July 2022 Community Update!

Dear Community,

I hope you all are well! Things are good here. I’ve had about 3 weeks of company, so my house has been filled with people coming in and out. It has been nice to see them and spend time with them.

My kids are winding down the summer and have to start school again in a couple of weeks. My oldest kids, the twins, are heading into senior year. They say, “pay attention because it goes fast.” I have tried to pay attention and it has still gone fast!

We’ve been rocking and rolling on a number of fronts. Huddles is off to a very strong start. If you’d like to join a huddle - a small dedicated group of fellow travelers - then please message @soulfullyabutterfly and they will plug you in.

We also just released a gif integration in our forum text editors. Click on the magic wand in the top right. Then click on the image to resize. Copy and paste the image to move it. I see gifs as an evolving type of new visual language. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

We are also working on releasing a new flourishing measure and an easier way to track your test results over time. Stay tuned!

I hope the rest of your summer goes well!

Best,
Glen

Heather (H)
Thank you to everyone who has continued to utilize our official feedback form! We strive to incorporate your feedback, whenever possible, into how we grow to keep building our ideal community. We have gleaned a great deal of helpful insight from your submissions and will continue to implement suggestions that are actionable. For those who have asked, tech items are raised for consideration to our dev team and all domain-related feedback is also relaid to the respective leads. If you have any questions about your feedback, you can always drop me an email at heather.nelson@7cups.com.

One piece of feedback I received was a desire to connect with me on a more regular basis, and I would like that, too! To accomplish this, I am rolling out a monthly open chat for both members and listeners, adults and teens. See when and where here! I look forward to getting to spend time with you.

And for anyone who wasn’t around for our annually 7 Cups Birthday events, I wanted to point you to our community-made video. 7 Cups is the result of our combined effort. Every single one of you has something special to offer, and remember you are what makes 7 Cups the candid caring community it is.. I am excited to seeing us keep growing together.

Laiba (Hope)
It has been an eventful month for 7 Cups Academy. We have been working hard to make sure that more and more trainees/interns become graduates. We launched the academy oath to ensure that all academy trainees/interns understand the commitment they are making. Additionally, we also added academy program limit which you can read about here. Academy apps edited to require academy oath completion to join our programs along with questions that help potential trainees/interns reflect on their reasons for joining academy programs.

In order to improve trainee/intern experience, we have also been working on tightening our academy leadership. In an effort to do so, we updated our mentor role maintenance guidelines and launched academy awards to honor mentors who are doing a good job. Lastly, to encourage academy personel to make their sub-communities, their own, we launched the academy content content connoisseurs.

Last but not least, 7 Cups Academy now has one central thread to support all trainees/interns on their academy related questions. You can view the thread here. The next time you come across an academy trainee/intern, do share this resource with them!

Obs
This month, we updated the criteria to access Group Chats to make it easier to join. We want to ensure everyone able to get all support and compassion through group chats. On the same line, Compassion Course is one the criteria to access topic Group Chats.

We successfully badged 537 users with the Compassion Hero badge in July so far. Everyone finding the course really helpful and enjoyed taking it. If you are a member and didn’t yet, please try it here!

Group Support Team is working on bringing more chatroom moderators and room supporters to bring more support and uplifting discussions in the group chats. We onboarded 16 Room Supporters & 7 Chatroom Moderators so far. We appreciate all for stepping up and going above and beyond to facilitate healthy and uplifting conversations in the Group Chats.

We also made a lot of improvements on the Active Listening Tests I-IV. As a result of the changes we made to Active Listening Tests, there is an increase of 20% in the passing rate and on an average passing rate increased to 80%. Also, there is a 50% increase in the counts of listeners who successfully completed all the tests. I am glad all the listeners tried and find it helpful and learning experience. If you didn’t complete one or more Active Listening Tests yet, please attempt them here!

SoulfullyAButterfly
This month, we successfully launched 6 closed groups, called Huddles. A Huddle is a closed group where the same participants meet up to provide continuous support and social connection to each other over multiple weeks. Our Huddles trial is going very well. These closed groups are helping users foster closer connections over shared experiences and support. Some of the groups including Relationship Stress and Mindfulness Support 2 are still accepting members so if you would like to give this opportunity a try, now is your chance! The sign-up form now also hosts an option to submit future times as well as suggested topics - we hope to launch more of these groups soon.

In content news, I’ve had the opportunity to create a new growth path entitled “Coping with MDS”, a type of cancer - our content and growth paths continue to support a variety of topics and I want to thank everyone for creating growth paths as well!

In other news, I’ve been hosting the July Self-Care Challenge during the final week of July - this has been an interesting challenge wherein we are able to reflect on our current self-care needs and goals and are working towards upgrading our practices together.

theriverissinging (filling for CheeryMango)
On the Needs Reply Team end, we have been working hard and checking in with team members on their needs, suggestions and tips to improve and make the team and its purpose even better. More updates and resources in the process with @bookworm274.

With listener resources, re-did the Listener Learning & Journey Community's Description & Resources which is all up-to-date and much relevant now. You can find our Listener Resources Forum Library here with the newest addition to it by @WonderfulMagic99 here. Information on how to make one yourself is here!

You can find an updated list of various 7 cups oaths here - thanks to @AffyAvo for helping. We have been trying to update and compile Forum Forms File (FFF) and 7 Cups Bookmarks. Please leave me a message or reply in those threads for having anything included.

Check for forum restructuring updates here. Many more to come. Finally, feel free to leave your feedback on forum functionality and content. All of your helpful feedback is duly considered.

EvelyneRose
We have redesigned the Active Listening Tests, as per Ob’s update above! We have made it so anyone can take any of the tests at any time. All tests will receive feedback. After the changes, we have seen a massive increase in test taking and passing rate. We hope you find these useful! Thank you to @ASilentObserver, @Jenna, @Mel, and @Harsvin for all your help! If you are interested in helping to grade, please let us know!

We have also added 10+ new Quality Mentors in the last month! If you are interested in becoming a Quality Mentor, please apply here!

The Anonymous Evaluation Team has added @InternalAcceptance as our newest Quality Ambassador! She will be helping @MidnightRaven999 and @FrenchMarbles. They have recently re-vamped the team and the team rules. If you are interested in joining and are already a mentor, please apply here!