‘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

With under a week to go to Christmas, we must've made it to Autumn in our month-by-month round-up.

With Olympic and Paralympic fever still dominating, in September we knuckled down to some fundraising and planning for new projects.

Those projects include our two big current efforts to keep people warm and connected this winter, and to research community resilience to extreme weather conditions.

But that didn't mean our amazing volunteers weren't still busy doing what they do best: spending time supporting and socialising with their older neighbours.

Throughout the month, those volunteers hosted 10 social clubs, ran a trip for care home residents to see the London Symphony Orchestra and livened up other local care homes with weekday and weekend visits.

They also went gardening, took Mrs Hawes for lunch on her 90th birthday, and got our beer mats into the Camden Town Brewery.

And, in one of our favourite interventions of the year, our brilliant volunteer Andreia, who's Portuguese, helped Carlinda, who's Brazilian, save over £100 on her phone bills so she can stay in close contact with her relatives at home this winter.

That's what North London Cares is all about: connecting people, and building communities.