A Great Idea

I recently read about Barbara Bright, who has set up a company called Nexus, which began in the 1970s as a phone based network service and is still going strong.

Nexus is not a dating agency but a means of meeting other unattached people. As Barbara explains, “If you’re lonely, you’ll find that people are not going to beat a path to your door,” she says. “You just have to get out and meet people. NO one can change your life but you.” And that is what Nexus does – provide an opportunity to do just that.

Nexus was devised by an Australian civil engineer who found it difficult to meet people in the early 1970s. He heard of a system in Japan where people could phone a number and listen to recorded messages. If they liked the sound of the person, they could contact them.

So Nexus was founded on that idea and a similar service set up in the UK. Barbara and Peter advertised and were inundated with calls. Within this service came Icebreakers, which is a listing of members’ ads with a first name and phone number, released every month.

Then Skills Bank was started by a member who wanted to help people with business skills in exchange for practical help. The Leisure Interest directory came next, categorising members by their interests, and the Bulletin tells Nexus members what’s going on in their area.

As a result of all this communication and contact, members form a community and help each other. Not just that, but they tend to keep their membership long after they have found a partner.

“It becomes a way of life,” says Barbara. “It gives people a family outside their family.”

It seems strange that nowadays there are more forms of communication than ever, yet it is ever easier to avoid talking to people, so communication skills are dying.

Perhaps we should all re-learn the art of listening. Of having time for each other; of caring. Taking the time to stop. Grabbing those moments of happiness, and sticking them in our mental scrapbook, to be taken out and treasured.

With so many of us scattered all over the country, if not the world, Nexus sounds like a wonderful idea.

www.nexus-uk.co.uk
or ring 01237 471704

And just to lower the tone completely, Himself has suggested calling the van the Bonkmobile....