Wellbeing Lancashire Community Interest Company, formed by a group of Lancashire wellbeing providers, has set an ambitious mission of making Lancashire the kindest county and what better than to launch this mission on World Kindness Day (Friday 13th November 2020).
Following its membership launch event last week, the organisation is quickly growing its provision of wellbeing services within the county. The vision is to make Wellbeing a top priority for Lancashire, by providing a framework for the delivery of wellbeing in the county.
But what does making Lancashire the kindest county actually mean?
A recent Coronavirus and the Social Impacts on Great Britain survey, found that most people think we will be united and kind following our recovery from the Coronavirus pandemic (57% and 67% respectively), but only 22% thought we would be an equal society (source: Office for National Statistics, May 2020). Wellbeing Lancashire will build on this kindness trend with a calendar of events that will support the mission ‘to make Lancashire the kindest county’ and also ‘to make 2021 the kindest year yet’.
The Wellbeing Lancashire Kindest mission will be launched this Friday with a behaviour and value attached to each letter of the acronym.
Kindness – this principle underpins everything and since Coronavirus, attitudes to kindness have increased since the pandemic hit. Findings show that the average monthly searches for ‘acts of kindness’ are 4400 in 2020, compared with 2900 in 2019. Meanwhile, the search term ‘random acts of kindness’ has more than tripled since last year. We want individuals, communities and organisations to attempt to make Lancashire an even better place by promoting good deeds and pledging acts of kindness.
Individual – essential to life is self-care and looking after your own health is critical. We want health improvement to be an essential component of our mission.
Non-judgemental – we want to erase judgemental attitudes in the county towards sexual preference, religion, ageism, sexism, race and disability.
Doing the right thing – we want to create a county where integrity is a core value by all.
Empathic – Empathy allows people to build social connections with others. By understanding what people are thinking and feeling, people are able to respond appropriately in social situations. Research has shown that having social connections is important for both physical and psychological well-being.
Societal – the whole mission for Wellbeing Lancashire is to create a kinder and more empathetic society where people value, support and get involved in their local communities and neighbourhoods.
Trusted- this is the value which underpins all of the above factors and is at the heart of Lancashire becoming the kindest county. It’s about erasing silo working amongst organisations, where people stop falling through the gaps and everyone works together for a more integrated approach.
Wellbeing Lancashire aims to engage individuals, communities and businesses with its KINDEST mission and further details of these activities will follow.
