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<p>Dear Mark, Alex, national chapters,</p>
<p>I hope you managed to stay healthy and well in 2020 and found a
happy way into the New Year.<br>
</p>
<p>I would like to send you an update on the last 3 month's
activities of Action for Happiness Germany:</p>
<ul>
<li>Based on a amazingly moderated, online strategy-weekend
several new volunteers joined your coordination team and <b>refreshed
our activities tremendously</b>! <br>
</li>
<li>We offered monthly online-calls for people interested in
volunteering. The first zoom call with a 17 minute
introduction into Action for Happiness Germany was recorded
and serves as a first introduction on our webpage and for
future volunteers. Every month new volunteers joined in.</li>
<li>From the strategy-weekend several projects emerged that
showed already some actions:</li>
<ul>
<li><b>Online Exploring What Matters Courses</b>: We went
through the course book and identified a few spots where the
content needs to be modified or enhanced regarding the
pandemic (New action ideas, mental health studies regarding
the pandemic situation, working remotely). We reworded the
course description page (<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=auto&tl=en&u=actionforhappiness.de%2Fkurs">english
google translate</a>), to reflect that purely focussing on
happiness feels awkward to some people in the Pandemic
(adding resilience, confidence).</li>
<li>Additionally, as the UK EWM system is basically shutdown,
we translated the leader/apply/course booking forms, the
course leader guides, so that everything in the course
registration and <b>booking process is now in our hands and
in German</b>! Still there are a lot of things to refine
and automatize, but we are equipped to do the first
prototyping and announce a "EWM course for future course
leaders" which is basically booked out after 3 days.</li>
<li><font color="#ff0000"><b>IMPORTANT:</b></font> We changed
the <font color="#ff0000"><b>payment description</b></font>
for the course. The previous "the course is worth 100€" was
a inexact term. Is it a donation or not? Donations have
(depending on you income) high refunding (up to 40%) in
Germany so it is relevant, if it is a donation or a
contribution. We agreed with Alex to go for the Karma
Kitchen Style: "Your course has been paid, to enable future
course you are free to donate. AfH-Germany calculates around
100€ for a real world course, 50€ for an online course, for
course book, technology costs, support from Action for
Happiness England, cross-financing for course participants
who can pay nothing or less or courses in other regions of
the world where the Course expenses do not come back in".
Well, the 50€ have not been discussed with Alex, but I guess
this is appropriate, as food and room expenses are not in
there any longer (<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=auto&tl=en&u=actionforhappiness.de%2Fspenden">google
translated donation page</a>). I will discuss with the tax
office, if this is appropriate for a legal donation. Even
better would be a donation at the end of the course (like in
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="https://www.dhamma.org/">Vipassana
Meditation Courses</a>). But we have heard that is very
important to have some upfront commitment for the course,
otherwise it would be to easy to register for a free event
and dont show up.<br>
</li>
<li><b>Social Media Boost</b>: We have now a team that does
social media activities on facebook, twitter, instagram,
pinderest, telegram channel. In addition to the calendar
quotes, which are now more beautifully designed, we have an
additional Daily Format with interactive tasks and
suggestions where one volunteer contributes really amazing
pictures from her personal library:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.instagram.com/actionhappinessdeutschland/">https://www.instagram.com/actionhappinessdeutschland/</a><br>
</li>
<li><b>Happiness Hotline</b>: We initiated a support hotline
with 3 volunteers with a background in coaching and positive
psychology, one hour a week. The first three weeks, it was
not used by anyone. We have some ideas how to improve the
presentation of it. (e.g. less thinking of what we can
offer, more thinking of "empathically connect with a fictive
interested person and think how would he/she search for such
an offer and how could he/she overcome hinderances",
Testimonials, ...).<br>
</li>
<li><b>Community</b>: For one year, we have an online
community tool PeepSo included in our webpage. It is rarely
used by external people, but inside our active volunteers
it's group functionality makes it an easy collaboration
support.<br>
</li>
<li><b>Volunteer Portals</b>: We announced AfH votunteering
portals and got some responses here. <br>
</li>
<li><b>Online Happy Cafe</b>: We plan our first online happy
cafe 20.1.2021.<br>
</li>
<li><b>Weekly Plan:</b> Some volunteers prepare a weekly plan
of online events, possibly including events for other
organisations.<br>
</li>
</ul>
<li>In Autumn we already printed the 24 pages version of the "10
keys summary" in Germany and ship it over the homepage on a
Karma-Kitchen-Payment model.</li>
<li>We created monthly newsletters. AfH International supported
us with mailings to their members in Germany, Switzerland and
Austria. We ship to 2400 members from the UK database and to
1400 members from our database. We conducted a survey on the
content of the newsletter. The calendar got 4.9 of 5 starts,
the entire newsletter amazing 4.3!<br>
</li>
</ul>
In general, it feels like that we have <b>waited </b>for very
long for the world to become back to normal again, wanting the
world to be different than it is. And now <b>accepting </b>that
for a longer time, the world will be different and finding <b>creative
ways to act</b> upon this insight! <br>
</div>
<div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-unicode"><font color="#ff0000"><b>Thank
you, volunteers, for all your contribution!</b></font><br>
<ul>
</ul>
<p>Difficulties:<br>
</p>
<ul>
<li>The number of administrative and organizational tasks grows.
We find volunteers to contribute in several ways, but still a
lot of organisational knowledge is focussed in me, Tobias. We
have basically given up "thinking bigger" in terms of
preparing a "massive volunteering administration" or looking
for a Foundation that would be willing to sponsor an executive
director or something like that. We make up ideas and actions
as we encounter issues. (Which is not the worst thing! :-)<br>
</li>
<li>For me, personally, I have some "zoom fatigue" regarding
online activities, as a particular joy for me
is the "bringing people together" part of Action for Happiness
and I have more than enough online contacts with my normal
work. Still, what AfH can offer is very valuable, but not
particularly for me.<br>
</li>
<li>We are still basically invisible for classical media like
magazines, radio, TV. We are not experienced in contacting
those.</li>
</ul>
<p>Perhaps you are interested in our basic organisational
structure, which has changed in some details:<br>
</p>
<ul>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>There is a non-profit association with 3 board members that
serves as the legal foundation, but effectively does nothing.
This year we had the first legal checking of our non-profit
status and we passed.<br>
</li>
<li>There are now 7 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.<br>
</li>
<li>Every 6 months, we arrange a weekend together, for
revitalising the contact. The last 2 have been only virtual
and the next will be probably too.<br>
</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 30 minutes zoom webcall with a
personal round with "30 mindful seconds", "one good thing",
"current internal weather"; and looking at the active projects
"celebrate success", "appointments for next week",
"impediments/difficulties/questions" (adopted from Scrum
"daily"), with up to 10 members.<br>
</li>
</ul>
<b>Dear national chapters, is there anything to report from you?</b>
I would find it nice, if you all report something about your
current achievements, difficulties, feelings, plans!
<p>Best wishes</p>
<p> Tobias<br>
</p>
<br>
</div>
<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" moz-do-not-send="true">www.actionforhappiness.de</a>)</pre>
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