spurbask my Italian heart says no :P
@Erato Absolutely not.
Fantastic news. So inspiring!
Nice
This is exciting ! , I hope one off donations will be able to given I feel so much comfortable with this and giving what I can when I can. It will also mean I can add here to my list of places I donate to when I do fundraisers yayyy.
That's really a wonderful initiative and an inspiring project, congratulations!
Sounds great, congratulations!
@Jill7Cups
aaaa ♡ 🥰🥰🥰 what amazing news!!
@Jill7Cups
That's great news! <3
Hi everyone, thanks so much for being part of this thread and letting us know what you think of this project! If it's cool with you all I've got a bunch of questions as it would be super useful to learn what you all think before I start building the crowdfunder.
First off, what do you think about these taglines? Would really value your input 
Give the gift of better mental health.
We're building the frontline of community mental health workers to combat the global mental health crisis.
@fancifularrow55 I think shorter is better, but in this case I'm not sure the short one is strictly true—does that matter?
In the long one. I think crisis might have a negative impact because it has been overused in other contexts, and I wonder about the wisdom of using of military metaphors, frontline and combat.
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie thanks this is SO helpful. Really appreciate it.
We'd be using both of those sentences as part of the campaign, they're kind of the core ideas.
I'm curious, how come you feel the first one isn't true? Is it something along the lines of you can't guarantee someone better mental health? I hear what you're saying if so but let me know if I've misunderstood.
Good point about military metaphors too. Maybe something like:
We're building the next generation of mental health workers to solve the global mental health crisis
@fancifularrow55 That is not what I said 
I said I am not sure it is strictly true. I'm not aware of evidence that a community with mental health workers is the same as a community with better mental health.
It's like...I've read that San Francisco has a housing crisis. Will training more builders help? Builders make houses, don't they?
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie oh I see what you mean now. Thanks for explaining. I think we have data to show that community mental health workers trained in the way we're planning has made a difference in the past, so maybe like you're saying it's important to show what that data is.
@fancifularrow55 Yes, that's great news that you have the data. Other schemes I've seen often get good reviews from people in the scheme (who have a vested interest), but fail to make a difference objectively to mental health in the community as a whole. This has been a criticism, for example, of the very costly IAPT scheme in the UK.
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie More on this here: Improving Access to Psychological Therapies: An idea thats failed to deliver
Charlie