We were lucky to catch up with Trevor Kelliher recently and have shared our conversation below.

Trevor, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Being an individual with a disability, I know how hard it is to meet new people and have an active social life. After I graduated high school, I felt this hardship even more. While all of my friends from high school were off to pursue the next journey in their lives, I felt very isolated and alone. It didn’t occur to me how much harder it would be to meet new people and get connected with a new social circle. As the pandemic hit, those feelings of isolation and loneliness were amplified. I knew that in order to make a difference in my own life, I needed to act.

Once I set out on my journey for change, I realized that I am not the only person in my situation who is struggling. And if I can make a change to improve my life, I could also help to improve the quality of life of other’s who are also struggling with loneliness and isolation. That is when my motivation for change really took off and All Friends Network was created.

All Friends Network is a non-profit organization created to help individuals enhance their quality of life through the joy of friendship. Our organization focuses on creating meaning, long-lasting friendships within the disabled community. Our programs promote social interaction through exciting social events and activities, both virtually and in-person, allowing the opportunity for all our members to participate. All Friends Network offers three programs, twice weekly virtual events, where members participate in interactive games and discussions, monthly in-person events, where members attend a variety of exciting and social events hosted throughout the year, and a social media outlet, called AFN Live-LINK, where members can connect in a safe and friendly environment. All of our events promote regular, engaging social interactions where members can continue to build and grow life-long relationships.

Since the creation of All Friends Network, we have hosted many exciting in-person events including, outings to professional sporting events to watch the Tampa Bay Rays and Tampa Bay Lightning, field day activity events with wilderness buggy rides, in-person social and game nights, and more!

Through the combination of in-person and virtual events, our members are able to connect on a regular basis and participate in events that best fit their needs.

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Trevor, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Trevor Kelliher. I am a 23 year old with Cerebral Palsy and the Founder of All Friends Network. Growing up, I had a difficult time making friends in school. Although I did consider myself lucky to have a small core group of friends, I often felt lonely when the school day was over. When I graduated high school, I was excited to see what this next chapter of my life held and the new people I would meet. Unfortunately, this proved to be much harder than I imagined. I decided to move to Florida with my dad and start a new journey.

After moving to Florida, I realized I needed to be the one to make a positive change in my life to help with my feelings of loneliness. It was through my motivation to improve my quality of life that I realized I could help others, like myself, who were also struggling. From that moment, I set off to work, and All Friends Network was created.

All Friends Network is an organization with the primary purpose of creating meaningful, long lasting relationships within the disabled community. Our programs are designed to allow the opportunity for all our members to participate in social engagements. With the option of both virtual and in-person events, members can choose to participate in the events that are best fit for them, or attend both! We believe our unique option of dual event styles allow greater opportunity for participation, regardless of a member’s physical capability or location of residence. By giving members this opportunity, it allows them to get to know all of the participating members and gives members the chance to interact in regular social events, allowing relationships to continue to grow and flourish.

What makes us most proud and feel successful in our mission, is seeing members connecting and continuing their relationships beyond our organization and maintaining friendships independently. We are so proud to see this and know we have accomplished our goal of helping to provide new, meaningful relationships.

At All Friends Network we believe Everyone Deserves A Friend

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

I would say the most effective strategy for growing membership has been our collaboration with other non-profit organizations providing services to the disabled community. It has been really incredible to work with other organizations with similar missions and goals to ours. Exposing our members to their organization and meeting new faces who can benefit from our organization has been really helpful to all the individuals we serve. We have also found that by participating in community based events with other non-profits organizations and resource fairs serving individuals with disabilities, has also allowed us to spread awareness about the benefits All Friends Network provides and also throughout the community.

While these strategies have been successful for our organization, we also have had a lot of success of gaining new membership by word of mouth. There have been many instances where current members who attend our events bring new faces to our events and into our organization, which has been really wonderful and successful way of gaining new membership.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When All Friends Network was created, it was a challenge to get our organization’s name out into the community and gain the first members to our organization. We started our organization in March of 2020 and by the end of that year we had a total of 5 members. Although it felt has though we weren’t making the progress I had hoped for in that first year, I was so proud and motivated by the positive impact we were having towards the members that we did have. That reward and motivation pushed me to continue working towards our goal of helping all individuals with disabilities create meaningful, long-lasting friendships. Through hard work and determination, we had significantly expanded our membership to 75 members at the end of the following year.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://allfriendsnetwork.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allfriendsnetwork/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=all%20friends%20network

Image Credits
Trevor Kelliher.