March 2020 Community Update: Recovery, Resilience and Growth
All,
We have been thinking about you and your loved ones. We are hoping you are all safe and okay. This is a difficult time right now. I am thankful for all of you and very glad we have this strong community of people to rely upon.
Much of this last month has been focused on strengthening our community and finding ways to support people through COVID-19. We wrote much of this up here, so I wont provide too much detail. In brief, we ramped back up our translation efforts, opened a group support room, and also launched a new area of the forum to support people on quarantine. Excellent work to all involved and a special thank you to @RicochetJaguar for help here!
For my part of the update, I wanted to share some good news with you. Since the beginning of the year, 7 Cups has started to gain real strength and significantly grow again.
Here is context - all startups go through ups and downs. One area that has been up and then gradually down for a while are measures of community engagement (number of messages, conversations, forum posts, group messages etc.). Broadly, when we started in 2013, we saw a steep climb (meaning we were quickly growing) on all of these measures through 2016. Then, as we started running out of money, we had to switch focus and learn how to generate our own revenue. We figured that out, but it came at the expense of further helping to grow community engagement and strength. The pattern was up, up, up, then plateauing and then gradually down since 2017. The downward trajectory was not pronounced, but it was incrementally flat to down.
Things started to change at the end of last year / beginning of 2020. As a direct result of our community team, ambassadors, mods and other community leaders, we saw the downward trend stop and things start to flatten out. Then, thankfully, we slowly started to see signals of strength and growth emerge. This was encouraging because we were all working very hard to turn things around.
As outlined in the community updates (December, January, February), starting with a return to community in November, we have made around 50 updates in this time and launched many new initiatives. All of these changes started to come together about 2 months ago. And now, at long last, we see the result of our collective efforts resulting in a strong and growing stronger community. Whats more, this is growth that is directly tied to our new initiatives. Some of the increase is also due to the natural anxiety/concern about COVID, but we are mostly able to bracket that out to get a better understanding of the new underlying growth.
I am thankful to see this strength and growth. We have not seen it since 2017. You can see it in the community engagement metrics I mentioned above, but you can also hear it in what people say. Listeners that have been here for years are saying that our community is returning back to how it was years ago. Not to say there are still not challenges (we know there are), but people feel that same energy they used to feel. Some sense it as stronger and some sense it as 10 or 20% below where it once was, but still considerably higher up than when it was last year.
Hats off to all involved in the hard work invested in strengthening our community. It has been extraordinarily difficult for many of us, but we have worked together, aligned, and we have turned things around.
I am proud of our collective efforts. One of our staff members said it best - we are on point. We have a sense of urgency and accountability and we are quickly moving things forward. It is great to see.
A few key stats to share:
--Messages/conversations are up over 73% since our low last year. That means our community is supporting 73% more supportive conversations than we were months ago. That is remarkable.
--Sub-community/forum stats: In the past 4 months, our forums (sub-community forums and forum sections) have seen a strong rise of 43%. This is no coincidence, it's the result of the collective efforts of our leaders and participants. This is the results of YOUR efforts.
--Group support messages are up 55.49% - Group support is becoming increasingly central to the work we do at 7 Cups. The moderators have been doing an amazing job on all fronts. GTKY and Sharing Circles are a big hit and making a significant impact.
Updates from H
Hi, everyone!
As Glen mentioned, we have kickstarted our translations efforts by relaunching the Translations Project! We started at the beginning of the month and I am blown away by the amount of interest the communitys shown. In under a month, we have recruited roughly 80 contributors (and more every day), and we are a little over halfway completed with the languages were currency translating! Weve still got a long way to go, but were making incredible progress, thanks to your selfless dedication to bringing global support to our platform! As we complete languages, we will be uploading them to the site. To speed up the process to get globalized support across the platform, we are bringing on @SoulfullyAButterfly as our Translations Project Coordinator! Look forward to the official announcement soon!
If youre interested in taking part in the project as a translator and/or proofreader, hop over to this tab!
Updates from Hope
Since the last monthly update here is what the teams have been up to!
The sub-community team has been hard at work to ensure that all sub-communities have active leaders. Three new leaders joined YPOC, Student & Career Support and Eating Disorders. The self-harm sub-community is hosting a month long self-harm awareness event that ends on 31st March. On 21st March, the student and career support sub-community celebrated world poetry day. Last but not least, the sub-community ambassador @tazzie has been hard at work to plan many sub-community collaborations for the month of April, stay tuned to see the celebration of stress awareness month and a volunteer appreciation day amongst other events.
On the forum front, The forum team relaunched the needs reply team with the support of @Lucy2, the goal of this team is to ensure that everyone is heard and replied to. It is an important measure to increase support in these difficult times. Additionally, @RicochetJaguar and @DaveMcGrath among others have been consistently providing support and resources in the Covid-19 forum category. The forum team is prioritising support in the Coronavirus forum space. We are thankful to all those who are supporting and seeking support during these challenging times.
In the Internship Project, since the last update 25 listeners successfully completed their internship trial and became active Interns. 12 more interns successfully completed their internship and became intern graduates, four of which graduated with Honors! Additionally, over 60 interns joined the internship Program and are in the trial phase. Last not not least, The Internship sub-community has been consistently hosting forum ice-breaker sessions to provide interns with the opportunity to relax and destress.
Last but not least, The Teen community has been working together in supporting each other. The teen sub-communities have seen more engagement as a result of collective efforts of the teen leadership team and the sub-community ambassador. We have introduced spin the wheel of questions, ice-breaker and writing prompts posts among many other opportunities to engage in fun events. Additionally, now the teens can be a co-host in any of the community mod led discussions. Lastly, Two more volunteers have joined us in our efforts to engage the teen listener room. We are consistently working to provide more discussions for the members and the listeners of our teen community.
Updates from Obs
Sharing Circles
We started Sharing Circle Sessions to have an inclusive and support based format of group discussions. Everyone is welcome to share their emotions, experiences and story in rotation.
The current schedule of the sessions are-
Morning Sessions -
Get to know you (Adults) - 11.00 am EDT
Sharing Circles (Adults) - 12.00 pm EDT
Sharing Circles (Teens) - 1.00 pm EDT
Get to know you (Teens) - 2.00 pm EDT
Evening Sessions
Get to know you (Adults) - 7.00 pm EDT
Sharing Circles (Adults) - 8.00 pm EDT
Sharing Circles (Teens) - 9.00 pm EDT
Get to know you (Teens) - 10.00 pm EDT
You can find a time zone converter here.
Learn more about Sharing Circles here! If you have any questions about the Get to know you and Sharing Circles Session, please share your thoughts in the comments of this post.
Revival of 7Cups Community Account
It was an initiative 7Cups started earlier to improve communication and relationship with the community. It was paused for a few months. But, now we are back at your service. You can ask certain questions by tagging @7CupsCommunity and the team will answer it. You can tag @7CupsCommunity when
You have a question about the site or you are unclear on a guideline
You are curious about a site update
Someone did something awesome and you think they deserve a high five
You'd like to share an idea
You'd like to report a bug
To learn about it, you can read here!!
COVID-19 Support
As we are experiencing COVID-19 pandemic in different regions, we understand and relate with your challenges, experiences and emotions. During this challenge, you are not alone. We are committed to provide you a safe space to talk and get support.
We have launched a dedicated COVID-19 Support Room. It will be opened 24/7 to talk, discuss, share and get support. For further info, you can check this thread. Also, we introduced support sessions and guided discussions on COVID.
Opportunity to host support sessions and guided discussions
We noticed how you all support and listen to each other. So, we introduced an initiative where any member or listener meeting certain criteria can become a discussion leader in the community to host support sessions and lead guided discussions. The goal of this initiative is to have more supportive discussions on varied topics to ensure all discuss, learn, support and have fun together.
To learn more about this opportunity, this post can be helpful.
Social Media Channels Revival
We are back on social media. After a pause, we are active now on our social media channels to stay connected with you. To stay tuned with our posts and updates, you can subscribe or follow us on these channels -
Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, TwitterTeens and Facebook!!
Last but not the least: we are so proud of our community. It is a perfect example of unity in diversity. Keep up the good teamwork!!
@GlenM
Awesome work everyone! I also noticed the social media revival. I saw two 7 Cups posts in my Instagram feed this week and I was like "Oh. It's back now?"
I'm just happy that we've been able to accomplish this much 
Hi dear Sky!!! You are describing several things that I had concerns about. First, though ... the Community Calendar ...
https://www.7cups.com/home/communityCalendar.php It does still exist! :) I didn't ever trust it very much before, but the leaders of the discussion/group chats seem to be attending and being on time more, here recently. There are a few ways to find the calendar. The easiest I think is, from start page - click on "Community" (just after "Chat" at the top of the page). Then click on "Calendar" - it is a little bit harder to find - scroll down a bit and there's a wide line across the page. It is a yellow/peach color right now. Says: Forum , Chatrooms , Wiki , Calendar , Q&A , About . Yes, that "Calendar" - there it is!
Any time I see someone like you here, who addresses the missing of the "Feed" - the massive one and each personal one - I will try to speak up there too. I miss the Feed a lot, Sky. For all of those reasons you've listed! Not only did my work, time, and thought put into my *Growth Path* have somewhere to get 'posted;' also others could read it - which gave me a larger sense of responsibility to actually do whatever my growth step was about that day. If my 'Small Simple Step' was out there for the 7cups world to see, but then by noon the next day or before getting into bed (or whichever deadline I'd put in the Step), I could expect to be asked about it (I mean I knew that if I was asked about it...). See, I feel that I have not enough accountability here IRL, so 7cups members and listeners were helping me with that - even though y'all probably didn't know! [ @Moj and our lovely group in the MCR - the "real" MCR (the old one with @kindDay4067), not this one we have now. ]
@Skyy0, I'd like to tell you: I am glad you've returned! And I agree that things around here have changed A LOT since - well lots of big changes started around the first week of Nov 2019. And @Laura and @Kate (llamas!!!), if you ever see this ... I miss you two, too! 
and of course many s to Queen Coco. Hugs to you all! Skyy0, hugs for you too 
Platy
oh btw @7cupsCommunity - thank you for addressing that, Glen(?). Another listener and I were just wondering if we could write to or give Qs to 7cupsCommunity (really! like yesterday or Saturday!). I have a better answer now. Thank you! I'm still not sure if it was gone, but either way - I *know* I am glad the 'link' has been turned on and we can direct Qs or ideas to @7cupsCommunity!
@GlenM
