Our birthday this year is different – but there is hope

On August 8, in each of the 12 years that The Cares Family nurtured our communities of older and younger people to reduce loneliness and intergenerational polarisation, we marked our birthday.

We always felt it was important to remember where we came from and how we launched spontaneously in 2011, to reflect on how one friendship had inspired 30,000 older and younger people to eventually be part of our community, to celebrate the joy and connection that rippled from North London to South London to East London, and Manchester and Liverpool, and around the country through our national programmes, and to take pride in the results of our advocacy.

This year, that birthday celebration is different.

We can still be grateful for the meaning so many thousands of older and younger people brought to one another. We can still be proud of the impact we made over 12 years. We can still look back with love, and even look ahead with a little hope that this work will continue in one form or another. We can be glad that the websites are live again, and the stories can be shared and reshared.

But with The Cares Family now closed after our board’s decision to cease operating last year, our birthday this year is of course a moment of sadness too. Even as so many of those friendships continue organically, we mourn the loss of future connections made, of surprises shared across differences.

We also know that, in times of challenge and change, polarisation and populism and post truth, if the work of bringing people from different generations and backgrounds together didn’t exist, someone would have to invent it. That’s why, on our birthday this year, we are asking for your ideas.

Please contact us via social media if you think you can help revitalise some of The Cares Family’s work or mission. Now 13 years after our launch, we need this community as much as ever — and we hope you will continue to be part of it.