The Friendship Project
is about asking what friendship, belonging and welcome mean. It’s a chance for me to learn more about friendship across and between cultures. Why?
My name is Olivia Darby. In my work supporting migrant women to integrate, and encouraging young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to discover their strengths and voices, I saw that friendship is what is missing. You can’t force friendship upon people, and yet it is wha
t gives our neighbourhoods – geographic or interest-based – meaning, purpose and identity. They are webs of friendships, literally knitted together into the fabric of society.
Women talk about our friends and friendship all the time. To most of us, our friends, and our role as a friend, is fundamental to our own sense of self and purpose. But how would you define friendship? What are the rules? What are our duties and expectations as friends?
How often do our challenges in building friendship with people from different backgrounds stem from the fact that we think that in the word ‘friendship’ we mean the same thing? Not realising that the importance of friends, the role they play in our lives, the access they have to our secrets, the time we spend with them compared to family members, is informed by the cultures we have grown up in?
Informed by my own experience of friendship, feeling welcome, feeling excluded, living in the UK, Kenya and Belgium, these are just some of the questions that I want to explore. I want to share stories of inspiring friendships and how people have been made welcome. I want to hear from people who have questions or observations that I haven’t thought of.
What is friendship? The more I think about it, the less I know! So this is the Friendship Project. And I’d love to hear your story!
The Friendship Project 