Page’s “Little Italy” wants us to rethinks approaches to aged care, loneliness and community
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Eighty-two-year-old Irene Sideris has been living at Villaggio Sant’ Antonio, an aged care facility in Page, for the past three years.
She loves everybody and everybody loves her, but Irene doesn’t get to meet that many new people each week.
That’s all changed now that Villagio has embraced an innovative way to bridge the loneliness gap in Australia.
Last week it opened its own coffee van and indoor café – open to the public and designed to bring members of the community together. It means you can drop by, have a coffee, and share in a little of Irene’s love.
The Little Italy Village Café is an Italian village-inspired gathering place where aged care residents, neighbours, workers, families, parents, children, dogs and people of all ages can come together over coffee and food.
The café will become the first site in the Foundation for Social Health’s new Third Spaces Network, an Australian-first initiative to tackle loneliness by creating and supporting everyday places where social connection can happen naturally.
The model being pioneered in Canberra aims to tackle two major social challenges at once: the separation of older Australians from everyday community life and growing levels of loneliness in the wider population. One in three Australians reports being lonely, along with 40 per cent of Canberrans.
Villaggio Sant’ Antonio CEO and former ACT MLA Giulia Jones says Canberra has an opportunity to demonstrate a different way of thinking about ageing and community.
“We want to challenge the idea that aged care should sit apart from the rest of society,” she says.
Inspired by the traditional Italian village café, Little Italy is designed around the idea that people of different ages naturally come together as part of everyday life.
The café will serve food and coffee prepared at Villaggio and is deliberately open to everyone, not just Villaggio residents and their families.
For Page, it will also provide the suburb with its only café.
Giulia, who is of Italian descent, said the concept draws on a culture where older people remain visible and valued members of their communities.
“In Italy, the village café is part of the fabric of community life. You see people you know, you meet people you don’t, you hear the local stories and you feel part of something,” she says.
“You have grandparents sitting alongside young families. Children grow up knowing older people in their community. Generations aren’t separated from each other.
“That’s what we want to create here in Canberra.
“Sometimes connection starts with something as simple as seeing the same person every morning and saying hello.”
Little Italy will also mark the official launch of the Foundation for Social Health’s Third Spaces Network, with the Canberra café becoming its first formal site.
“Third spaces” are places outside home and work where people can spend time together informally, from cafés and libraries to community gardens, neighbourhood spaces and local meeting places.
Melanie Wilde, CEO of the Foundation for Social Health, says bringing a third space into an aged care setting is particularly powerful because it can strengthen connections for older Australians while breaking down the physical and social separation between aged care and the wider community.
“Loneliness isn’t something we can solve by simply telling lonely people to go out and make friends,” says Melanie.
“We need to create the conditions that make connection easier – places where people can show up regularly, encounter one another and gradually build relationships.
“Little Italy is the first site in our Third Spaces Network because it demonstrates what is possible when we rethink the places already at the heart of our communities. This is about much more than opening a café.
“Canberra is where we’re starting, but we want Little Italy to be the first of many places around Australia that make social connection part of everyday life.”
Giulia says people don’t need an appointment, an invitation or a particular reason to come to Villaggio, just the desire to have a coffee and maybe share a few words with residents.
“We want people across Canberra to see aged care differently – not as somewhere removed from community life, but as somewhere community life can actually happen.
“Buon cibo, buon caffè, buoni amici – good food, good coffee and good friends.”
THE ESSENTIALS
What: Little Italy Village Café
Where: Villaggio Sant’ Antonio, 35 Burkitt Street, Page
When: 7 am to 11 am seven days
Web: villaggio.com.au
Main image: Melanie Wilde with Irene Sideris
