Are you taking part in ITV's One Million Minutes?

As we move towards Christmas, it is important to remember that we aren’t all lucky enough to have a large group of friends or family. This means that a lot of people are left on their own during the Christmas period and the rest of the year. Loneliness has been linked to poor health and can even contribute to an earlier death.

ITV and the morning TV show, Good Morning Britain have joined up with several charities to start the ‘One Million Minutes’ campaign. It’s all about getting the British public to make a conscious effort with members of the community that maybe don’t have the support structure that a lot of us do have.

The charities involved with the campaign include; Silver Line, Age UK, The Royal Voluntary Service and also The Campaign To End Loneliness. All of them are organisations dedicated to providing support for the elderly, and together with ITV they want to encourage this same ethos across the United Kingdom.

The campaign works by asking visitors to the website to pledge a certain amount of time each week or month to help end loneliness. The website then offers information on how to pledge time to people. This can be done through The Royal Voluntary Service and also Silver Line. There are also countless other ways for people to volunteer though, getting in touch with your local council and ringing around care homes in the area would be a great start!

So far there have been an impressive 20,000,000 minutes pledged to charity. There is no guarantee that people are going to actually commit their time to helping people that are lonely, but the campaign will help inspire some people and give a very serious issue a second thought.

If you would like to commit some of your time to helping the elderly, or you would like more information on the cause please visit:

http://www.itv.com/goodmorningbritain/1millionminutes/1-million-minutes