Local charity Live at Home has launched a community initiative to combat loneliness.

The charity is inviting coffee shops to display ’care to share’ stickers in their windows, and to place bee-themed mugs on certain tables.

The idea is that anyone can take a free seat at one of these with others who are willing to have a chat.

The charity emphasised that the idea is voluntary, meaning that anyone who does not wish to share their table can move the bee mug to a different one.

Live at Home said that the initiative is meant to ’stop people from feeling alone and build community spirit by encouraging conversation and interaction’.

The scheme has been launched in the island’s four Costa Coffees, and all coffee shops across the island who would like to participate are being invited to sign up.

Live at Home executive Jackie Bridson said the bee theme comes from the idea of ’Manxifying’ a similar scheme which had been rolled out across hundreds of coffee shops in the UK.

Here, the mugs and stickers have the slogan ’Bee dty hoie’, which is Manx for ’take a seat’.

She explained the concept to the Examiner: ’If you walk in and you’re on your own and you wanted to sit down and have a drink with somebody else instead of sitting on your own - those tables are the ones that you would go to.

’Or, if you’re sitting at the table and you open to somebody potentially coming and joining you.

’The idea is that you then build conversations and interact.

’It’s just going back to the old days of community spirit, and people not only sitting on their phones’.

Highlighting the need for such an initiative, she continued: ’Live at Home as a charity have been in the island for 22 years, so isolation and loneliness isn’t something that’s new.

’I think the thing is that now, people recognise it more because everybody has been affected by it this year.

’It’s absolutely highlighted it - whether you were in lockdown because you might have been contact traced, or maybe you were in lockdown because you had a parent or family member that has an underlying health condition - everybody now will know what it’s like to be stuck inside somewhere.’

Douglas Mayor Jon Joughin, who spoke at the initial launch event at the Sea Terminal Costa, said: ’It’s a great initiative, it really is.

’Live at Home has been a fantastic charity, it’s been well run for a long time - getting people out to socialise together, the various things they’ve done over the years like Men in Sheds - it’s absolutely fantastic.

’This initiative to get people not just to sit in a cafe on their own, but to speak to somebody - it’s tremendous for people that live on their own.’

A second launch event will take place tomorrow, Wednesday, from 9 to 11am at Cycle 360 in the Isle of Man Business Park, another cafe which is participating in the scheme.