Friendships get rekindled via Zoom meetings

The Friendship Cabin was established last year and usually operates out of the Otters Head, Studio 8 and Lomond Centre.

Run by volunteers, it offers a wide range of social and educational activities to help maintain participants’ engagement in community life.

With the majority of members being forced into self isolation, initially they stayed in contact via the telephone, however treasurer and trustee Roger Wilks decided to try to run meetings online via Zoom and asked Amazon for help.

He said: “I approached Amazon with a number of ideas and they very kindly donated 10 Fire Tablets with a retail value of nearly 1000 to distribute to our clients.

“This enabled us to re-introduce our schedule of meetings after we had downloaded Zoom.

“As a normal agenda we either had guest speakers or entertainment so now with the use of Zoom we are able to provide this for our members and from responses, the boredom of self isolation has been relieved somewhat.”

Jamie Strain, senior operations manager at Amazon in Dunfermline, added: “Technology has become increasingly important for staying connected and it’s our pleasure to provide Friendship Cabin with the donation of Fire Tablets.

“We hope that more people living alone in our community are able to communicate virtually with their support networks and they have fun with their online meetings.”

The Zoom meetings have seen cabin members joined by friends from Canada and Nigeria with entertainment being provided by Shanelle’s Piano Studio from Mumbai, and Sanjay Bose and Adrian Das from Bangalore.

Members also used the opportunity to have a blether on many subjects and take part in quizzes.

A number of entertainers have also agreed to sing over the next few weeks, while, as a further effort to occupy the time of members, specially designed quiz books and colouring books have been distributed.

Anyone wishing to join the sessions should call Pearl on 07423 154632.