About Your Organizer

My name is Aario Shahbany. As a software engineer I worked as an expat for more than a decade in various countries. The idea of a workshop only and only for friendship came to my mind first in Berlin Germany. While a much bigger city than Tenerife, Berlin still has its own issues regarding expats finding friends and building deep human connections. In 2019 I had found for myself a group of friends and we were gathering regularly. Once it happened that we could not meet for a period of 1 month. Everyone had his own errands and difficulties, so we just did not meet.
When we finally met again, one lady in our group burst into tears when talking how lonely she was and that the only people she could talk to, were the cashier at the super market and even the supermarket banned her from shopping there anymore! (Yes being banned by a supermarket is a thing in Germany!). That made me start researching about the phenomenon of expats loneliness. While I had my own circle of friends, the rest of the society did not have it necessarily well.
In 2019 the article of DW was titled Berlin the capital of loneliness, saying that:
“The Christian Democrats [The CDU Party] in Berlin are calling for a special commissioner for loneliness as isolation plagues the metropolis.”
Since I do not wait on governments anywhere, I started the workshop in Berlin. I was persistent and 6 years of running the group, gathered more than 14000 members. Almost all expats. English speaking. Looking to find friends. Every week around 50 or more of them were meeting. Initial chat and getting to know, my speech, then more time for networking and practice what they have learned. Thousands of circles of friends, unforgettable memories, some relationships, and of course, thousands of friends for me. It worked!
The method is simple:
- Provide people with a regular place so they can meet frequently and build connections.
- Step by step, describe the core ingredients of a real friendship to the attendants (Which you will learn in this workshop).
- Encourage people to practice what they have learned every week.
- And sprinkle love on the top.
It works everywhere.