Making coffee connections

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The Strathmore Municipal Library has created a new weekly meetup, inviting older adults and seniors in the community to connect over coffee around the fireplace. 

“We just wanted to offer another opportunity for adults in the community to meet and connect with other older adults in the community,” explained Laura Henderson, public services manager with the Strathmore Municipal Library. “We know there is a lot going on in the community; we are in the same building as the Happy Gang, so we know there are activities going on right next door to us; we know that Bridging the Gap has activities typically on Tuesdays and/ or Thursdays, so we wanted to have something going on ourselves that was sort of in that connection piece.”

Henderson said the library wanted to create an avenue for people to connect which did not require a lot of commitment or investment from attendees in order to make it easy for them to participate.

During the weekly events, hosted on Mondays, the library will have conversation prompts available to help get attendees started. 

“The first one that we hosted was Sept. 23, and then we did not host one Sept. 30 because we were not open, but (attendees) chatted about worry, stress, and everyday frustrations,” said Henderson. “It will not always be that type of conversation; they might chat about activities or fun things, it will just be varied and then if conversation flows on its own that is even better.”

Going forward and as the event develops, the library aims to connect with more local groups around town such as the Happy Gang, local churches and the seniors lodge to spread the word. 

According to Henderson, the library aims to continue hosting this type of event weekly on Mondays for the foreseeable future, as long as it maintains traction and support. 

“We would love to see it get some traction and then see it running itself. We just want to provide the space and some coffee and tea and that sort of thing,” she said. “We can fit a lot of people around that fireplace so we would love to see it filled. Because we knew it was a one-off in September and then we had a holiday Monday, we did not want to start confusing people so we put it out there to see what happened but now we will be advertising it a little heavier.”

Future instances of the event may vary in topics from past fashion to activities, to deeper conversation topics. 

More information about the weekly meetups is available through the library.