How Panion is tackling loneliness with connection

As part of Loneliness Awareness Week 2020, we're delighted to have our friends at Panion share how they are tackling loneliness by connecting like-minded people.

Anyone who has ever moved to another country for studies or work has faced difficulties making friends and adjusting to a new home. Founder and CEO of Panion, Melanie Aronson, is not an exception. After relocating to Sweden from the U.S. 5 years ago, she fully experienced the struggle of integration in one of the most challenging countries for making new friends. By doing research on integration at Lund University, Melanie found more like-minded people who shared her views and concerns. To tackle the issue of loneliness, she developed a prototype for an app aimed to connect immigrants and expats in Sweden.

This prototype, responding to the ever present Swedish problem of making friends, became Panion, the first social meeting place that connects like-minded people with similar values and diverse interests. Panion is not a traditional social networking app but acts more as a search engine for friendships and an engagement tool for communities. Users are asked to share their interests, passions and experiences as keywords to make everyone findable and filterable. Panion communities allows networks to come together on a mobile platform and find meaningful, individual relationships within their university, organisation or company.

Panion supports the Marmalade Trust’s Loneliness Awareness Week, as the company’s mission is to defeat loneliness and isolation with new friendships, activities for engagement, and strong communities.

Tackling loneliness is the mission behind Panion’s inception and now it has brought together more than 120,000 users from all around the globe. Though the global pandemic has exacerbated the loneliness problem, Panion observed a dramatic increase in messages sent, connections made and virtual gatherings. Panion continues working on the expansion of services and improvement of processes, so people feel that they are cared about, listened to, and supported by meaningful connections all around them.

Panion’s features include:

• Keyword and geolocation filters. Find like-minded people nearby who share common interests, values and goals.

• Panion Gatherings. Organise spontaneous get-togethers (in-person or virtual) around a specific activity or interest within a community or based on location.

• Panion Communities. Panion members can join one of many public interest-based communities to increase the likelihood of meeting a like-minded person who shares a common interest. Organisations can create private communities to encourage individual connections amongst their members.

If topics related to community building, social wellness and loneliness interest you, be sure to check out our blog. If you are ready to meet like-minded people near you, go ahead and download Panion today.