In the spirit of the new year, we’re looking back at what’s happened on the Online Community over the past year. It’s been a challenging year for many with continued uncertainty around the coronavirus pandemic and the impact this has on cancer patients and their loved ones.
What has helped a lot of people get through is talking to others who can understand how you may be feeling here on the Online Community.
We’ve welcomed around 21,901 new members since the start of 2021 and we’ve seen 161,844 posts, comments and blogs.
There’s a lot of support to be accessed here on the Community and we hope all our new and existing members find it helpful to have a safe and supportive space to share personal experiences and offer support each other.
"Thanks so much, I totally appreciate all the support I have had from joining this forum it has helped me greatly knowing that I am not alone xxx"
“This forum is a lifeline and keeps me sane, Thanks to every contributor as they have all helped on the journey.”
"You can't believe how much your response has helped me as I was lost in imagining worse scenarios etc. I now feel more hopeful and more ready to take the challenges ahead."
"I just want to say a big thank you to this forum as you really helped me through the recovery after my last operation. Your support has meant such a lot to me and I know with your help I’ll get through this one too."
Have you seen our new Welcome video?
A few months ago, we released our new welcome video to help new and existing members find the right support for them here on the Community. There’s lots of different ways to access support on the Community, and the video helps explain.
The short video (1:42 minutes) can be found in the private message you receive from the Moderator account, or it' can be seen in our Technical help section.
Our amazing Community Champions
We’d like to take the opportunity to say a huge thank you to all of our volunteers who dedicate their time to supporting people affected by cancer. This year, we had 8 new Community Champion volunteers join the team:
Lowedal, Wee me, Vulval cancer warrior, MrsBJH, Irishgirl16, God Willing, Juicestool and Daisy53.
We hope you’ll join us in saying thank you to them and all our volunteers for helping everyone here in the Online Community in 2021. If you want to know more about the role of a Community Champion, you can read our ‘Here’s to our Champions’ blog.
You may have spotted the Online Community adverts
Earlier this year, we launched a new advertising campaign that you may have seen on social media. The aim of the new campaign was to help more people who’ve been diagnosed with cancer and supporting loved ones find peer support here on the Community.
Introducing Community Badges
Our Community badges are not only a new way for our members to quickly identify the Community team, and our Community Champions, but also a way to celebrate you and the amazing support you provide each and every day on the Community.
We have three badges which we are going to be launching, and we wanted to tell you more about each of these badges below.
There’s more information in the ‘Introducing Community badges’ blog if you’d like to know more.
Do you read our Community news blogs?
The News section of the Community shares member’s experiences, updates and useful support information. This year the Online Community team published 108 blogs. You may have noticed that we’ve updated the Community news blog page to help you find the content you are looking for.
Like the image above, you’ll see different categories that you can choose. If you click these buttons it will link to the related blogs.
We love hearing what content our members like to see in our Community news blog. If there’s any topic you’d like us to publish in our content, please do let us know in the comment box at the bottom of this page, or email community@macmillan.org.uk.
Alongside telling us what content you'd like to see published next year in the Community news blog, we'd also love to hear how you've found or offered support to others here on the Online Community. Maybe you've started your own blog or have been following someone else's? Have you started a discussion thread about a certain topic and it's provided lots of support to others? If so, please do let us know in the Comment box below.
