Our Mutual Project was set up to address the issues associated with social isolation and loneliness by supporting our beneficiaries improve their abilities to build relationships by participating in activities chosen and adapted by and for themselves.

The journey in the project development was not easy as we encountered numerous cycles of needs assessments that we completed over the last 4 months. Our initial project focus was to work with young people and encourage them to consider higher education but unfortunately due to insurance restrictions we could not do that. We then tried again by empowering adults to pursue higher education but we couldn’t do that because we couldn’t find where we could make a lasting impact. But that didn’t stop us we kept going and It was when we approached Age UK that we made the breakthrough we needed.

During our initial meeting they informed us of the social isolation issue in the North East. We learnt that in our region over 25 000 people were reported to experience social isolation to date. They also connected us with our current project partner Well-Being Plus who also fight to address social isolation and they work with people with Long term Health conditions.

To ensure we were equipped with appropriate knowledge and skills to address social isolation and loneliness. The mutual team had 5 of its members complete an online course in understanding social isolation and how best we can deal with it. We then developed activities we felt would address the effects of social isolation.

We innovatively began co-creating these activities with our beneficiaries. To ensure the activities that were created deliver a lasting impact. The process for that would be they attend their first session where they fill out the Well-being star after completion and review they would work with us in creating activities that would target their personal development using a lesson plan. The next step would be to deliver this session in line with the action plan that was created and tick off way more boxes in our beneficiaries skills and personal development.

*Due to Covid-19 we have suspended operations.  We look to resume once it is safe to do so in the new Academic Year 2020/21.