Young Again: Being part of the project has given me a sense of purpose

“Before the Young Again project was established, there were no facilities for older South Asian people in the area. I am 84 years old and live on my own with no family nearby so I often felt alone and distant from people in my local community.

I found out about the project through a poster at my local grocery shop in Huddersfield and attended my first meeting in January 2018. Since then, I have visited the Pakistan Association centre nearly every week. We all have lunch together and catch up. It’s always a welcoming place and I look forward to meeting the other project members, who I now consider to be close friends.

Being part of the project has given me a sense of purpose. We meet every month to make decisions about the group activities and plan trips for the upcoming month. For example, some people mentioned that they struggle to use smart phones so we organised tutorials on modern technology and social media.

We often invite guest speakers to give talks on socially relevant topics of interest. Recently, an academic presented on Islamophobia, which is important to talk about and sparked interesting conversations.

We also arrange regular trips to places of interest around the UK. We travelled to London to visit the House of Commons and meet our local MP. It takes a lot of planning which is all done by the members.”