Neighbours Every Day

Top 3 messages about loneliness:

1 in 5 Australians say they feel lonely.
Feeling connected, accepted and included helps reduce loneliness.
Everyone can do something every day to make another person feel less lonely.

We all want to live in communities where we feel connected, accepted and included. Yet, despite technology making contact easier than ever, 1 in 5 Australians of all ages report feeling lonely.

Neighbours Every Day (or NED) is a campaign managed by Relationships Australia with the aim of achieving ‘belonging every day’. It’s a call for everyone – individuals, businesses, community groups and government – to create social connection and respectful relationships through everyday acts.

The campaign is important for older people because loneliness can severely impact their vulnerability to elder abuse as well as their health and wellbeing.

Why is neighbourhood connection important?

When we are connected to other people, we feel less lonely. Our wellbeing improves. And our neighbourhoods become resilient networks that can support each other through hard times and challenges.

The concept of ‘neighbour’ is wider than ‘people next door’. Neighbours are anyone in our community that we can connect to, share with and grow alongside.

NED recognises that fostering community belonging isn’t up to ‘someone else’ or ‘the authorities’: everyone can do something to make others feel welcome in our community and less alone.

The campaign asks us all to:

create belonging, by connecting with others
share belonging, by including others
grow belonging, by building lasting, respectful relationships.

Watch this NED video to find out more.

When did Neighbours Every Day start?

Broadcaster and social commentator Andrew Heslop founded Neighbour Day, a one-day annual event, back in 2003. The event came into the custody of Relationships Australia in 2014, and since then it’s expanded into an ongoing, year-round campaign.

Neighbour Day remains a focal point of the campaign and an important day of action. This annual celebration of community is held on the last Sunday in March.

Who supports Neighbours Every Day?

Neighbours Every Day is supported by a range of individuals and organisations that include local councils, community organisations, individual campaign Ambassadors, and Very Neighbourly Organisations (VNOs).

The VNOs are business, community or government entities such as R U OK?, Orange Sky, Volunteering Australia and the Australian Men’s Shed Association. NED Ambassadors currently include MasterChef winner Julie Goodwin, gardening guru Costa Georgiadis, and social researcher and author Hugh Mackay AO.

As the leading social connection campaign in Australia, Neighbours Every Day continues to grow and support everyone in Australia to build respectful and sustainable relationships with those around them.

Find out more about Relationships Australia

Learn about loneliness and supporting lonely people

Discover 10 reasons to create, share and grow belonging