September – SHARE

Prompt of the Month: Choose one way to lighten someone’s day — by giving, helping, or showing up.

Here is a question to reflect on this September: when did someone last make your day a little lighter?

Spend some time with what has surfaced for you. It could be practical help that came during a time of real need. It could be a small act, such as a neighbour taking the bins out during a difficult week. Isn’t it interesting how the memory holds on to the warmth of that moment, long after the act?

This month’s theme of SHARE highlights the impact of these small acts. Zurich theologian, Johann Kaspar Lavater, turns this observation into a promise: 

“What we give freely is never lost.”
~ Johann Kaspar Lavater ~

The calendar adds its own gloss:

“Giving is good for your wellbeing. Generosity is a quiet practice that multiplies joy and eases burden.” What was given to you was not lost by the giver. It is still producing warmth on both sides of the exchange, years after the meter ran out. September is a month for standing on the other side of that transaction deliberately.

From Unite to Share – A Thought from Lily, Our Welfare Officer

I’ve noticed how sharing doesn’t always have to mean giving something to someone. It can be sharing a moment, a story, a feeling, or simply the enjoyment of being together.

I was reminded of this last month during the solar eclipse and meteor shower. For a moment, people paused and looked up at the sky together, sharing a sense of wonder and awe. It struck me how an incredible experience can feel even more special when shared with others.

That same sense of connection was there during last month’s Swiss National Day celebrations. It was lovely to see people cheering when someone won a raffle prize, enjoying the food and music, and exchanging stories and memories. Some conversations were between people who already knew each other, while others began between strangers.

Our jewellery-making workshop was another moment of sharing, as people came together around the table, shared ideas and creativity, and enjoyed making something together. It was a simple activity, but it created an opportunity to connect.

I also think about how it can sometimes be difficult to reach out when we do need to share, or receive support offered by others. Asking for help can be difficult. We might worry about putting someone out or feel that we should manage on our own. But accepting support is not a weakness. Allowing someone to help gives them the opportunity to be there for you, and that is part of being a community.This month, alongside what you might give, I encourage you to notice what you can share: a conversation, a story, a laugh or simply some time. You don’t have to work everything out on your own.

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Giving Is Not Subtraction

The United Nations marks 5 September as the International Day of Charity. Giving can mean offering to those who have less, but it can equally mean sharing our time, knowledge or experience – and recognising that everyone has something to give. Research bears this out: in a 2008 experiment at the University of British Columbia, people who spent money on someone else reported greater happiness than those who spent it on themselves. Sharing, it turns out, is good for the giver too.

What is striking is how much of what we value costs us nothing to pass on. Swiss culture is a good example. September brings Zurich’s Knabenschiessen, one of the country’s oldest festivals – and while most of us in the UK will not be attending, it barely matters, because culture was never something you had to take part in. It is something you identify with and hand over. The evening spent explaining to a curious colleague what this shooting festival is all about. The recipe taught to your children the way it was once taught to you, in a kitchen that smells the way your grandmother’s did. The tip about the restaurant that does a proper Rösti, passed to a compatriot who has been hunting for one. The patient answer to a newcomer asking the question we all once asked. None of it leaves you with less. As Lavater promised, what we give freely is never lost.

September makes this practical, too, because it is a month of new beginnings. New students are arriving in halls of residence, school leavers are starting their first jobs, parents are returning to work, and families are beginning new chapters in the UK. Each of us has something that might make another person’s transition a little easier — a piece of advice, a useful introduction, or simply a conversation. If you have something worth sharing, this is a good month to pass it on. And for anyone facing a transition that needs more than advice, our Welfare Office and Financial Aid are there to help. Please pass that on too.

Some giving is best done together. When you give to a charity, your gift joins other people’s and reaches further than any of us could manage alone — put to work where the need is greatest, for a cause close to your heart. The International Day of Charity is a natural moment to do exactly that.

And if the cause you choose is the Welfare of Swiss nationals in the UK, there are many ways to give: a donation that goes straight into welfare work, a membership, coming along to our events, or simply mentioning to someone who might need us that we are here. Every one of them counts.

Where to Give an Hour This Autumn

If the prompt asks you to lighten someone’s day by showing up, it helps to know where showing up is possible. Here is what is taking shape for the autumn.

Our Disconnect to Reconnect Digital Wellbeing Workshop takes place on Saturday 10 October, from 1–4pm at 79 Endell Street, London: an afternoon of mindfulness, community connection and practical ways to develop healthier digital habits, led in collaboration with The Digital Detox Club.

Further gatherings in our Tea, Coffee & Good Company series are also in preparation. And for those far from London or not able to travel, coffee mornings on Zoom and online gatherings hosted by Swiss organisations across the UK mean an hour can be given, or received, from anywhere.

To hear about events first, join the SBS Community Events WhatsApp group. If you have specific accessibility requirements for any SBS event, or would like to let us know in advance that you will need assistance, please email us at community@swissbenevolent.org.uk and we will make sure someone is ready to welcome you at the door.

A Practical September Experiment

This month’s prompt asks you to choose one way to lighten someone’s day — by giving, helping, or showing up.

The choosing matters as much as the doing. A gift that suits the giver but not the receiver lightens nobody’s day; the useful question is what the person in front of you would actually feel lighter without.

The question is not: What can I spare? The question is: What would make their day lighter?

Here are four ways you might act on it:

• Give an hour, not a thing. Accompany someone to an appointment they are dreading, sit beside someone’s paperwork, read a CV over, translate an official letter from German, French or Italian, walk with someone who walks alone. Whatever is easy for you is hard for someone, and twenty minutes of your fluency can save them a week of dread.
• Clear out, and pass it on. Fill a bag with the clothes you have not worn in two years and take it to a charity shop; the decluttering repays you in lightness before the giving even starts. For everything else, Olio makes it almost effortless: post what you no longer need, a neighbour requests it and collects it, and something headed for a cupboard or a landfill makes someone’s day a few streets away instead.
• Pay one forward. At the coffee shop, pay for the next person’s drink, or leave one behind the counter for someone who cannot afford their own; many cafés will happily hold a ‘suspended coffee’. Giving to a stranger you will never see again is generosity with the receipts thrown away, and it has a lightness all of its own.
• Let someone give to you. If help is offered this month and you need it, accept it, without the reflexive ‘oh no, I’m fine’. As Lily says above, receiving well is a generous act: it hands the other person the chance to matter.

And on 21 September, the International Day of Peace, there is a fifth option that costs the most and weighs the least once done: let one small grudge go. Forgiveness given freely obeys Lavater’s rule as reliably as anything else on this list.

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Closing Reflection

Autumn begins this month, and autumn is when the natural world does its most extravagant giving: the orchard does not hold back its fruit against a harder year, and is not poorer in spring for having let it go. Lavater’s line makes the same claim about us. What we give freely is never lost; it changes form. The hour spent with a friend or volunteering can become the steadiness in someone else’s week. The bag taken to the charity shop becomes a warmer winter for a stranger and a lighter wardrobe at home. The book left in a café finds its next reader. The accepted offer of help becomes, for the person who made it, the knowledge that they still have something worth giving.

A community is a long agreement to keep giving things away to each other: time, competence, patience, second chances. Three centuries of this Society’s work amount to that agreement, renewed by every generation that chose to keep it. This month, the renewing is yours to do, one lightened day at a time. 

Give one thing away this month, and watch what it becomes.
And carry on.

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Join Our 2026 SBS Year of Steady Progress

This journey continues through our monthly blog, where each theme will come to life with practical insights, reflections, and coaching tools to help you stay steady through the year.

Accessing the Calendar

To ensure everyone in our community can take part, we have made the full PDF version of the SBS 2026 Wall Calendar available to download for free on our website.

If you would prefer a hardcopy, you are very welcome to contact our office. We will be happy to post one to you. We currently have a limited number of printed copies remaining, available on a first-come, first-served basis; in return, we would gratefully appreciate a Donation of any amount. As always, 100% of proceeds go directly back into the SBS Welfare Fund, supporting Swiss nationals in the UK who need us most.

👉 Download the PDF: SBS 2026 Calendar A4
👉 Request a hardcopy: info@swissbenevolent.org.uk

READ OUR OTHER BLOGS HERE:

• Given Away, Not Gone: A September Reflection on Share
• Where the Forest Begins: An August Reflection on Unite
• Annual Summer Office Break
• A Light to Guide You Home: A July Reflection on Connect
• Together at the Table: The SBS Tea Party 2026

About the Swiss Benevolent Society

The Swiss Benevolent Society exists to support Swiss nationals in the UK through times of change, challenge, and transition. Our work is grounded in dignity, compassion, and the belief in self-reliance — offering practical help while empowering individuals and families to regain stability and confidence. If you or someone you know may need support, you can learn more about how we help and how to get in touch through our Welfare Office. If you share our values and would like to be part of our community, we welcome you to become a member and stay connected with our work. And if you are able, donations — of any size — help us continue providing vital assistance; every contribution goes directly back into our welfare programmes.

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