I’d like to congratulate my fellow Community Champion, Eddie Piekut from Maidenhead because Maidenhead is now celebrating its one-year anniversary of holding a regular Talkin Table – “Creating a Community by Bringing People Together one Table at a Time!”
Initiated by his friend Grant Oliver, Rotary started their latest Talkin Table (TT) in Maidenhead in January 2024, ably supported by other Rotarians such as Jane Petrou, Sarah Street, Paul Street, Fiona Thornton, Stewart White, Shahrbanu Haidari, Norman Freegard and others.
Eddie reports that the TT is starting to overflow with regular attendees of over a dozen people, and it’s getting tougher to fit everyone comfortably around a Rio table.
TTs meet weekly every Tuesday from 10:30 until 11:30 a.m. at the Rio Deli Café, Ground Floor, Maidenhead Library. They were held without a break throughout 2024 and will continue in the same spirit in 2025.
All anyone needs to do to attend is to turn up at the Rio Café, buy their own refreshments, and have a chat.
Everyone who goes to the Maidenhead TT is treated with dignity, regardless of age, ability or disability, gender, race, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, marital or gender status. Eddie tells me that he has found hosting a regular Talkin Table a very rewarding experience. He knows from both personal experience and his nerdy look at the science behind loneliness that group-based interventions such as Talkin Table are a very effective way for people to make friends and come together as a community.
Eddie and Grant say that the genius of attending a TT is in its simplicity. A regular one-hour, once-a-week meeting allows hosts and beneficiaries to build a positive community spirit, share information and topical issues, have fun, and make friends without too much commitment. The hour seems to fly by, and although meetings are regularly overrun, Eddie tries to keep them to a one-hour schedule in case he and the other attendees are cajoled into doing more community work and the attendees are not charged too much for car parking.
You are never too far from a risk assessment when you have a chat with Eddie 😉
The Rio Café is registered with the local authority under the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme. It maintains a “good” hygiene standard and has 17 Trip Advisor entries, 16 scoring excellent and 1 average. It is also close to all the facilities that the library offers, making it a safe, affordable, and spacious place to meet. The café has good escape routes, good lighting, First Aid facilities and a Defibrillator.
If you are ever in Maidenhead on a Tuesday morning, I suggest you go to the Talkin Table.
Talkin Tables is a national effort see – https://www.talkintables.co.uk for the location of over 50 tables across the country. The national initiative works against the tagline: ‘Conquering Loneliness by Bringing People Together one Table at a Time!’ but Eddie and the Maidenhead Bridge Rotary Club prefer a more positive tagline: ‘Creating a Community by Bringing People Together one Table at a Time!’
Thank you.
Jon
