Happy Encounters - The Big Lunch 2012

This seems like a really good idea to connect with people around you to create a happier, closer and friendlier community.  It's a great opportunity to get to know people who you may walk past every day that seem like great people, but you just never really had a chance to get to know them, as we are always either too busy with our lives or it just seems too awkward to chat up with some stranger out of our comfort zone.  Share this with your friends and create your own big lunch in your area.

About, street party, community event, neighbours - The Big Lunch 2012

The Big Lunch is a very simple idea from the Eden Project. The aim is to get as many people as possible across the whole of the UK to have lunch with their neighbours in a simple act of community, friendship and fun.

Last year on Sunday 5th June the best part of two million people took part in 2012 The Big Lunch falls on the same weekend as The Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations on Sunday 3rd June and as announced by Buckingham Palace The Big Jubilee Lunch will be a part of the main programme of events over the central weekend of the Diamond Jubilee. A record number of people are expected to take part. Why not be one of them!

A Big Lunch can be anything from a few neighbours getting together in the garden or on the street, to a full blown street party with food, music and decoration that quite literally stops the traffic.

Since starting in 2009, thousands of Big Lunches have taken place in all kinds of communities across the UK and the best part of a million people get involved each year.

Why get involved?

Having a Big Lunch with your neighbours can be great fun! Here are just a few reasons why it's good to sit down and eat with your community:

• To stoke up community spirit – we call it ‘human warming’.
• To make the third of us who live alone feel happier, closer and friendlier.
• To show how local people can change a neighbourhood for good, forever.
• To conquer our natural shyness by opening our curtains, doors and minds and looking out for one another.
• To share stories, skills and tools, so we all end up richer in every sense.
• To discover common ground across age, class, faith, race and the garden fence, and to remind ourselves that charity begins at home, or at most, a couple of doors away.

Below are some responses from 2011 Big Lunchers… 

• 89% said it encouraged sense of community
• 89% thought it brought generations together
• 84% felt it made them feel better about their neighbourhood
• 86% said it was a day to remember
• 69% identified a stronger sense of community after their event
• 74% created new relationships which would like to be continue
• 87% of organisers meeting new people at the event
• 95% of organisers say The Big Lunch has been good for their community
• Over half of the people who attended said after their event they feel less isolated