Coffee with a Cause with BuddyHub

On November 27th Gareth Simpson, a Founding Member of MarketingKind and long time supporter of BuddyHub, hosted our second Coffee with a Cause gathering. Gareth invited Catherine McClen, Founder of BuddyHub, to share with us what inspired her to create BuddyHub, why it was needed and how their model of building meaningful friendship groups around lonely older adults is essential for the long-term health and wellbeing of the country.

BuddyHub is essentially a friendship club. It operates as a social enterprise that specialises in matching up each lonely older adult with three volunteers that can become real friends in what they call ‘Friendship Wheels’.

They are currently operating in three boroughs of London and in order to grow they need help with reaching and engaging chronically lonely older adults. Because this group of people are often not online and are socially isolated they are particularly hard to reach.

In our session MarketingKind members explored the barriers and potential solutions to overcoming this hurdle. Ideas included an intensification plan to partner with local community groups and build locally around BuddyHub’s most successful existing neighbourhoods, reaching more people in need of their services through friends and family members who are online, and finding the right way to overcome any hesitation lonely older adults may have in stepping into the service.

We now have a working group that will continue to build on and refine these ideas with Gareth and Catherine and we’ll keep you updated on their progress.

If you have ideas for BuddyHub or potential partners they should work with, or you would like to join the working group please get in touch.