On the 15th May, Katy Roberts our plan coordinator arranged a Virtual Coffee Morning over Zoom for different organisations that we had supported.

Zoom Coffee Morning

The aim was to discover if we could support them through the COVID-19 crisis and to see if there were any opportunities for the groups to collaborate and/or share ideas.

Promoted by Katy and Fran Taylor by email we had 21 participants attend the Virtual Coffee Morning. they came from organisations like Boston in Bloom, Butterfly Hospice, Samaritans of Boston, LHP, Age UK, NACRO and more.

With the popularity of the meeting, 3 breakout rooms were created on Zoom so everybody had a chance to share their views and ideas. Each breakout room had 7 participants and lasted for 40 minutes. It began with each person introducing themselves along with their group’s needs and requirements during this difficult time, an open discussion began.

After the 40 minutes, everybody came back together and the 3 breakout room facilitators shared the main points with the whole group. After which everybody was given a chance to share their thoughts and if anything had been forgotten.

The main outcomes and needs were to look at supporting the elderly with their loneliness by providing simple to use tablets and/or 4g routers, along with training. Thus enabling them to Video Conference face to face with others. Katy is looking into how we, at Boston Big Local, can best support this to make it a reality.

Another point that was raised was the need to provide training on how to offer emotional support to people who are struggling through this tough time. Samaritans of Boston said they would look at providing their Workplace Training, which does just that, over Zoom as a solution.

A post-coffee survey discovered that this Virtual Coffee Morning was positively received and that most of the participants would like them to be held every month which we are looking into doing.

If you are in the Boston Big Local area and would like to come to our next Virtual Coffee Morning please email bostonbiglocal@gmail.com for more details.