Words by Smiley Team
Early in 2020, during the first lockdown, Keith Grinsted found being on his own something of a struggle.
At the time, he was also running a #WellbeingWednesday scheme for his employer, Wave, on behalf of Nespresso. The combined experience brought him to thinking more about how other people were dealing with loneliness.
He began to look into how this radical change of circumstances was affecting people. By Christmas 2020, when the third lockdown was happening, he found a lot of people were confessing to how difficult they were finding life.
So, on the evening of Christmas Day, he set up a Zoom call for anybody that was feeling lonely and wanted to have a chat. As it turned out, he sat there for an hour on an empty zoom call – alone. But his daughter reminded him afterwards: “Well, that just goes to show that nobody was feeling lonely on Christmas Day dad, so that's good.”
(Find out how The Lonely Art Club is bringing communities together)
More people spoke to him between Christmas and New Year, so on New Year's Eve he decided to establish the ‘Goodbye Lonely’ social enterprise.
Keith acted as a sounding board, and simply someone to chat to. Over the past 18 months, he has helped countless people, some of who were close to suicide, nervous breakdown or exhaustion. He set up a Facebook group, with the mantra: “No matter how dark things may seem, you can still be the light at the end of someone else's tunnel!”
The conversations take place via Zoom, telephone calls, Messenger, WhatsApp, whatever works best for them. And at whatever time!
Most weeks he spends six to eight hours chatting to members that need someone to talk to.
(Read about the befriending scheme which needs volunteers)
However, following the recent Facebook outage, he was concerned people would be unable to get in touch as normal, as the enterprise uses Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger predominantly, along with support phone calls.
Lonely or isolated people were left cut off from support. “We no longer want to be beholden to major corporations when we are supporting individuals through difficult and challenging times for them and their loved ones," he said.
So Keith decided to bring forward the launch of the ‘Goodbye Lonely’ App, to help even more people in need.
One user said: “I dread to think where I would be right now if I had not connected with you.”
Another added: “Keith has been the rock that has gotten me through some terrible times.”
His main mantra is always: “Goodbye Lonely provides a non-judgemental shoulder for support, or to cry on.”
Click here to join the Goodbye Lonely Facebook group and drive positive change by supporting others who feel isolated.
