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<p>Hi Mark,</p>
<p>thanks so much for your heartful thoughts and information.</p>
<p><u>"creating a new enhanced<b> online version of the 8-week EWM</b>
course designed to be delivered online via Zoom": </u>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", ... <br>
</p>
<p><b>Asking people</b>: 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).</p>
<p>As always, if you have any thoughts or comments, I would be glad
to hear them.</p>
<p>Best wishes</p>
<p> Tobias<br>
</p>
<p>P.S.: The covid situation in Germany, in particular in the area I
live in, has <b>changed rapidly</b>. 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.</p>
<p>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. <br>
</p>
<p>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:<br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">* 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."
</pre>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Am 13.10.2020 um 14:00 schrieb Mark
Williamson:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CADm-gmx8aWRBpY6QfR1Na1fdbKs_17DrBizMKSmOY3-syiW6pA@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="ltr">Hi Tobias,
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Great to hear from you - thanks for raising these very
important questions.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><b>Weekly check-ins </b>- glad to hear these are
continuing :)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><b>Courses </b>- 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...</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><b>What can AfH offer</b>? 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).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><b>Online groups?</b> 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 <u>creating a new enhanced version
of the 8-week EWM course designed to be delivered online via
Zoom</u> (as well as hopefully being able to be run in
person in future too). Alex is leading this work.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><b>Options in Germany</b>. 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? <a
href="http://www.actionforhappiness.org/groups"
moz-do-not-send="true">www.actionforhappiness.org/groups</a>
- 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).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I also like your idea of asking people what they would like
to receive as a support for their happiness right now.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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!).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Warmest wishes to you and all the team in Germany :)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Mark</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div>
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"
data-smartmail="gmail_signature">
<div dir="ltr">---<br>
<b>Mark Williamson</b>
<div>Director, Action for Happiness</div>
<div><a href="http://www.actionforhappiness.org"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">www.actionforhappiness.org</a>
<br>
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/actionforhappiness"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">www.facebook.com/actionforhappiness</a>
<br>
<a href="http://www.twitter.com/actionhappiness"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">www.twitter.com/actionhappiness</a><br>
<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, 11 Oct 2020 at 22:16,
Tobias Polzin <<a
href="mailto:tobias.polzin@actionforhappiness.de"
moz-do-not-send="true">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>
<p>Hi Mark,</p>
<p>I hope you are doing well.</p>
<p>I would like to give you some updates on recent
activities and perhaps you have some suggestions for us.</p>
<p><b>Status:</b><br>
</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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).<br>
</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
<p>We submitted "job offers" to volunteering portals, made
online calls introducing AfH to them (and recorded these
calls for further use).</p>
<p><b>Challenges</b>:</p>
<p>* 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.</p>
<p>* UK seems to have reasonable success with the online
groups (79 online) and zoom events. (<b>@Mark,</b> 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.</p>
<p>* 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).</p>
<p>Options:</p>
<p>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).<br>
</p>
<p>2) Try to enhance the course content and more importantly
the <i>course communication</i> and promotion to link it
explicitly to difficulties in the covid-situation.</p>
<p>3) Mimic other successful UK activity, like trying to set
up something like the 10-days email program in German.</p>
<p>4) Pilot some zoom discussions as in UK, even with not so
well known people and with smaller scale.</p>
<p>5) Do something completely different, like asking
ourselves, what would I personally like to receive as a
support for my happiness in these times?</p>
<p>Is there anything you would like to comment on?</p>
<p>Best wishes</p>
<p> Tobias<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<pre cols="72">--
Ich werde versuchen, mehr Glück und weniger Unglück in der Welt um mich herum zu stiften.
(Action for Happiness Deutschland. <a href="http://www.actionforhappiness.de" target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">www.actionforhappiness.de</a>)</pre>
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</blockquote>
</div>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-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="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.actionforhappiness.de">www.actionforhappiness.de</a>)</pre>
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