A cuppa with some company can beat loneliness
Shared cafe tables project
A scheme to help combat loneliness and isolation has come to Stirling.
The Welcome Community Café project is now running at the city’s Waitrose, Burgh Coffeehouse in King Street, Stirling University and Recyke-a-Bike, Alloa Road.
It invites customers at these places to display cards indicating they are happy to share their tables with others who are on their own.
The cards say: ‘Share your table and meet new people. You might just make someone’s day.’
The heart-warming scheme started in England but it was been taken on by Falkirk and District Association for Mental Health which is based in Falkirk’s Victoria Road and runs projects aimed at helping people with mental health problems.
The Welcome Community Café initiative is already operating in 30 places in the Falkirk area and two in Alloa.
Much media attention has in the past few years been focused on the impact of loneliness and social isolation and how that can often lead to mental health issues such as depression.
This was one of the reasons why FDAMH staff decided to start the Welcome Café project. At the moment it has no funding but securing financial backing is a longterm aspiration providing it proves successful.
Volunteer coordinator Jim Thomson explained the scheme had one aim: to encourage people to have a chat over a cuppa.
He said they “wanted to get back to the old days” where people could sit and talk to people they didn’t know without feeling uncomfortable.
“That small interaction might be the only human contact that someone has all day and the benefits, although not seen, could make a real difference to that person’s life,” he added.
“You put the card on the table and the onus is on you as a person who is inviting someone to share their space.
“It’s not trying to pair people up; it’s encouraging people to have a fiveminute chat, if you are up for it. Some people who go to cafes like to be on their own. Others come in and sit staring through the window for long periods, never saying a word. Sometimes, that can be the only interaction they have that day.”
He said the project would give people a choice of whether or not they wished to engage with someone willing to speak with them. Volunteer Helen MacLeod, who was born and brought up in Stirling
If you have worries, chatting to someone completely different gives you a bit of light and takes you away from what you are experiencing Volunteer Helen MacLeod