YEI Member Spotlight: Carrol Harrison

From Agony Aunt to Friendship Queen: Carrol’s Gift for Bringing People Together

From lonely expat in Shanghai to founder of an 11,000-member community, meet Carrol Harrison, the woman who keeps turning strangers into friends.

Some people have a knack for bringing people together, and Carrol Harrison is certainly one of them. Whether she’s living in South Africa or halfway across the world in Shanghai, Carrol somehow manages to find people who need a friend, a listening ear or simply a good excuse to get together for lunch.

And it all started when she was still at school.

The Schoolgirl Everyone Turned To

“Agony Aunt.” That was Carrol’s nickname in high school, and it wasn’t because she was dishing out advice in a newspaper column. She was simply the girl everyone turned to when they had a problem.

“Sixty-five years later, nothing much has changed,” she laughs.

Carrol can’t really explain why people have always felt comfortable confiding in her, except that she believes she was born with a caring heart. Empathy, she reckons, is probably the word for it.

As the eldest of five children, caring for others came naturally. Her youngest brother was born when she was 13, and she absolutely doted on him, taking much of the responsibility for looking after him as he grew up. It was an experience that gave her a lifelong love of children.

Life, however, didn’t quite follow the family path she might have imagined. Carrol lost her first child, a son, at birth, before being blessed with a daughter whom she describes as beautiful. It was one of the early reminders that life doesn’t always turn out as planned, something she would come to know only too well.

A Career Girl Who Was Going Places

Carrol enjoyed a successful career, starting in newspaper advertising before moving into senior administrative roles. After relocating from Gauteng to KwaZulu-Natal in 1975, she joined a firm of consulting engineers, where she spent 23 happy years.

But while her career was going well, life on the home front was about to bring some challenges.

When Your Children Live Half a World Away

Carrol’s daughter married and moved to the United Kingdom, something Carrol found incredibly difficult. She was devastated by the distance, particularly as her three grandchildren were subsequently born in the UK. Anyone whose children and grandchildren live overseas will understand just how hard it can be to miss out on those everyday moments that other grandparents sometimes take for granted.

An unexpected twist and turn took her all the way to China.

Shanghai, Loneliness and a Rather Brilliant Idea

When Carrol accompanied her husband to Shanghai for a two-year work contract, she probably hadn’t imagined just how lonely life in a foreign country could become.

Her husband travelled frequently to Korea and other parts of China, leaving her with plenty of time on her hands and very little company. She was bored, isolated and a long way from everything familiar. She decided that if she needed friends, there were probably plenty of other expatriate women feeling exactly the same way. So she did something about it.

Through a local newspaper, she connected with Jan from Australia and Nicola from Switzerland. Together, the three women organised their first get-together, and the Expat Ladies Friendship Club was born.

What started as a way to meet a few new friends quickly grew into something much bigger.

By the time Carrol left Shanghai after 20 months, the club had more than 200 regular members, and their lunches were attracting so many women that they were booking out entire restaurants!

Carrol handed the club over to a committee before leaving, but what an achievement. From feeling lonely in a foreign city to creating a thriving social community, she had once again found a way to turn a difficult situation into something positive.

Retirement? Time for Another Friendship Group!

Back in South Africa, Carrol spent another eight years working in human resources before retiring to Sedgefield in the Western Cape in 2014. You might think that after a busy career and all those years of organising people, she would have been ready to put her feet up. Not a chance.

Carrol launched Garden Route Seniors, a social group that has grown to an extraordinary 11,000 members and is still going strong.

Just think about that for a moment. Eleven thousand people connected through an initiative started by one woman who has always understood how important friendship and companionship are.

And, as anyone involved in running a community group will tell you, building something like that takes far more than simply bringing people together. It requires time, patience, organisation and a genuine interest in people. Fortunately, Carrol seems to have those qualities in abundance.

New Home, Same Carrol

Last year, Carrol relocated back to KwaZulu-Natal for personal reasons and now lives in a retirement estate. Has she finally decided to take things easy? Well, not exactly.

She’s already running a Ladies Friendship Circle in the estate, making sure that women have opportunities to get together, chat and enjoy one another’s company.

It’s the sort of initiative that might seem small compared with a group of 11,000 members, but anyone who has moved somewhere new, lost a partner or found themselves feeling isolated knows just how much difference a friendly face and an invitation to join in can make.

And perhaps that’s the real beauty of Carrol’s story. She hasn’t set out to build an impressive collection of clubs and communities. She has simply recognised a need for connection and done something about it, wherever she happens to be living.

Sixty-Five Years Later, the Agony Aunt Is Still Going Strong

From a schoolgirl listening to her friends’ troubles to a woman who has created communities in China, along the Garden Route and now in KwaZulu-Natal, Carrol has spent much of her life doing what comes naturally to her: caring about people.

Her story is also a lovely reminder that friendship doesn’t always happen by accident. Sometimes someone has to make the first move, organise the first lunch or invite the newcomer to join the conversation.

For Carrol, that first move seems to have become something of a lifelong habit.

And what does she have to say after all those years of working, travelling, overcoming challenges and bringing people together?

“Enough already. Cheers to a good life, everyone!”

We couldn’t agree more, Carrol.

A YEI member spotlight article