Any Suggestions

LegacyUser

Hi Guys,

My mam is single and 50 plus. She separated from my father a long time ago and does not really get out of the house. Now that she is at home all summer she has expressed an interest in doing something to get out of the house. Which I think is great. She has a bit of a drink problem so these are good signs(her actually taking an interest in life). I have suggested she does some volunteering but is there any like social club for people that age. Something to get her out of the house on a regular basis and meeting new people. Any idea or suggestions are most appreciated. She now volunteers on a weekly basis but would love to get out of the house more.

thanks

Colonel_McCoy

Take up Bridge?

tigerlily73

Tell her to join the ICA or to take up lawn bowling.

Walking clubs are always good ones, as they get you out of the house, you meet people, AND a lot of them are the healthy type that would not generally foster a heavy drinking environment on the social side of things.

The Irish part of this site is also worth a check out.

http://www.helpx.net/hostlist.asp?host_region=305&network=3

Basically people like farmers, or clubs and the like look for help around the place. You can find a farm for example that says "Move in with us for the summer, your board and food is free, but in return help out cleaning, a few other tasks and so on".

Tasks vary of course from what a young healthy teen, to an older person could do. As a random example from that site:

Small holding on the west coast of Clare, growing vegetables, and keeping farm animals We produce for the Farmers Market where we sell home-made breads, cakes, jams and vegetables. We use goat's milk and home-made cheese for the house and we cook with a lot of the home produced vegetables and sometimes meat. We have two small children, Frank (10) and Fina(5) and they love having volunteers around the place. We like the volunteers to participate in the household and -work, allthough they have their own mobile home to sleep in,(2 small bedrooms) and possibly cater for themselves, to be sociable, independant, and enjoy farmwork with irregular hours at times, mostly time off on sundays or bad rainy days! We offer healthy food, wonderful sunsets and rainbows, irish traditional music, and the possibility to learn more about old style farming and farm-related skills like cheesemaking, bread baking, spinning wool, etc.

Cant hurt to look whats there. Me and the girlfriends did it for 2 months once and we ended up south of Dublin feeding rare animals for the whole time, including big rare dog/wolf things and weird birds.

LegacyUser

Maybe what she needs is some fun! Look around and see what's available where you are - check the classifieds, the notice boards in the shops/church/community centre/library. The walking club is a good idea - they usually have different levels to suit different abilities. Also the bridge club. Is there a local choir she might like, a drama group or dancing classes? Maybe there's a local festival to help out at. Arts groups are great - if you get involved in one thing it often leads to being involved in something else.

lukegriffen

If she's in Dublin, i heard good things about meetup.com - look for the Red Cap group, this is an over 50s group