Friendship club offers 'safe space' for young women

The group has hosted a range of activities including tote-bag painting

A friendship club set up to tackle loneliness in young women has "created a safe space" for connections to be made, its founder has said.

Caitlin Ball, 23, started the Social Girls Club (SGC), which has attracted 1,100 members since March, to get women in their 20s and 30s together.

Group outings have included a rugby try-out, sea dips, jewellery making, painting classes and a meditation workshop to tackle feelings of isolation.

Ms Ball said the take-up had shown "there really was a need for the group" and watching the community grow over the past 10 months had been "mind-blowing".

Groups of between a dozen and up to 40 girls have attended the meet-ups

Ms Ball, who is a project manager from Douglas, chose to set up the group after growing apart from school friends when she chose to stay on the Isle of Man to study at University College Isle of Man.

"I've never really had a proper girl group and making new friends as an adult is hard," she said.

Since creating the group, she said she had made "many really good friendships".

"I also see girls going out together, and adding each other on Instagram and Facebook after events, I just love it," she said.

The friendship is run by four volunteers who live on the Isle of Man

Clare Pickering from Douglas went along to a group meet up after three years of living in the UK and immediately found friends.

She said even with established friendship groups and family, coming home was "still quite difficult" because people had "moved forward and you don't quite fit in anymore".

The club had made a "massive difference to me confidence-wise" as it "fosters a safe space to get to know people who are on your wavelength".

Ms Pickering, who is now an group volunteer, said it had been "lovely" to build a "massive community of lovely people" who were all "looking for connections".

Tiffany Baker Quayle (left) and Caitlin Ball are part of the team that run SGC

The volunteers, who run the group in their spare time, said new members had included student nurses and teachers, and people who have lost contact with their friends.

Tiffany Baker Quayle, who moved to the Isle of Man for teacher training in 2019, said the uptake had been amazing but she was "not surprised" it been so well subscribed.

She said she wanted to help set up the group because moving to the Isle of Man at the age of 21 had "felt like joining the main cast of a TV show in series five".

The feedback had been "really special, and we're just getting started", she added.