by Kendall Worth!
Yesterday June 12th 2023 turned out to be the social connections event, hosted by the Brunswick Street Mission. I previously wrote about the event, and for more on the whole “mitigating social isolation project” see this post. Among people working on this project, myself included, we hope this will the first of of many events yet to come. Thank you to the Brunswick Street Mission for being great hosts of this event.
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| 4 facilitators and 2 of the 8 guests that attended. |
Sadly, yesterday’s event was not as popular as we hoped, with a low turnout. The plan was to have enough people to sit at a variety of tables, with cards to stimulate conversation and the idea was to move people around, every ten-fifteen minutes or so, hoping they would find a table where they got to know someone and try to make a connection. Only 8 people showed up, and they came in over the first 45 minutes. On the bright side, of the 8 people who did show up, they came from a variety of different backgrounds - a mix of people in poverty, people with disabilities and newcomers to Canada. Those who attended had a very good time, and enjoyed themselves, and some connections were definitely made.
But many of the people I speak to and advocate for, who are living in poverty, did not attend. On the one hand it did not surprise me – on the other, why was attendance so poor? What about it made it unattractive? What would make it more attractive? I did hear from a small number of people that they would have come if we held it outside of places where people in poverty go, anyway. We want to have more events in the future and want to make them free but also well attended. This did not surprised me.
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| Those who attended had a good time and left us messages... |
The main purpose of hosting
an event in June, was to try to engage people with a social group so
that they would have people to invite to take in free events this
summer. One piece of feedback was that we should do it every week... same time and place.
I will end this by saying after the event was over yesterday I had some First Voice people, who wanted to come, message me asking me how the event went. They said they wanted to come, but their day yesterday ended up not working out so that they could come to the event.
Someone to go with was a learning experience for the future of the project! If you knew about it but did not find it attractive, or did not feel included – can you let me know why or why not?? Use the comments or send me a message.
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