Jamal Erbilir, aged 31, Convener of the Meeting Strangers programme, Amsterdam.
Interviewed in a coffeeshop at Frederiksplein on June 10, 2024
How did you come to realise the city needed a programme to help strangers meet?
I saw it. All around me. And I especially noticed in my hospitality work that people were longing for connection but didn’t know how to get past the small talk with someone new. I’ve had some memorable exchanges with strangers in my time and they’d made me look at the world in a different way. I’ve learnt things from those conversations. And I wanted to give people the opportunity to feel that deep connection in a very short time: ten minutes is the magic number. Loneliness doesn’t happen just because we happen to be physically isolated. Our culture encourages us to feel a sense of shame at being alone. These classes are designed to help normalise meaningful conversations between strangers.
How popular are your classes?
So popular that we’ve held them twice a month for three years now and every one of them has sold out. And we’ve started offshoots: one for the over 50s. One for the queer community. One at Christmastime for people who find the holiday season really tricky to deal with. We hold them in the square here or in the park. We set up tables and chairs and for two and a half hours people exchange cards with pre-written questions designed to help you move past the small talk and learn something special about the other person. And probably yourself too.
It’s not a dating event, just an open, relaxed and safe space to meet strangers. Of course you’re not going to connect with everyone— we know that— but if you get a spark with just one person, that’s a great start. At the end of the class you can decide if you’d like to have coffee with someone you enjoyed talking with. We see people light up when they discover someone with mutual interests. A network of strangers comes alive. Sometimes people go off afterwards and have dinner together in groups. That’s when we know we’re helping.
Do you think we’re losing the art of striking up a friendly —but not too friendly—conversation?
Absolutely. In Amsterdam it might be a cultural thing: we’re not very curious about each other, perhaps because we’re a big international city. We’ve got used to ignoring one another. It’s easier that way. There’s no need for eye contact or smiling on the street. I’m not sure we ask enough questions of each other anymore. We’re scared to broach bigger subjects because we’re worried about causing offence. I think we’re in danger of losing our emotional intelligence. I grew up as the generation before the internet so I learnt how to talk to strangers but social media will make that far more difficult for Gen Z. I think we should be teaching communication skills at school.
Do you think big cities have to work hard to keep the idea of community alive?
Yes. Amsterdam is in danger of losing that. We nod or say good morning to our neighbours but that’s it as far as conversation goes. We don’t know anyone in our buildings by name. New migrants and people who move here for work often find Amsterdam a lonely city. In fact my Turkish grandparents – they’re in their 80s now — are thinking of emigrating from Amsterdam back to Turkey. My grandfather says, ‘If something went wrong for us and we needed to rely on our neighbours, I’m not sure they’d offer to help us or check up on us.’ They find that scary. In the Netherlands, the Government provides healthcare in such a complete and efficient way that it has made us anti-social by default. It’s a trade-off: we have strong Government so we don’t rely on each other.
Is this the way of the future – courses like yours reminding people how to communicate verbally?
I hope not (laughs). I hope we auto-correct ourselves before we do too much damage. We’ve got to stop treating strangers like they’re dangerous people. Being on our own doesn’t have to be problematic or demeaning — it doesn’t say anything sinister about our character. Strangers are just people we haven’t met yet. We are not designed to communicate on screens. We are designed to meet face to face. But I think if we’re not careful, we’re going to have to teach the next generation how to talk to each other in person.
Do you understand why Amsterdam has a reputation for being one of the loneliest cities in Europe, especially for the elderly?
Marit: In this neighbourhood, many of our clients are living alone with no families in very tiny old-style apartments on the canals - some of the buildings date back to the 13th century. Many of the elderly get stuck — literally stuck— on the second or third floors because the staircases are almost vertical and so cramped you can’t fit in a chairlift. Or the landlords won’t pay for one. And that means the elderly never leave their apartments.
Judith: I find it so sad when I visit people and I’m the highlight of their week. Sometimes it’s been a month since they have spoken to anyone. Loneliness is a hard fix in this city. It is terrible when we go in and find someone has died. We had an elderly gentleman recently we called ‘The Pyjama Man’ who’d been dead for two weeks and no-one knew. The people above and below his apartment said, ‘Oh we wondered why we hadn’t heard him.’ I said to them: ‘Why didn’t you knock on his door or call the police?’ and they just shrugged their shoulders: ‘It’s not our business.’ It happens here too often. As social workers, we don’t know who lives in these buildings because while you see three stories from the street, it could be six apartments if they’ve been divided. And the elderly often won’t let us in to check on them.
What about Loes? She’s 85? How is she coping?
Judith: Loes has never been married or had children. She worked as a prison guard at a men’s prison in the town of Haarlem. She has lived alone in this 19thC apartment — it’s 30 square metres in total— for fifty years. Often she won’t let me in, but today I have an Australian with me (we laugh) so she is curious to meet you. She has a good attitude but she needs help and she won’t ask for it. But you can see how happy she was to have company. She’ll tell you it’s not unusual not to leave her apartment for a month.
Do Dutch people try to look after their elderly as a rule?
Marit: I’m afraid not. In Amsterdam we are not especially kind. We have been raised to believe that everyone should look after themselves. One of the big reasons for the loneliness here is that we don’t depend on each other anymore. The social welfare system here takes care of you from baby to grave so we don’t need the community to play its part, and actually that’s a bad thing because as soon as you can’t climb down your stairs and get outside it doesn’t matter how good a Government you have.
Petrick: Our Government thought it would be clever, and cheaper, to leave old people in their houses as long as possible. Now they’ve realised that they can’t afford to keep pensioners in their homes. There are long, long waiting lists for home help, often as long as two years. It’s a hopeless situation. We are social workers but sometimes we find ourselves buying groceries, cleaning toilets and putting out the trash. If not us, who else will do it?
Your ‘Buurtteams’ model seems to work very well as a way of starting relationships with the elderly at a street by street level. Does every neighbourhood in Amsterdam have its own team of social workers?
Marit: Yes. We are part of a new social system for Amsterdam. And we do it by strengthening the concept of neighbourhood. Our model is being copied in other places where loneliness and isolation is a becoming a crisis. The elderly need to see the same friendly faces so they can start to trust us and let us inside. We send a letter first or we just turn up and ring the bell. And we keep ringing the bell until they know us well that we are allowed in and we can start seeing how to help. This is how we get to know everyone who’s old in the area and where they live. We become someone they can depend on. We have our office in their neighbourhood too so residents can ring their local Buurtteam and know we will help them straight away. No wait lists. Or if they’re mobile enough to walk they can drop into us in person, come for coffee or join one of the neighbour clubs just for people in this area. It doesn’t matter how good the healthcare system is. Loneliness will only change if you put people first.
What are you most proud of?
Judith: We have created some great friendships between residents. We connected a group of women in the neighbourhood who didn’t know anyone and were very lonely. We helped them to meet up the first ten times and then we left them to organise themselves. They’re now a little ‘troop’ seeing each other all the time. They check up on each other. We want to start more groups like this because they work so well.
Marit: Wintertime is especially hard because it’s very cold and very wet and everyone stays inside all the time. We see the loneliness at terrible levels then. Last winter we started a ‘telephone circle.’ We joined up five or six isolated people inside the circle. I started by ringing the first person. The first person then rang the second, and the second rang the third and so on until the last person rang me back and the circle was complete. They enjoyed their call with someone and everyone feels they’re looking after each other. And as the social worker, I know my circle of clients are managing for this week. Next winter we will try to get them to do the telephone circle by themselves. They will report to me if someone doesn’t answer. Then I can go check on them in person, but more importantly, we are showing people how to look after each other independent of us. In Amsterdam we need to start re-building community from the ground up.
