‘12 days of Christmas: looking back at a memorable year

Please note: this post is 145 months old and The Cares Family is no longer operational. This post is shared for information only

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For the next 12 days in the run up to Christmas, we're publishing blog posts that look over some of the work that North London Cares has done in 2012. Think of it as a little Advent Calendar. First up, January...

This time last year, NLC didn't really exist.

We'd piloted a few projects -- supporting a handful of people in Islington with occasional tasks, recruiting volunteers from Teach First and other local schools to help out at theLemuel Findlay Supplementary School in Tottenham, and helping Hands On London tocollect unwanted winter coats at King's Cross station -- and we were working hard to raise money, but it wasn't really until the new year that we really got going.

So in January 2012 we were raring to go.

Working with Islington Council, we began in earnest to deliver a project (which we are repeating this year) to help keep our neighbours warm and connected during the coldest days of winter.

Over the next 10 weeks, 19 volunteers knocked on over 4,000 doors, delivering blankets, coats, cold and carbon monoxide alarms, connecting people to the Council and local GP surgeries, and generally checking to make sure their neighbours were OK.

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It wasn't an easy project, but we learned a lot from it.

We discovered that while most older people in the borough were well-connected to health and social services, many craved more opportunities to get out, to meet people, and to make new friends.

In response, we built the NLC Social Clubs and "Love Your Neighbour" project (more of which over the coming days...)

In January we also recruited Jen as network coordinator.

Jen spent the next nine months building North London Cares, growing our database of volunteers and supporting hundreds of our older neighbours in inspirational ways. Jen has since left NLC to other opportunities, but the rest of the team would like to thank her for her great work throughout the year.

Check back over the next 12 days to learn more about the ways we've been "connecting people, building communities" in 2012.

Alex