About the Second 50 approach to community (and why we’re not a Facebook group)
Might you indulge me for a moment? My thoughts are about the approach we’re taking to creating community within Second 50. But first, please join me for a dip in the sea…
Most Sundays, I do an early morning ocean swim with a small group of wonderful women. Last Sunday was a perfect day with calm surf and no stingers. We were lucky enough to watch a turtle glide gracefully by, look down on sleeping wobbegongs, and visit the local giant cuttlefish. Even when the water is rough and rain threatens, I love this weekly dose of exercise, the ocean and what we often find inside it. But the immense benefits from my weekly swim would not happen if I swam alone.
Ultimately, what fills, uplifts and replenishes me, is swimming with a true community of women.
The sense of community is there in the way we swim. We don’t race, we look out for each other, and we chat as we pause to share our awe at the water clarity, comment on the temperature, take in the sunrise sky, or just to look at each other and say: ‘Wow’.
We make sure no-one is forgotten, left behind, or misses out on any special marine sightings.
I was invited to join this small ocean swim group last year by a friend. Despite having been an ocean swimmer previously, somewhere along the way I’d lost time to do it, then I’d lost my confidence. I kept saying I was going to take it up again but was full of excuses about why it was all too hard.
From the ocean to Second 50
I’ve thought about this swimming group a great deal as Melissa and I started to create the Second 50 community.
I know that not everyone is as lucky as I was to have a friend who, after hearing me lament about missing ocean swimming, took it upon herself to check with her old school friends, who made up the swimming group, whether it would be okay to invite an outsider to join their weekly swims.
What I do know from my last year of swimming is that you don’t need a long shared history in order to be accepted, feel embraced and have some important needs met through a community of women.
I also thought a great deal about how best to create this experience for women in their Second 50 who might initially be scattered and disparate, whether geographically or lifestyle-wise.
Why we’re not a Facebook group
One of Second 50's earliest members asked: ‘Why aren’t you building the community via a closed Facebook group?”
It was a good question! She pointed out how convenient Facebook groups are, and how many of us are used to how they work and, therefore, how to participate.
I am on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn but, to be honest, in a less than half-hearted way. I appreciate social media for how it facilitates people to keep in touch with far-away friends and provides a platform for work-related or social sharing. But I’ve also seen social media groups filled with unhelpful noise and an unhealthy focus on non-meaningful metrics such as likes and follows.
I also know that social media runs on a ‘freemium’ model, meaning that it is only free to use because you are the product being sold.
The sad truth is that social media platforms thrive on shallow engagements and are designed to steal your time and attention for the benefit of advertising revenue. Social media aims to keep you online so they can feed you products and services that their advertisers want you to buy. All those pics and videos you love are there to reel you in, keep you scrolling and encourage you to click and tap your way through the day.
Facebook, Instagram and X don’t want you to deepen your relationships with new people you’re connecting with. And they especially don’t want you to take these connections offline.
Research into social media shows that using it dumbs us down, depletes us and makes us sadder and less fulfilled. That is the exact opposite of how we want Second 50 members to feel!
The simple truth is that using social media as the Second 50 platform never felt right. And we’re extra glad we went with this hunch as we’re now reading research (by IT firm, Gartner) that shows only 20 percent of Facebook users still share life moments there, and that nearly half of who they call ‘consumers’ plan to significantly reduce their social media interactions across the next year.
How we are instead choosing to create community in Second 50
Second 50 is still in its early stages so, in truth, we don’t know how our community will evolve from here (and we are very open to evolution and change).
As the co-founder and community leader of Second 50, I want to share the founding vision, and values and philosophy that led us here. I’m doing this to help every member understand the reason why this community exists, what we are co-creating together, and what we should all expect from each other on the journey.
Second 50 ‘s goal is to help Australian women from midlife onwards to make positive changes happen. Our vision is for a world where women in their Second 50 feel valued and can contribute their wisdom and experience meaningfully and visibly. Our logo represents a circle of women around a campfire having constructive community dialogue. In this digital community, we leverage technology to bring back this circle approach, fostering a sense of belonging through meaningful story sharing, social learning and intentional dialogue and action. Our forums and activities have been designed to support each woman's voice, invite diverse thinking, and encourage creative problem-solving. We all share the responsibility of protecting our community values and members' wellbeing.
We have three values that are core to who we are and everything we do:
1. Gain and Give We are a reciprocal community where experienced women learn and grow together; where women feel safe and motivated to share what they know, ask for what they need and help individuals and the community, when they can.
2. Co-creation and Co-leadership To achieve our vision, Second 50 must be co-created and co-led by motivated members, not just the founders. The magic lies in connecting, harvesting and leveraging our collective energy, skills and wisdom. We encourage members to step up in ways that are meaningful to them
3. Safety, welcome, and inclusivity We have a shared responsibility for ensuring the safety, inclusivity and vibe of the community. We ask every member to consider themselves a guardian. Members must abide by the community guidelines, the legal Ts&Cs and values and let the S50 team know ASAP if they see something out of line taking place.
Our community was founded on 4 core principles:
1. Purpose-led Our community is focused on making positive change happen, with a higher purpose to make the world better because women from midlife onwards feel valued and can contribute their experience and wisdom in ways that are meaningful and visible.
2. Collective wisdom We focus on the enormous potential of harvesting and leveraging the wisdom of everyone’s skills, experiences and knowledge. New connections, social learning and growing together, is how we can discover and act on new possibilities.
3. Meaningful experiences Our community and activities have been designed around our purpose, with a focus on creating meaningful experiences and spaces where members can pause to reflect, learn and engage in activities that help them and others make positive change happen.
4. Circle wisdom We are leveraging digital technology to revive the circle approach to community, fostering meaningful story sharing and respectful dialogue.
These principles apply no matter whether we’re talking about our digital platform, online video sessions or face-to-face Second 50 interactions.
While digital interactions lay the groundwork, we are already witnessing meaningful real-word interactions, the forging of bonds and benefits flowing in a reciprocal way. We know that a relationship that begins online doesn’t prevent anyone from chatting on the phone, meeting up for coffee, connecting via Zoom or even flying somewhere to get together in person.
An invitation to you (with a dash of saltwater inspiration)
We know that many of you will already have plenty of friends and family in your life. I do, yet none of them were in the mood or stage of life where they wanted to join me for a regular ocean swim. I needed to find a new community to enable me to gather all the pleasures and benefits that await me beyond the sand.
So, I know that there’s immense power in meeting new people who are looking for the same things as you and who you don’t already have a potentially complex history with, or sense of obligation to.
Our hope for Second 50 is for women to connect with other women who wish to make the most of our years from midlife onwards.
By welcoming you into the waters of being a Second 50 member, I hope that you will feel even a splash of what I experience most weeks as I gather with my new ocean swimming friends. I guess I’m hoping that you will jump into the ocean and swim with us.
Maybe you’ll find a turtle-shaped insight, or permission to sleep like a wobbegong on the ocean floor, or experience the anticipation of meeting a human-equivalent of a spectacular giant cuttlefish!