We moved to another country 10 years ago, I went from working full time in the NHS living in a town with a very active social life to living in the middle of the countryside, no job and virtually no social life at all. I was bordering on feeling very depressed. I found a local community centre and started volunteering. It was the best thing that I ever did. It got me out of the house, I could choose when I wanted to volunteer (at one point I was doing it full time) and I met some lovely people who went on to be very good friends. I also was fortunate to go on lots of different training courses and I actually passed my training qualifation which I absolutely loved doing. I would recommend volunteering to anyone that has time on their hands, maybe feels lonely or maybe just moved to a new area and wanting to make new friends.
