[AfH-Chapters] How to proceed with Action for Happiness during Covid

Tue Oct 13 14:00:00 CEST 2020

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 - 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
www.facebook.com/actionforhappiness
www.twitter.com/actionhappiness

On Sun, 11 Oct 2020 at 22:16, Tobias Polzin <
tobias.polzin at actionforhappiness.de> 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)
>
>
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