Impact on Community
This part of the website contains information relating the activities of the Isle of Man u3a concerning our impact on the community and community events.
The Silver Line
The Silver Line is the only free, national, confidential helpline open 24 hours per day, 365 days of the year, offering information, friendship and advice to older people.
After several pilot schemes were run in 2012 - including one in the Isle of Man - Dame Esther Rantzen founded the service, which launched nationally in 2013. It has received over one million calls to the helpline since the charity's launch.
It currently gets around 10,000 calls a week - and this number has been steadily growing.
Over two-thirds of calls to the helpline - around 700,000 - were made overnight or at weekends when no other helpline is available for older people who may be lonely, isolated or confused.
The Silver Line relies entirely on donations and there is no cost to the older person, or to volunteers, for any of their services.
Everyone who rings the helpline will be offered the opportunity of having a weekly half hour telephone call from their Telephone Volunteers or, if they prefer, a Silver Letters Volunteer who will write to them twice per month. For further information go to The Silver Line website.