Please join a few of us from around the ecosystem as we listen deeply to one another about what is wanting to emerge, and heart-storm a tool for supporting deep listening in our communities.

We are considering designs for a decentralized system for “good neighbor warmlines” – ideally making this available via SSp ecosystem.  As we all know, there are lots of crisis hotlines (suicide prevention, domestic abuse, etc.), and lots of help-lines (offering services/connecting people to resources).  But there are few “warm lines” – designed simply to provide a loving presence and deep listening for those who seek it.  This could have initial value as an offering for those seeking company, but perhaps more significantly, it could have value in encouraging more and more people (volunteers) to be trained in the art of deep listening and holding space in more mainstream settings – thereby building our collective capacity to invite and hold people in a space of greater stillness, healing, and wholeness so as to be able to collectively sense the emerging future, rather than to cling reactively to past, cracking systems.
 
We're hoping we can gather a group to heart-storm about the “human” side of this – eg, creating volunteer training materials/modules, as well as best practices around recruiting, supporting volunteers, etc. Here’s a short inspiring video about how such a warmline can work at its best.  And here’s a 30-minute video that is related to the possibility of encouraging and training deep listening skills in traditional settings/populations. 
 
Initial Idea Outline:  Good Neighbor Warmline (offering the gift of love, friendship and presence):  This would offer the gift of friendship and deep listening to those who feel socially isolated and who could use some love and social connection.  It would get around the problem of giving out private phone numbers because people would choose to call in (and we could ask them if they want to opt in to leave their numbers if they want follow up calls).  We would simply need to build/acquire the basic technology, and all the “manning” or “womanning” of the hotline would be volunteer. 

Here are some examples in other cities:

• The contact help line for many communities in Pennsylvania.  I think this is the closest example of what I had in mind:  “We provide listening, health and human service information and referral assistance to the Pennsylvania communities.”  It does not purport to deal with suicide prevention or domestic abuse, for example.  It just is mainly for listening.
• The friendship line offered by the Institute on Aging of San Francisco:  “The Friendship Line is both a crisis intervention hotline and a warmline for non-emergency emotional support calls”  Offers not only deep listening and friendship, but also suicide prevention/crisis services, grief support, well-being checks, elder abuse reporting, and outreach to eligible callers.
• The silver line – a UK based offering that matches volunteers with seniors; the senior receive weekly friendship calls:  “The Telephone Friendship Service is not a counselling service, and no specialist advice or support is provided, however older people tell us that not only do find their calls enjoyable, they find that they help them navigate the difficulties of ageing.  The service is free, calls from volunteers are made via an online, virtual call centre and our older people and volunteers never meet, as the safety of older people and volunteers is paramount.”  Silver Line also creates peer groups of 6 or so elders that join volunteer-facilitated calls as a peer group.  The group calls are not dissimilar to my virtual Awakin circles (see attached emails that describe the local Awakin circles). 
• World Empathy for Meds [underway]: those trained in nonviolent communication available to be called by front-line healthworkers.
• Crisis Text Line – extensive effort based on texts (not phone calls), and focusing more on helping than listening.
• Quarantine Chat -- seems to be a new offering.  Callers sign up and choose language preferences to be subscribed to periodic calls. After a brief moment on hold, they're matched with another random person (the caller ID says "QuarantineChat" when the phone rings; the receiver doesn't have to pick up if they're busy—the first person will be automatically matched with someone else).

Please join us in our collective heart-storm!