Save The Date! Sunday 7th June 2015

The Big Lunch, the UK annual get together for neighbours takes place Sunday, 7th June, when folk all over the UK will turn off the TV or laptop and join their neighbours for a few hours of fun, food and friendship.

The Big Lunch is the UK’s annual get together for neighbours, an idea from the Eden project and made possible by The Big Lottery Fund. It provides the perfect recipe to have fun with your neighbours, feeding community spirit and helping to build stronger neighbourhoods. People are the key ingredient, with those taking part creating friendlier communities in which they start to share more, from conversation and ideas to skills and resources.

The Eden Project an award winning social educational environmental social enterprise, started it in the belief that we, as a society, are better equipped to tackle the challenges that we face when we face them together.

Recent studies show that communities across the UK are more fragmented and provide a lower sense of belonging than 40 years ago.The Big Lunch aims to show how the simple first step of sharing lunch together can start to change how people feel as part of our wider community and are asking us to take part this year and host our own Big Lunch events on June 7th 20145 or on another date this summer if this Sunday doesnt suit locally.

Grainne McCloskey of The Big Lunch said: “Big Lunches of all sorts and sizes have happened in all kinds of communities, in streets, entries, back gardens, parks and local community venues. Since starting in 2009, thousands of events have taken place each year, with a whopping 4.85  million folk taking part across the UK last year. Everyone can get involved and it doesnt need to cost much because everyone brings something to the table,” she said.

Last year there was a really positive response showed a growing appetite for The Big Lunch idea in Northern Ireland and we are optimistic of a great response again this year.

To find out how you can run your own Big Lunch with your own neighbours, colleagues, friends, family or community group, check out www.thebiglunch.com

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