CQUniversity starts conversations across Australia to End Loneliness
While loneliness continues to affect people across the globe, a community-driven campaign born out of regional Queensland is helping to connect people and start conversations.
CQUniversity hosted End Loneliness Day in Rockhampton last week, but the message was heard throughout the country with more than 2000 people attending events in search of connectedness and conversations.
CQUniversity Associate Vice-President Rockhampton and Central Highlands Regions, Kim Harrington was the initiator of what has become End Loneliness Inc. – a community organisation committed to tackling the challenge of loneliness head on.
“We started the project back in 2016 with community forums and research projects which ultimately led to the establishment of End Loneliness Inc. in 2021,” she explained.
“It began as a KPI of the CQUniversity Rockhampton Region Engagement Committee, but with the support of community members and local businesses it has taken us on an ambitious journey to end loneliness through a variety of strategies."
End Loneliness Day has become an annual event where organisations register to hold a morning tea to raise awareness of loneliness and to encourage people to engage.
However, the day is only the beginning of the strategic approach to ending loneliness for the organisation.
“We’ve established four pillars – Smile Zone, Hello Neighbour, Connectivity Pack and Conversation Corner – which all play an important role in bringing people together,” Ms Harrington explained.
“Smiling at someone, and being smiled at, makes you feel good. So that’s an important pillar.
“Our modern society has enabled a disconnect with our neighbours, so we thought that was an important issue to address also.
“Conversation Corners allows us to create safe and accessible spaces and opportunities for people to connect and talk with others, while our Connectivity Pack is an electronic resource developed to establish a hub of information on support services, community events and social and sporting opportunities.”
Ms Harrington said research studies had proven that loneliness was at pandemic rates.
“Research is showing that one in four people feel lonely – that’s significant numbers – and we know it is having a huge impact on health and wellbeing.
“In a global community more connected than at any other time in history, increasing numbers of people of all ages, circumstances, religions and cultures are becoming more isolated, disconnected and lonely.”
Ms Harrington said the loneliness phenomenon was happening well before COVID, but the pandemic just amplified the problem and made it more visible.
She said although it was established that loneliness affected the older population, in Australia the loneliest sector was aged 18 to 24-year-olds.
“That makes it an important issue for CQUniversity as that is a key demographic for all universities.”
CQUniversity continues to be a proud supporter of End Loneliness Inc.
For more information on End Loneliness Inc visit www.endloneliness.org.au.
Transcript
Loneliness is regarded as the world's most difficult problem to solve it's an issue that has plagued society for decades and yet only now has been recognized as a real societal challenge and something people are willing to talk about good morning how are you haven't seen you in a while back in 2016 the CQUniversity Rockhampton Region Engagement Committee joined with community on an ambitious journey to end loneliness starting with forums and research projects and the formation of End Loneliness Incorporated steps were made to help people reconnect people started talking more about it during Covid and in the years after the initial pandemic but it but it was as I said it was there we identified in 2016 so the University then led research projects and we held more forums and workshops we really engaged community and it we knew that it had to be a project that if it was going to be long term and actually address any of the loneliness issues that needed to be led by community today is all about promoting the importance of social connectivity and um by hosting and loneliness day here at CQUniversity we're providing the opportunity for people to connect have a conversation over a cup and a cupcake proving that from Small things big things can grow this week End Loneliness Day saw thousands of people attend events in almost every state of Australia we've got elms moving around the event today so that's end loneliness motivators and their role is to actually engage in conversation and use those conversation starters just to get um the social interaction happening and to have people feeling comfortable about talking um with those they know and most importantly being able to chat with someone that they've never met before research in Australia is showing that one in four people frequently feel lonely so that's quite high numbers significant numbers and we know that there's lots of health outcomes you know like all the decline in people's health and well-being when they are socially isolated and when they they're not connecting with people automatically think it's elderly people and I think they were probably the loneliest in previous years but research indicates in Australia 18 to 24 year olds are our loneliest group so obviously with universities that age group is a big cohort attending university and colleges across Australia and knowing that um there were real issues from what we found we formed in 2021 End Loneliness Incorporated so End Loneliness Inc and that's a committee of business people who volunteer their time to implement the strategies and in particular four pillars that our communities indicated they thought would be helpful tools to help reduce loneliness so we've got Smile Zone and people smile if you actually smile it makes you feel good so they're tangible Smile Zone locations Hello Neighbour we know with our neighbours we're not as connected as we used to be so we've got automatic roller doors for our cars we no longer get regular mail delivered and we're not getting the newspaper to the front door so there's less time to be out and there's less chance of seeing our neighbors so we need to actually reconnect with neighbours we've got Conversation Corners and then we've got Connectivity Packs and Connectivity Packs are really really important so it's information on where to go for if you need support it's information on sporting and social and then community events while End Loneliness Day is a once a year event it's a reminder that the simple act of starting a conversation can empower connections and help to reduce loneliness
