Members of Age-friendly Whalley Range and Chorlton were happy to welcome a group of delegates from the Standing Committee for Health and Social Welfare from Oslo City Council to our community centre recently.
We received a message from the group upon their return to Oslo:
Good morning 🙂
On behalf of The Standing Committee on Health and Social Welfare in Oslo I want to thank you a lot for hosting us last Monday.
You have a very inspiring place, attitude and experiences and the group visiting you expressed that in plenum.
We have arrived safely in Oslo after interesting and great days in Manchester and Leeds.
Good luck with your future work.
Yours sincerely
Hans–Olav Toft
Secretary of The Standing Committee on Health and Social Welfare
(Thanks to Russell and Dave for letting us use the the church as it was enrolment day in the JNR8 hall for our ESOL learners!)
Manchester Cares is a brand new community network of young professionals and older neighbours hanging out and helping one another in our rapidly changing city.
We do this because our home town of Manchester is a wonderful place, with innovation and influence, history and heart at its core. There’s always so much going on, from new music to new businesses to new people arriving all the time.
But the city we love is now growing and changing at double speed, and that leaves some people feeling anonymous, isolated and left behind.
For our older neighbours in particular, many of whom have spent a lifetime in their home neighbourhoods, the rush and pace of the city can often now feel too much. Getting around can be difficult, and trends including globalisation, gentrification, migration and digitisation are transforming communities faster than ever before.
The multiplying effect of those pressures is that many older people have deep roots – from Ancoats to Ardwick, Longsight to Levenshulme – but few connections. Meanwhile, young professionals – often graduates from across the country and around the world – can have hundreds of connectionsin the social media age, but often no roots in their communities.
The separation of those parallel worlds wastes human potential, entrenches loneliness and isolation, perpetuates social division and is ultimately corrosive for our society.
Manchester Cares seeks to address this modern blight of disconnection by harnessing the people and places around us for the benefit of all.
Our objectives are to:
- Reduce isolation and loneliness amongst older people and young professionals alike
- Improve the connection, confidence, skills, resilience and power of all participants so neighbours can feel part of our changing city rather than left behind by it
- Bring people together to reduce the gaps across social, generational, digital, cultural and attitudinal divides.
Find out more: https://manchestercares.org.uk/about-us
ABOUT CYRIL FLINT BEFRIENDERS
With over 5 million elderly people living on their own, and 50% citing television as their main source of company, loneliness is an ever-present problem within our community (Campaign To End Loneliness).
Cyril Flint, an elderly pensioner living on his own in the Trafford area, was a classic example of one such individual. Having spent 20 lonely Christmas holidays on his own, since the passing of his wife, Cyril story not only evoked a wave of compassion within the community, but it also made us want to do something to help. Setting up an informal befriending service, designed to help prevent social isolation, seemed like the perfect solution. Since its creation, our scheme has grown throughout the Manchester area and we now have an increasing number of active volunteers throughout the community. https://www.cyrilflint.org
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