Dear Tobias, Thanks so much for this very helpful and inspiring update. We're extremely happy to see all this great progress you've been making in Germany and so grateful for all the amazing time, effort and commitment that you and the team are putting in to support our shared mission. Please pass on sincere gratitude and thanks from all of us associated with Action for Happiness. I look forward to catching up again soon and would be happy to join any conversations about achievements, difficulties, plans etc if helpful... Warmest wishes Mark --- *Mark Williamson* Director, Action for Happiness www.actionforhappiness.org www.facebook.com/actionforhappiness www.twitter.com/actionhappiness On Thu, 31 Oct 2019 at 12:37, Tobias Polzin < [email protected]> wrote:
Dear Mark, Alex, national chapters,
I would like to send an update on the last 3 month's activities of Action for Happiness Germany:
- There are now around 10 courses using our translated materials and they all went well, some where really vibrating (Darmstadt had over 30 participants). This is really a contribution that would not have been possible without the work of the translation team! Thanks! There was a course in Nürnberg which was thought to be given in English, but it did not get enough participants. - We printed a new edition (200 books) of course books as we were running empty. There were only minor changes to the last edition. - We translated the AfH postcard and printed 5000 of them. Distribution has not yet started. The online team is thinking of a good way to for the interaction. - We found a volunteer that is eager to do the shipping of books and postcards for us. Really great. - A separate team does very constantly do the translation and review of the successful calender, including posting on facebook and on the website. Thanks! - A new member of the core team is Facebook savvy and started daily postings of quotes, calendar tasks and funny adoptions of the 10 keys into something like "Keep calm and do things for others", ... We have now over 1500 subscriptions. www.facebook.com/actionforhappinessdeutschland - The homepage www.actionforhappiness.de has been enriched with materials. One text on social change, possibilities to contribute, a German version of the "Unhappy?" text, ... - We have been "passed the lamp" from Alex to do the course calls for germany and started translating the "how to become a course leader" and "course guide" to make it possible to make the whole thing available to German course leaders with limited English skills. We are taking over the responsibility for the courses in German speaking countries more and more. - We created monthly newsletters. Again, AfH International supported us with mailings to members in Switzerland and Austria. - All founding applications we did, were rejected. But we were contacted by a foundation and were granted 2000€ for printing of books, postcards and organisational meetings. - In two cities there are regular gatherings. We have translated some of the gathering materials. - We had a weekend with 11 contributors and interested people in Germany for tuning in, connecting, planning and taking action.
Difficulties:
- We invite people to contact us if they want to support, and they do. But except from "organize a course" (and soon "spread the postcards") there is not much we can offer them "out of the box". There is a beautiful plenty of things to do, but they involve a lot of knowledge and sometime skills. So we - mainly I - do a lot phone calls, people are sometimes disappointed, because after a first "hello, would you like to give your course, what are your interested, join our supporter mailinglist" email they have to wait far too long. - As many of our team have a lot of other talks, its really a huddle to arrange appointments. Not to speak about the difficulties in organizing regular tasks (monthly newsletter) or complex tasks (setting up the context management system for all kind of purposes). - We are still invisible for classical media like magazines, radio, TV. We are not experienced in contacting those.
Perhaps you are interested in our basic organisational structure, which has not changed much:
- There is a non-profit association with 3 board members that serves as the legal foundation, but effectively does nothing. - There are now 5 people that committed themselves to participate in the organisation for at least 6 months. There are around 10 others that participate in separate tasks (translating the monthly calendar, ...). We have mailing lists for translators and supporters, but the activity here is rather low. - Every 6 months, we arrange a real world weekend together, for revitalising the contact. - Every 3 months, we do a session of review (our past activities, to celebrate), retrospective (what has to be changed in our processes) and planning (what is the focus of the next 3 months) (adopted from Scrum methodology) - Every week, we have a 20 minutes zoom webcall with "one good thing", "current mood", "celebrate AfH tasks done in the last week", "plans for next week", "impediments/difficulties/questions" (adopted from Scrum "daily"), with up to 5 members.
Dear national chapters, is there anything to report from you? I would find it nice, if you all report something about your current achievements, difficulties, feelings, plans!
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)