<div dir="ltr">Hi Tobias and team - thanks so much for sharing this very helpful update from your brilliant work in Germany - that's extremely useful to see and very inspiring to hear about all your progress, despite the on-going challenges of a small team of busy volunteers keeping this all going alongside other day jobs!<div><br></div><div>We're always delighted to hear all the great progress being made by the different national chapters. I greatly enjoyed connecting with the AfH Australia team at one of their recent Board meetings and it's wonderful to know about their Happtivist march happening this week in Melbourne (and Vanessa King is also currently there as she's talking about AfH at the IPPA conference). I've also had great recent calls with Maurizia in Italy and Gabi in Czech Rep and it's really encouraging to hear about all their on-going progress too.</div><div><br></div><div>Also, I just wanted to share one theme with you all that has been on my mind recently... although it's great to see the on-going rise of the "wellness movement" around the world (from yoga & pilates to kale, detoxing and mindful workplaces etc), the thing that really makes our work with AfH distinctive (and urgently needed!) is the move "from me to we" - with our focus on creating a happier world (as well as a happier self) and focusing outwards as well as inwards. We're really linking personal wellness to wider social progress - and that's what the world needs right now! On that note I enjoyed reading this article on mindfulness and social change - and thought you might like it too...</div><div><br></div><div><i>Moving mindfulness from 'me' to 'we'</i><br></div><div><a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/civic-mindfulness/">https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/civic-mindfulness/</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>Huge thanks again to you all for everything you're doing - and particularly again to Tobias and the team for this very helpful and encouraging update :)<br></div><div><br></div><div>Mark</div><div><br></div><div><div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>---<br>The Action for Happiness team<br><a href="http://www.actionforhappiness.org" target="_blank">www.actionforhappiness.org</a><br><a href="http://www.facebook.com/actionforhappiness" target="_blank">www.facebook.com/actionforhappiness</a><br><a href="http://www.twitter.com/actionhappiness" target="_blank">www.twitter.com/actionhappiness</a><br><br></div></div></div></div><br></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, 15 Jul 2019 at 21:05, Tobias Polzin <<a href="mailto:tobias.polzin@actionforhappiness.de">tobias.polzin@actionforhappiness.de</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<p>Dear national chapters,</p>
<p>I was just writing an email to Mark with a some update with our
last 3 month's activities and I thought, perhaps you would also be
interested in it.</p>
<p>I would like to share some personal feelings about our local
chapter work, too. In general, things feel more difficult for us
compared to last year. The first year was so exciting. The
preparation of the translated course was a hard, but clear task.
Now that we have done that, it's not so clear how to proceed,
given the limited time resources of volunteers who are full-time
employed with other jobs. So, we <b>focussed our work for the
next 3 month</b> on the following areas:</p>
<ol>
<li>Courses. Approach all people that have said they are
interested in leading a course (hopefully using a mailing from
AfH International database)<br>
</li>
<li>Prepartion of a gathering weekend for Action for Happiness
Germany. We hope that this can be an activity that can attract
new volunteers, give them a non-internet contact with us,
qualify them for tasks and clarify the further directions of
AfH-Germany. nspired by something that Maurizia from AfH-Italy
did, we would like to offer a "preparation for being a course
leader" to people who registered as leaders in your database.</li>
<li>Improve on organisational questions</li>
<ol>
<li>What can we offer people wanting to volunteer, without the
ability to make individual training?</li>
<li>For what activities does it make sense to pay for them, as
they are not done regular enough and/or powerful enough if
done on a volunteer basis?</li>
<li>Apply for funds that offer consultancy for non-profit
organisations</li>
<li>Use positive psychology approaches (character strength
analysis) within our own group<br>
</li>
</ol>
</ol>
<p>Unfortunately, a very valuable point, articles in Happiness
magazines had to be dropped due to limited resources.<br>
</p>
<p>Perhaps our current working procedure is on interest for you:</p>
<ul>
<li>There is a non-profit association with 3 board members that
serves as the legal foundation, but effectively does nothing.</li>
<li>There are 3 people that committed themselves to participate in
the organisation for at least 6 months. There are around 10
others that participate in isolated tasks (translating the
monthly calendar, ...).</li>
<li>Every 6 months, we arrange a real world weekend together, for
revitalising the contact.</li>
<li>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)<br>
</li>
<li>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.<br>
</li>
</ul>
<p>After the last "review" I was impressed what we have achieved the
last 3 months, although things did not feel very "fluid":</p>
<ul>
<li>3 successful courses supported</li>
<li>6 courses in preparation</li>
<li>The homepage <a class="gmail-m_6442996309060957593moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.actionforhappiness.de" target="_blank">www.actionforhappiness.de</a>
has a new "contribute" page, a page with the german course
material for participants. We prepared a German version of the
"Unhappy?" text, giving pointers to support organisations in
Germany.</li>
<li>Printed the German course book with fully revised German
"resources" (personally, <b>this was my highlight</b>! the
printed german books are so well received, look so cool, and the
gathering of German links/books/videos for the resources was
fun)<br>
</li>
<li>Together with AfH International we are experimenting about how
to arrange the organisational work for courses in Germany<br>
</li>
<li>The homepage was equipped with a feature rich CRM (CiviCRM)
used by over 11000 non profit organisations. It offers many
interesting options (member database, mailings, event
applications, management of donations, ...). But is also so
feature rich that it's using sledgehammer to crack a nuts.<br>
</li>
<li>AfH Internaional supported us with mailings to members in
Switzerland and Austria (with surprisingly no responses)</li>
<li>We started collected emailadresses of supporters and have
around 200.</li>
<li>Facebook subscriptions and likes are now over 1000.<br>
</li>
<li>One request for funding / organisational consultancy was
rejected, a second one was submitted, a third one is in
preparation.<br>
</li>
<li>We found two new people interested in translating materials.</li>
</ul>
<p>Is there anything to report from you? I would find it nice, if
you all report something about your current achievements,
difficulties, feelings, plans!</p>
<p>Best wishes</p>
<p> Tobias<br>
</p>
<br>
<pre class="gmail-m_6442996309060957593moz-signature" cols="72">--
Ich werde versuchen, mehr Glück und weniger Unglück in der Welt um mich herum zu stiften.
(Action for Happiness Deutschland. <a class="gmail-m_6442996309060957593moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.actionforhappiness.de" target="_blank">www.actionforhappiness.de</a>)</pre>
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