With the popularity of personally isolating social media, meaningful face-to-face conversation may be lacking in some people's lives.
Roxanne Skogstad-Ditsch will offer the Communication Corner as an outlet.
Every Monday from 8:45 to 9:45 a.m., and Friday from 6 to 7 p.m., Skogstad-Ditsch will be at the KOOTASCA Community Action, 2232 Second Ave. E., offering an ear. For more information, contact Skogstad-Ditsch at 283-9773.
Through work with her disabilities service, Rox's Disability Service, she said she realized that some people just need someone to talk to.
"Whether because people are lonely, just want someone to talk to and maybe don't feel like people are listening, I thought I could help," she said.
The need became more clear even before December's Sandy Hook school shootings, when what appears to be a troubled young man killed 20 children and six adults in Connecticut, she said. But Skogstad-Ditsch said she hadn't found a place to offer the service.
"After the shooting, I thought I just had to keep looking for a place," she said.
Skogstad-Ditsch said she will volunteer her services to Communication Corner. "It's something that if people want to come in and talk, they can," she said.
Through Rox's Disability Services, Skogstad-Ditsch works with anyone who has any kind of disability, including communication issues, autism, and deafness. The business is offered through Family Freedom Corp., owned by Skogstad-Ditsch, which also owns a local group home.
She said the disabilities service work revealed that a lot of people in the community may be lonely and don't have anyone in their life that will "just sit and talk to them."
She said the Sandy Hook shooting drove home the need.
"If people were happier, some of these things maybe wouldn't happen," she said. Of course for some people, therapy is a huge piece of the need, she said. "But if people were happier and felt that somebody cared, maybe people wouldn't get to the point of feeling so terrible."
Communication Corner is only for adults, and Skogstad-Ditsch stresses she is not a therapist and will not offer therapy.
Instead, she said, the service will offer meaningful conversations about any topics and she will simply offer to listen. She said she is not qualified to diagnose clinical issues, but will tell people when their needs are beyond just talking.
People interested may drop in to Communication Corner, where Skogstad-Ditsch said the experience is intended to be "like a visit with a friend over coffee."
In some cases, the conversation will include more than one person - "who ever shows," she said. But if people want to visit alone with Skogstad-Ditsch they could set up an appointment.
Skogstad-Ditsch said she believes the need to talk person-to-person with someone who cares is widespread in small and large communities.
"I know people in the same boat in great big cities, of all ages, of all incomes, small towns, big cities - it just seems like people don't really know how to communicate as well or their thoughts or how to find someone to communicate with," she said.
She said the need to talk with people may be related to the economic situation in the nation. She said when she first started teaching school, emphasis was placed on how to get along in the work place, but since then money has been spent in other areas.
"We do hear once in a while people saying there is a need to start teaching social skills, but there is no follow up," she said. "Everyone needs to spend some time helping and preparing themselves to get through each day in regard to relating to other people."
She said people are trained from a young age to take care of physical hygiene, "but often go out the door without preparing their minds to be ready to face the day."
Skogstad-Ditsch said most people, including herself, know what it's like to want friends.
"I have lost friends, and know what it is like to feel that void and there is lot of people I talk to lately who feel the same way," she said.
But it may be awkward to go into a coffee shop and ask someone to be a friend. "It sounds ridiculous, but how do you go about letting people know that you need a friend?" she said. "People don't know that there are people out there that have no friends."
What does Skogstad-Ditsch hope to accomplish with Communication Corner? "What I would like to see people walk away with is feeling like 'Somebody out there cares about me.'"