North London Cares is a community network of young professionals and older neighbours hanging out and helping one another in our rapidly changing city.
We do this because London is a place of extremes. While our capital is one of the most dynamic places in the world, full of cultural and economic opportunities and a hotbed of innovation and change, it can also be anonymous, lonely and isolating.
For our older neighbours in particular, many of whom have spent a lifetime in their home neighbourhoods in Camden and Islington, the rush and pace of the city can often now feel too much. Getting around can be frightening, and trends including globalisation, gentrification, migration, digitisation and the housing bubble are transforming our communities faster than ever.
The multiplying effect of those pressures is that many older people have deep roots – from Kilburn to Kentish Town – but few connections. Meanwhile, young professionals – often graduates from across the country and around the world – can have hundreds of connections in the social media age, but no roots in their communities.
The separation of those parallel worlds wastes human potential, entrenches loneliness and isolation, perpetuates social division and is ultimately corrosive for our society.
North London Cares seeks to address this modern blight of disconnection in our capital by harnessing the people and places around us for the benefit of all.
Our objectives are to:
North London Cares has sister charities in South London Cares and Manchester Cares.
We achieve these outcomes through four core programmes. Our Social Clubs are regular group activities which offer an anchor of shared time, laughter, new experiences and friendship in familiar but often changing locations including pubs, cafes, local businesses, cultural and community centres. Sessions include film and storytelling nights, dance parties, new technology workshops, ‘back to work’ business visits, choirs, Men's Cooking classes, pub clubs and more.
Meanwhile, our Love Your Neighbour programme brings young professionals together with their often housebound older neighbours to build and support one-to-one friendships, and to bring a little of the outside world in for older people who may struggle to get out. Friends spend one or two hours a week having a chat, supporting one another and helping each other to get a little extra reflection and pause, as well as that deeply needed companionship to break up the week.
Third, our proactive Outreach work harnesses the connections of our young volunteers to identify potentially isolated older people where they are. Through this programme we place ourselves in local chemists, supermarkets, food banks, betting shops, pubs, libraries and other locations to strike up conversations with older neighbours and introduce them to our network. Our Winter Wellbeing project, for example, helps older people to stay warm, active, healthy and connected during the most isolating time of year. Young Londoners have knocked on 16,500 doors of older neighbours, enjoyed 12,000 face-to-face conversations, distributed 550 blankets, coats and scarves and £19,000 in small winter grants – and referred hundreds of neighbours to local council and other services, helping to make sure that no one falls through the gaps in local provision.
Finally, our Community Fundraising offers a fourth way for younger and older neighbours to interact. Events, challenges, corporate partnerships and online campaigns all offer the chance for neighbours to share fresh camaraderie, as well as to raise money to support their network.
