Hi Mark, thanks so much for your heartful thoughts and information. _"creating a new enhanced*online version of the 8-week EWM* course designed to be delivered online via Zoom": _This sounds interesting! Although from my experience (when we started AfH-Germany we did an Online-Course in the core group to check the translations, to get into contact with each other and to know AfH) it is really very different to doing it in a room, it could be an appropriate reaction. Please keep me updated! I guess, it could be imported to address the Covid situation in the course, or at least in the promotion of the course. Even, if the course content e.g. for Relationships, may be the same in Covid or non-covid, I feel the course would be much more relevant, if it addresses "Relationships given the limited freedom and contacts" or "Happyness at work, online and offline", ... *Asking people*: We will invite our social networks for an AfH-Germany Online Exchange, 31.10.-1.11.. Something like "The second Covid wave asks for your ideas and contribution to distribute Happiness!" We need new ideas and possibly also new people, because it becomes obvious that the old ideas don't work in the moment, that this situation (in combination with Covid challenges) exhausts some of our most loyal contributors. If we don't find new approaches, it could be appropriate to put AfH Germany into some resting mode (just performing the basic tasks and wait for more matching times). As always, if you have any thoughts or comments, I would be glad to hear them. Best wishes Tobias P.S.: The covid situation in Germany, in particular in the area I live in, has *changed rapidly*. From a slow growing curve of 1-2k incidents per day when I wrote you last, we are now in the exponential growth phase. If nothing inexpected happens we will run into a "March lockdown feeling", too. No one would dare to announce an in person 8 week course right. Apart from that I had an inspiring chat with two course leaders in Berlin who finished their aborted course. I was very good to get into contact with these lovely people that expressed how valuable the course leading experience was for them. I would like to share some thoughts they had about in-place courses, although you might have the same observation already yourself. They empathically described the difficulty to go to a course even it would be legally possible: * Participating a course with unknown people is a social risk. In times of covid, people seem to be more risk-averse regarding social risks. They feel themselves that they have limited courage and desire to get into near contact with new people. * For the "spreading" personalities: These people may feel, "if you want to be respectful, you should limit your near contacts as much as possible." * For the "seeker" personalities, being insecure with live: These people may fear, "what kind of people will I meet there, if they meet even under these conditions, although it is perfectly legal." Am 13.10.2020 um 14:00 schrieb Mark Williamson:
Hi Tobias,
Great to hear from you - thanks for raising these very important questions.
*Weekly check-ins *- glad to hear these are continuing :)
*Courses *- yes it's so frustrating that Covid is continuing to prevent courses from happening in locations all around the world. Thanks for all you've been doing to try to keep things moving forward. In light of the on-going uncertainty we're asking supporters to pay close attention to their local rules for in-person meetings and strongly recommending that leaders focus on online-only activities until Spring 2021 at the earliest. We'll keep this under review...
*What can AfH offer*? Yes I really like the Seligman point too (thanks for the reminder). It's hard because the central AfH strategy is "bringing people together" and Covid does make this much more difficult. So we're focusing on ways to help people given the restrictions, notably via our calendars/daily action ideas (available in 25+ languages), the free 10-day online course (now taken by nearly 40,000 people), the webinars (attended live by over 23,000 people to date, with 100,000+ watching later via Facebook/YouTube etc) and the online groups (with over 70 groups now happening).
*Online groups?* You asked for my thoughts on our experience so far... I feel our online groups have been a really helpful response to the Covid situation (I really love running my local one) but we also recognise that the 8-week courses offer some distinct advantages over groups, e.g. weekly rather than monthly sessions, more structured content, plus the fact that people seem more likely to sign up (and turn up!) for a course than a group (which is harder for them to visualise or see the need for). As a result we're now focusing our attention on _creating a new enhanced version of the 8-week EWM course designed to be delivered online via Zoom_ (as well as hopefully being able to be run in person in future too). Alex is leading this work.
*Options in Germany*. All your suggestions sound interesting to me. I like your idea of piloting some Zoom sessions in Germany - in our experience the key to success with the webinars is high-profile speakers and a big email list to reach out to, so it could be difficult to make happen. (Plus the Zoom webinar license is quite expensive!). What about the online groups - have many AfH supporters in Germany tried creating these yet? www.actionforhappiness.org/groups <http://www.actionforhappiness.org/groups> - I agree that it may be less appealing to people who now spend their working lives on zoom calls (!), but I have found my local group to be a great source of friendship, inspiration and mutual support (we've been meeting monthly via Zoom for 7 months now and regularly have 15-20 people join from my local community).
I also like your idea of asking people what they would like to receive as a support for their happiness right now.
Thanks as always for your support and sorry again about all the Covid frustrations - we share your pain (and life in Germany appears to be much more "normal" than it is here in the UK at the moment where it feels much more like March lockdown again!).
Warmest wishes to you and all the team in Germany :)
Mark
--- *Mark Williamson* Director, Action for Happiness www.actionforhappiness.org <http://www.actionforhappiness.org> www.facebook.com/actionforhappiness <http://www.facebook.com/actionforhappiness> www.twitter.com/actionhappiness <http://www.twitter.com/actionhappiness>
On Sun, 11 Oct 2020 at 22:16, Tobias Polzin <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi Mark,
I hope you are doing well.
I would like to give you some updates on recent activities and perhaps you have some suggestions for us.
*Status:*
Things that continue: We have our weekly check-ins with a group of volunteers (4-8), monthly newsletter, and great Gunnar posts daily calendar posts.
Because AfH-UK course support is basically shut down, we set up a limited German support for lead/leader/join surveys to support two course requests, one in Germany and one in Vienna. We have 2,8k likes in facebook, around 2k german email adresses in your database and 4k addresses in our database (but only 1,5k requested the newsletter, which is probably not exactly as we intended it).
The course in Germany was cancelled with just two participants, although the course leaders were very enthusiastic. The course in Vienna started with 9 participants, but one would like to attend online due to insecurity about covid.
We submitted "job offers" to volunteering portals, made online calls introducing AfH to them (and recorded these calls for further use).
*Challenges*:
* I like Martin Seligman´s start of his discussion with Richard Layard: Speaking about happiness in normal times is routine, but in difficult times is crucial. Yet, I find it difficult to describe what ActionForHappiness can offer during the pandemic. It's not scientific to extrapolate from the one example in Germany, but I guess it will be difficult to realize courses, even if there are legal and safe measures to do so. I guess it is a mixture because a) the sensitive people that are open to courses may be also more sensitive to the insecurity involved meeting other people in a room, b) what the course offers and how it is announced is not linked to the covid-situation.
* UK seems to have reasonable success with the online groups (79 online) and zoom events. (*@Mark,* can you say something, how you experience this?). I find it hard to copy this. Personally, I find the idea of 10 keys online groups not so appealing (given my 80% online conference during my working hours). And currently we don't have the experience and the broad audience to conduct such zoom events.
* The every day tasks (emails, people wanting to contribute, newsletter) requests some administrative activity. The time for rethinking AfH in Germany is limited (we will have a strategy weekend in the beginning of November).
Options:
1) Put AfH-Germany in a less active "preparation mode": Prepare technical course support (surveys, promotional videos) and course leaders to start with courses in the beginning of next year, in the hope that corona will be somehow under control. (This has the disadvantage that it's a bet on the future and just preparation is not something that is so attractive from the volunteers´ point of view).
2) Try to enhance the course content and more importantly the /course communication/ and promotion to link it explicitly to difficulties in the covid-situation.
3) Mimic other successful UK activity, like trying to set up something like the 10-days email program in German.
4) Pilot some zoom discussions as in UK, even with not so well known people and with smaller scale.
5) Do something completely different, like asking ourselves, what would I personally like to receive as a support for my happiness in these times?
Is there anything you would like to comment on?
Best wishes
Tobias
-- Ich werde versuchen, mehr Glück und weniger Unglück in der Welt um mich herum zu stiften. (Action for Happiness Deutschland. www.actionforhappiness.de <http://www.actionforhappiness.de>)
-- Ich werde versuchen, mehr Glück und weniger Unglück in der Welt um mich herum zu stiften. (Action for Happiness Deutschland. www.actionforhappiness.de)