Structured way of spending a lot of time in the same environment with other people with similar goals. "Go out on your own and make friends" doesn't work for many of us, additional free time will not help.
There's a good reason most people make long-term friendships in school and university, we need a similar space where we are surrounded by the same people every day (even though we may not like all of them). I have no idea what could it be since our society frowns upon such ideas.

Before Covid the office kinda took this role, however it was a gamble and not voluntary.