Empowering individuals in their mature years to cultivate new friendships and explore new interests.
Making friends as a child seems effortless, as kids embrace simple icebreakers and have abundant opportunities to meet new people. Their lives are filled with activities that facilitate both new connections and the strengthening of existing friendships. However, as adults, we often face challenges in approaching new relationships, and social anxieties can increase with age. We may also develop fixed expectations of how friendships should unfold, which may not align with reality.
Nevertheless, making new friends and engaging in new activities can bring immense happiness, satisfaction, and support to our lives. At Be Charity Group, we aim to empower mature individuals by providing guidance and resources to navigate the complexities of building deep and meaningful friendships in adulthood. With the right knowledge and approach, forging new connections becomes more attainable, enhancing our social well-being and enriching our lives.
Websites Offering Support:
Contact the Elderly
organises monthly Sunday afternoon tea parties for small groups of older people aged 75 and over, who live alone, offering a regular and vital friendship link every month.
In response to the COVID-19 crisis they have suspended their regular social gatherings and have created a new service for older people called call companions.
The guests in their existing groups are receiving calls from volunteers and they now have volunteer capacity to reach more older people and want call companions to be a permanent addition to their work.
The call companion’s idea is very simple: a volunteer call companion calls the same older person between two and four times a month at a mutually agreed time for an informal chat. Calls will last for around 30 minutes.
Campaign to End Loneliness
Feeling lonely is a normal human emotion and is simply a sign of wanting contact with people. It can often happen because of external circumstances, such as loss of a loved one.
Befriending
offers supportive, reliable relationships through volunteer befrienders to people who would otherwise be socially isolated. Around the UK, there are befriending projects which organise effective support for children and young people, families, people with mental ill-health, people with learning disabilities and older people, amongst many others.
The results of befriending can be very significant. Befriending often provides people with a new direction in life, opens up a range of activities and leads to increased self-esteem and self confidence. Befriending can also reduce the burden on other services which people may use inappropriately as they seek social contact.
Age UK
provides companionship, advice and support for older people who need it most.
There is a section dedicated to combating loneliness and lots of other sections offering help and advice on a broad range of topics related to older people.
Books on this subject:
Social Skills: A Comprehensive Tool For Meeting New People, Overcoming Fear, Dating & Effective Communication
Do you feel that you are the awkward type when it comes to the social events? Are you struggling to enter into a conversation in a room full of people you are meeting for the first time? Have you just seen a person at the other corner of the room you like but cannot gather the courage to say hi? You don’t have to struggle, just follow the simple steps and techniques as outlined in this E-book. It is all about practicing and learning to take risks, having self-confidence, and learning the universal social norms as described in the chapters that follow.
Not Fade Away: How to Thrive in Retirement
Retirement is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be yourself and do what you want to do. It offers new possibilities for personal growth through learning, retraining, travelling and friendship. But it is also one of the biggest transitions we face, and brings huge psychological and emotional challenges. It’s not surprising that many people struggle with the adjustment to a different pace of life.
Not Fade Away guides the reader through these challenges: dealing with the loss of status and routine, reinventing relationships, managing money, and above all, finding new meaning and purpose. It brings together expert advice and insights from people retiring now, who speak from the heart about the lessons they’ve learned and the new sources of fulfilment they’ve discovered. By cutting a clear path through the maze of choices on offer for people retiring today – which may or may not involve giving up work completely – Not Fade Away inspires you to make up your own mind and take control of your future. And that, experts agree, is the key to a good retirement.
Friendships Don’t Just Happen!: The Guide to Creating a Meaningful Circle of Girlfriends
Shasta Nelson, friendship expert and CEO of GirlFriendCircles.com, reveals the most important proven steps, processes, and secrets vital to establishing the five different levels of friendships, or Circles of Connectedness, that women—no matter their age or relationship status—are longing for in today’s stressful and mobile culture. This revolutionary, engaging guide will also benefit women who already feel rooted to fabulous friends, with insightful principles that will help them maintain and enhance their current friendships.