Legacy
Legacy
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South London Cares' newest colleague, Ruby, has joined the team to lead our Love Your Neighbour Programme, matching up older neighbours and volunteers one to one for new friendship. In her first blog, she describes her first week and why she's excited to get started.
Like most people who’ve lived in London for a while, I don’t tend to speak to people at bus stops. I passed the unspoken induction process that greets would-be Londoners arriving from smaller cities, towns and villages. I mastered the art of avoiding eye contact on the underground; I didn’t try to introduce myself to new next-door neighbours; and I fell under whatever spell it is that says two people waiting alone at a bus stop on a Thursday morning should only speak if absolutely necessary.
But the day of my first interview at South London Cares, I decided to break that particular habit. I struck up conversation with an older woman waiting next to me and to my surprise she didn’t shuffle away. In fact, Beth and I chatted for ages. I told her about my interview and the community network I was hoping to join and she told me about the changes she’d seen across South London in the past few decades. She couldn’t believe it when I told her where the office was based – “are you sure it’s in Brixton, love?”
That conversation clarified so much for me about why South London Cares exists. Because as odd as it might sound to say that a bus-stop chat with a stranger was uplifting, that’s exactly what it was. Beth and I might never otherwise have spoken, but we had things to give each other: attention, stories about experiences on the ever-late 415, even a vote of confidence for an impending job interview!
The luck Beth wished me obviously did the trick because here I am: at the end of my first week at South London Cares, thrilled to be part of a growing network of people making these connections across social and generational divides. This week I’ve met many brilliant older neighbours living in Southwark and Lambeth. I chatted to Roy about seeing Jimi Hendrix, the Kinks and the Rolling Stones (the latter “back when they were worth seeing” obviously). I talked to 92-year old Anna about growing up with twelve siblings in her Naples childhood home and the life she built for herself after moving to London 70 years ago.
Mostly, I’ve been talking about the amazing friendships already shared between our older and younger neighbours. Rita (above) even told me how she and her younger neighbour Laura have become "like family" to each other. I’m so excited to be part of growing our Love Your Neighbour programme, and I hope to introduce many more neighbours old and young for company, conversation and companionship over the next few months.
Just a week at South London Cares has shown me how strange it is that, for most of us, being part of a ‘social network’ means staring at a laptop screen, silently scrolling through the Facebook photos of someone we haven’t actually seen in over a year. We might feel part of a friendship group, but how many of us feel like part of a community? Since I moved to London, I haven’t felt that way.
Like many people I know, I’ve assumed that anonymity is just the price we pay to live in one of the most fast-moving and vibrant cities in the world. But one week at South London Cares has taught me that it doesn’t need to be that way.
One of the first tasks I'm getting stuck into is spreading the word about the Aviva Community Fund. We're hoping to win £10,000 to put on special dinners for our Love Your Neighbour network throughout 2017. If you have a couple of spare minutes and want to give me a welcome present, please vote here!