Manchester Cares is a community network of younger and older neighbours hanging out and helping one another in our rapidly changing city. We do this because our home town of Manchester is a wonderful place, with innovation and influence, history and heart at its core. There's always so much going on, from new music to new businesses to new people arriving all the time. But the city we love is now growing and changing at double speed, and that leaves some people feeling anonymous, isolated and left behind. For our older neighbours in particular, many of whom have spent a lifetime in their home neighbourhoods, the rush and pace of the city can often now feel too much. Getting around can be difficult, and trends including globalisation, gentrification, migration and digitisation are transforming communities faster than ever before. The multiplying effect of those pressures is that many older people have deep roots – from Ancoats to Ardwick, Longsight to Levenshulme – but few connections. Meanwhile, young professionals – often graduates from across the country and around the world – can have hundreds of connections in the social media age, but often no roots in their communities. The separation of those parallel worlds wastes human potential, entrenches loneliness and isolation, perpetuates social division and is ultimately corrosive for our society. Manchester Cares seeks to address this modern blight of disconnection by harnessing the people and places around us for the benefit of all.