Our Befriending project has been built up over the past 3 years, led by our Befriending Coordinator Sandra. At present, we have 90 volunteers providing weekly befriending support to 80 different residents (‘befriendees’), yet there remains an overall scarcity of Befriending services across the borough of Lewisham. With much more work still to do, our Volunteer-led services team have been busy driving the recruitment of new volunteers, through our summer festivals stalls like at Hilly Fields Fayre and People’s Day, and more recently through outreach at places like Lewisham Shopping Centre and Bromley Volunteers Fair! Thanks to their great efforts and the commitment of our amazing volunteers we have recently been able to reopen the service to new referrals.

Meanwhile we continue to support our existing team of dedicated volunteers and learn from their experiences. During the 10th annual ‘Befriending week‘ last year we celebrated our volunteers’ achievements with a coffee morning at Stanstead Lodge Community Centre (pictured below), it was a chance to meet other volunteers, and catch up over a coffee!