Create Belonging Sunday 26 March 2023
What is Neighbour Day?
Neighbour Day is a call-to-action day for Relationships Australia’s Neighbours Every Day social connection campaign. It aims to support and enable sustainable respectful relationships across communities, while also helping to address loneliness.
The theme for 2023 is ‘Create Belonging’, inviting everyone in Australia to take everyday actions that create social connection and foster respectful relationships.
Celebrations can occur at any time throughout the year; however, the official day is the last Sunday in March. It’s the perfect day to connect with existing and new neighbours to build the community you want to live in – and create belonging.
Make your Neighbour Day as big or small as you like – a casual cuppa, a picnic in the park or a simple message of support.
Visit NeighboursEveryDay.org to register your event and to access free resources to help you celebrate.
Ideas — Events can be in person or online
- Host a BBQ with neighbours
- Plan a ‘bring a plate’ street party
- Organise a game of anything on the local oval
- Have a party on your front lawn
- Meet for afternoon tea in the back paddock
- Enjoy a neighbourhood picnic in your favourite park
- Grab some takeaway coffees and invite your neighbour for a local walk and talk
- Or simply have a cup of tea or a chat with a new or old neighbour.
Read more about: Why get involved in Neighbours Every Day?
Social isolation and loneliness can affect any person at any stage of life. While loneliness is a normal human emotion, strong social connections can help protect you from chronically experiencing these feelings. Chronic loneliness can affect your mental, emotional and physical health. While the answers to loneliness may not be straightforward, having a variety of respectful relationships is fundamental to creating more resilient individuals and communities. Neighbours Every Day promotes the importance of these connections, every day of the year.
Strong social connections take effort. To truly reap the benefits of social connection, you must feel like you belong. Belonging is the sense of safety and comfort you feel when you are accepted for who you are. It’s more than inclusion, it’s an authentic acceptance which leaves you feeling both connected and supported. There are a range of ways that we can all work to create belonging, both for ourselves and for those in our communities. For some tips download our 10 Ways to Achieve Belonging.
Getting involved in Neighbours Every Day helps people create belonging in their communities. Independent evaluations show that people who get involved in the campaign have improved mental health, wellbeing and sustained reductions in loneliness – Find out more. Some key outcomes of the independent evaluations show:
• Those who got involved in the campaign are protected against the mental ill-health effects of the pandemic (2021).
• Participation leads to significant reductions in loneliness that were still present six months on from the campaign (2020).
• Neighbour Day participation was associated with people having wider and larger social networks, and more frequent occasions and time spent socialising (2021).
• The campaign increases neighbourhood identification – the sense of belonging you feel when you connect with your community (2021, 2020).
• Neighbourhood identification is the key to reductions in loneliness and social cohesion (2021).
• Neighbourhood identification has also mediated wellbeing during COVID-19 lockdowns (2021).
• Improvements in relationships with your community led to greater relationship satisfaction across all types of relationships (eg. family, friends, colleagues) (2021).
• These benefits were felt equally by everyone. Benefits of the campaign were the same across different ages, genders, educational background, relationship status, employment status, socioeconomic background and between those highly involved versus those casually involved (2021).
By getting involved you can:
• Help raise awareness about loneliness and tangibly address loneliness across Australian communities.
• Improve your own and others mental health. Create resilient communities which cope better during collective change or crisis.
• Foster respectful relationships every day of the year. Meet new people, grow your network and nurture previous connections.
• Create communities which generate a sense of belonging for everyone. Creating belonging is an opportunity to reflect on what we can do better. Belonging doesn’t always come easily. True inclusion and lasting connection takes consideration and practice.
Jump onto our Create Belonging page for more information
