Lonely No More Program

About the Program

Participant Testimonial: "I hope that Lonely No More keeps making some more programs because of how important they are. Lots of seniors are very lonely. Friends and close family members start passing away. Not as many chances to make friends... It's harder for older adults to ask for help." - North Perth Storytelling Club Member

The Municipality of North Perth and Gateway Centre of Excellence in Rural Health have partnered to launched Gateway's Lonely No More Program in North Perth. Gateway Centre of Excellence in Rural Health, who is sharing their evidence-based Lonely No More program model and promoting this pilot in North Perth, is supported by the Government of Canada’s Emergency Community Support Fund and Community Foundations of Canada to facilitate this inter-municipal project.

The Gateway Centre of Excellence initially launched the Lonely No More program in 2018 in Huron County to provide a free weekly phone-based program for isolated rural seniors.

These calls are facilitated by trained community members to facilitate peer support, coaching conversations and system navigation assistance. Older adults who are a part of the program report increased social connection as well as strengthening and expanding their support networks. Participants are also encouraged to identify and engage in healthy behaviours.

Lonely No More peer volunteers are empowered to be advocates in their community for isolated and at-risk older adults while also being able to address and confront facts that may cause isolation. Since the program’s inception, program feedback shows 75% of participants and volunteers report the program had a positive impact on their life.

With this expansion, we are recruiting additional community members as volunteers for the North Perth Lonely No More Program. In addition, to further build resiliency within the community and inspire dialogues aimed at reducing the social isolation experienced by at-risk community members, Gateway is also providing free educational opportunities (e-learning course and webinars) to community members who are interested in learning more about peer support, coaching conversations and system navigation.

If you are interested in being a volunteer or participant for the Lonely No More Program, please contact Sarah at 519-292-6862, for more details. Interested volunteers can also use the link below to register for the required training.

Online Courses and Webinar Opportunities

Lonely No More is a peer support program aimed to provide rural community connections among those isolated in our community.

We are looking for community members from the North Perth region and surrounding communities who would be interested in volunteering their time 2 hours a week for 12 weeks (24 hours in total).

The first phase of the volunteer position would be skill enhancement; completing our level 1 and level 2 volunteer education. A certificate of completion for all levels of training would be provided in the form of a digital badge that you can use to share your learning journey with your community (e.g., on your social media or email signature).
The second phase of the position would be putting these new skills into practice by co-facilitating weekly, 1 hour long, dialogues of support with a group of 3 to 5 rural older adults in a party line, over-the-phone fashion for an 8 week duration. Review of our Volunteer Guidebook, completion of weekly activity logs and, on rare occasion, a 1 to 1 follow-up phone conversation with program participants who express a specific resource need would be required.

The definition of resilience we use, which is what we want our volunteers to live out in the program, is resourcing our older adult participants to navigate and negotiate for their needs in meaningful ways. Asking how people define resilience really helps us see what perspectives they are coming in with. Doing for versus doing with is one of the tricky things we have to address during the training so having an idea of whether they take a community versus individualistic view is very helpful when introducing our definition

Winter Offering: 2 hour, weekly, interactive webinar workshop series starting January 9th at 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm EST (dates of the workshop series would include Jan 9, 16, 23, 30)

We're now recruiting participants for the Lonely No More Program! If you are interested in participating in weekly over-the-phone chats with a group of other North Perth seniors, please contact Sarah at 519-292-6862 or sarah@gatewayruralhealth.ca.

Municipality of North Perth
330 Wallace Avenue North
Listowel, ON N4W 1L3

Tel: 519-291-2950
Toll Free: 1-888-714-1993