Elderlearn

Andreas and Nicklas co-founded Elderlearn with the purpose of combating loneliness and improving integration. Elderlearn connects immigrants learning the local language with elderly people at risk of loneliness.

Andreas is responsible for daily operations and Nicklas is responsible for marketing and sales.

Andreas has a masters in sociology. His master thesis concluded that enabling elderly people, who could not leave their home, to do volunteer work is an efficient way to combat loneliness. Combined with Andreas having learned German from working in a nursing home this led to the idea behind Elderlearn.

Nicklas has a background as a serial entrepreneur. He has an IPO behind him, has been part of starting the innovation department of the largest bank in Denmark and has been self-employed since the age of 15.

Andreas and Nicklas have been listed as Forbes 30 under 30 Europe 2020 in the category of Social Entrepreneurs.

1. What problem are you committed to solving? 

Elderlearn solves two problems:

1. Loneliness amongst the elderly

2. Lack of integration of immigrants

2. What project are you proposing? 

Elderlearn solves these two problems with one solution: Connecting immigrants learning the local language with local elderly people at risk of loneliness.

3. How could your project elevate humanity?

Our main point of the project is to show that everyone is able to help other people and contribute. It does not matter if you are a frail elderly person living in a nursing home or an immigrant who have just arrived in a foreign country.

There are many other reasons why this elevates humanity:

1. Less loneliness

2. Creation of a local sense of community

3. Cross-cultural friendships and cultural exchanges

4. Preventing harmful nationalism amongst the elderly

5. Better integration (Language, relations to locals, help getting a job)

6. Both parties get the joy of helping another person

One of the biggest challenges developed countries face is taking care of the growing number of elderly people. The expectations towards welfare states in terms of elderly care has risen in most countries during the last 50 years and the large “Baby-Boomer” generation is retiring.

At the same time many countries face rising nationalism as a result of failed integration/welcoming of immigrants.

Currently Elderlearn is active in Denmark. The plan is to expand to the following countries within the next 5 years: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, Belgium, Holland and France.

These countries are relevant because they fulfill the following criteria:

1. Many immigrants

2. Welfare state

3. Large generation of “Baby-Boomers”.

4. Local population who are relatively fluent in English, but who has another native language. (This makes it difficult for immigrants to learn the local language since most people will simply speak English with them).

Elderlearn expect to be able to match 2.500 pairs of elderly people and immigrants a year in Denmark at full capacity (currently we have matched 800+ pairs). The potential in the above mentioned countries is roughly 35 times larger than in Denmark, meaning that up to 87.500 pairs could be matched pr. year.

Elderlearn connects immigrants learning the local language with elderly people at risk of loneliness. It is a novel idea because it allows even elderly people who can’t leave their home to do volunteer work, since the immigrant visits them in their home.

The truly new element in the way Elderlearn works is however that we create an automated IT-system that does not exclude the least IT-savvy elderly people. Elderlearns internal IT-system manages the work of our employees. It organizes and automates as many tasks as possible, while still allowing people who only have a landline phone to partake.

Everyone is contacted through the existing channel they prefer, meaning either a normal phone call or a personal or automated email or text depending on the situation, your need and your IT capabilities.

Since it is free for the elderly people and the immigrants to partake the customers of Elderlearn are local public administrations. The offering to them is a full-service solution where Elderlearn takes care of everything from getting sign-ups and matching, to doing follow-ups and reporting.

Who:
The projects mainly serves elderly people and immigrants. The project also serves local public administrations, since they are the customers.

The Elderly participants can be anyone who is retired, but we try to get as many people who receive some kind of care to sign up as possible, since they benefit the most.

The immigrants come from more than a 100 different countries and have all kinds of backgrounds. The largest groups right now (2020 in Denmark) are Indian, Polish and Syrian.

Impact on their lives:

Besides both parties getting the joy of helping, the elderly people and the immigrants achieve the following:

Elderly people: 

1. Prevent loneliness

2. Prevent harmful nationalistic views by giving them a personal relation to an immigrant

3. Give them a larger sense of safety in their community by turning immigrants into someone they might know rather than someone foreign

Immigrants:

1. Learn the local language and culture

2. Form relationships with local people

Understanding them:

Elderlearn has been matching elderly people and immigrants from day 1. Our work includes frequent phone calls and constant contact with our users. We only develop IT that is founded in real world experiences from these matches and our contact with our users.

We mainly contribute to the dimension: Elevating opportunities for all people, especially those who are traditionally left behind

The elderly people who can’t leave their home are left behind in a very literal sense, since they are physically unable to go out and partake in the civic society and do volunteer work.

The immigrants are often constrained by a lack of network, language skills and acceptance by the local community. We help to reduce these challenges, so that immigrants can get equal opportunities on the job market and in terms of a sense of local belonging.

The idea behind the project came as a result of co-founder Andreas Reventlows master thesis in sociology on loneliness amongst the elderly.

The academic literature on loneliness all came to the off-putting conclusion that the best way to counter loneliness was to lower your expectations.

However in the literature on life satisfaction and well-being a more positive conclusion was to be found. Volunteer work almost always increases life satisfaction and thus likely reduces loneliness.

The thesis also included lots of time spent with nursing home residents, and among others a dementia stricken man named Hans. The question became - What could Hans help anyone with?

Andreas though back to his days of having to learn German before an exchange to Vienna. He had asked a German friend to help him find a job working with someone who could not speak English. Andreas ended up working in Malteser Stift St. Bonifatius, a nursing home in Essen, Germany. And he had never learned as much in a month.

Thus the conclusion became that Hans, albeit his dementia, could be of help simply by speaking Danish to an immigrant, and the idea behind Elderlearn was born.

Combating loneliness and helping immigrants feel welcome are obvious motivators on a personal level. We also have 3 large scale motivations:

1. Sustaining the European Union - Elderly people where the main group of pro Brexit voters. Good experiences and stories of elderly people meeting immigrants can be part of stopping a trend towards nationalism.

2. Making Denmark (and europe) more culturally diverse - Many immigrants leave after a certain time, due a lack of sense of belonging. This is a huge shame since their skills are needed and our home city of Copenhagen grows more interesting with diversity.

3. Inspiring others to see frail people as able to help - Most volunteering is one person helping another. It is often forgotten that the one getting to help is the one benefitting the most. A classic case is an overload of volunteers in the soup kitchens on Thanksgiving.
   We believe that activities will benefit people more and get more sign-ups if both parties have a selfish motivation and get the joy of helping someone else as well. In our case the elderly people help someone learn Danish and get a visit. The immigrants get to learn Danish and help a lonely elderly person.

Co-founder Andreas Reventlow has personal experience being in the shoes of the participating immigrants, from his time in Germany (described earlier). Furthermore his background in sociology makes it natural for him to work with the public sector and with societal challenges like integration and elderly care.

Co-founder Nicklas Stenfeldt is a serial entrepreneur and a natural salesman. He has experience with IT-development and knows how to run a business.

Elderlearn has been fortunate to get two very skilled software engineering students on board early on. They develop Elderlearns internal IT-system at a very low cost, since they are still students.

Furthermore Elderlearn has a very easy time recruiting passionate colleagues, due to the strong “why” of the project and extensive media attention in Denmark.

The main reason why the team is uniquely positioned to deliver the project is however that we have a track-record of 2,5 half years as an organically growing business, and at our current pace of expansion we are fully financed for 1,5 more years already.

The biggest adversity we have encountered is not surprisingly the Coronavirus. When we started out the idea of sending “foreigners” into the home of frail elderly people was already surprising to say the least. With the spread of the virus, it is the last thing that would be advised.

The elderly people and immigrants have however not lost interest, and the natural conclusion was to start arranging online meetings. We quickly saw that this gave an unfair advantage to the more tech-savvy participants. Therefore we have now developed our own tool for online meetings, which is by our knowledge the simplest virtual meeting place available. This way we can accommodate a larger portion of the elderly participants.

The ones who don’t have a smartphone or computer are encouraged to simply meet through a normal phone call. 

Our ambition does not stop there. We are currently working on how we can get dementia stricken people living in nursing homes, who do not have their own phone to partake again.

Elderlearn is a social project that has invented a business model to survive and grow. With rising media attention, more and more elderly people and immigrants sign-up, even though they live outside of the paying local public administrations - We will always match these people.

This means that between a third and half of all the matches Elderlearn has made has been pro bono.

This is the way that we show leadership. We treat everyone who sign-up as equals, no matter whether we earn money from the work or not. Our main purpose is not to earn money, it is to create as many successful connections between immigrants and elderly people as possible.

As mentioned earlier there are two elements that are particularly innovative about Elderlearn:

1. We automate through IT, without excluding frail elderly people, this has been described before and will not be described further below.

2. We see frail elderly people as able to do volunteer work, which gives us a new view on volunteering.

Elderlearn sees even frail elderly people as able to do volunteer work by helping an immigrant learn the local language. Since the elderly people are often in need of a visit the immigrants are volunteers as well. Both parties can benefit and help at the same time.

On the one hand Elderlearn could be considered more capitalistic in its view than most charities, since we insist that both parties should have an egoistic motive to participate (learning the local language and getting a visit). 

On the other hand Elderlearn has a much more humane view of the participants, since we insist that both parties should feel that they can help and contribute (visiting a lonely person and helping someone learn a language).

These two views are different from most charities and volunteering, where one party should normally be thankful for help and the other is the benevolent helper. Like in the case of an overload of volunteers at thanksgiving as we mentioned before, it is not generally that simple.

By seeing and catering to both the altruistic and egoistic reasons for volunteering, we believe that we show more respect and deliver a better service to both parties.

Elderlearns main theory of change found inspiration in the article “Supporting Well-Being in Retirement through Meaningful Social Roles: Systematic Review of Intervention Studies” (Heaven et al. 2013 Milbank Quarterly,91(2), 222-287). The article found that volunteering was associated with improvement in overall well-being for elderly people.

The theory of change in relation to combating loneliness is that increased well-being from volunteering will be associated with a decrease in sense of loneliness.

Since Elderlearn addresses the elderly participants as volunteers they tend to get offended if we ask them directly if they feel lonely or if Elderlearn has helped them become less lonely. It is a strength of Elderlearns that the elderly people do not need to admit to being lonely in order to sign-up. This is a strength because admitting to loneliness is a huge barrier for many elderly people and it stops them from reaching out for help. It is much easier to say that you would not mind helping a foreigner learn Danish. By targeting frail elderly people we know that many of them are at least at risk of loneliness.

Instead of asking the elderly participants directly about loneliness we ask the elderly participants, if they would recommend Elderlearn to a lonely elderly person, 78% say they would.

Our main success criteria is however that the elderly participants felt that they were of use and able to help, since this is at the foundation of our theory of change. 81% say they felt able to help and of use.

In the case of the immigrants the theory of change is simpler. Speaking the local language with someone makes you better at it. 81% of the participating immigrants say that Elderlearn has helped them improve their language skills.

92% of the immigrants say that they would recommend Elderlearn to other people. This leads us to assume that even the ones who have not felt an improvement in their language skills appreciate getting to know a local elderly person.

So far Elderlearn has matches more than 800 pairs, meaning more than 1.600 people have benefitted from the service. 

In one year we expect this number to have grown to around 1.500 pairs meaning 3.000 people.

In five years when international expansion has taken off and the coronavirus is long gone we expect to have grown significantly. A likely best case scenario is that we are able to double the total amount of matches ever made each year, as we have done so far. This would lead to 24.000 matches and 48.000 people helped when 5 years has passed.

Expansion goals:

Within the next year: Expand to Sweden and Norway (if the coronavirus allows it)

Within the next five years: Further expand to Finland, Germany, Belgium, Holland and France.

Impact goals:

Within the next year: 1.500 pairs matched while still having 90+% who will recommend Elderlearn (If the coronavirus continues, this can still be achieved through online matches).

Within the next five years: 24.000 pairs matched while still having 90+% who will recommend Elderlearn

To achieve these goals there a several underlying tasks such as securing financing and constantly improving our IT-system, so that our employees are as efficient as possible in their work of matching people. These tasks are however not as time specific as the above and will be constant points of focus.

Financial/market:

Within the next year: We need to find out if the local public administrations in Sweden and Norway are relevant customers, and if they are as interested in buying as the Danish ones.

Within the next five years: The same goes for Finland, Germany, Belgium, Holland and France.

Cultural:

Within the next year: We need to find out if the local population in Sweden and Norway has sufficient trust in immigrants to find it a good idea to let frail elderly people welcome immigrants into their home. This was not evident at first in Denmark, and could be a bigger obstacle elsewhere.

Within the next five years: The same goes for Finland, Germany, Belgium, Holland and France.

Elderlearn has a start-up mentality which means that we launch and test constantly. This means that our plan to overcome these barriers is simply to approach local public administrations in the relevant countries and try to sell to them. In our experience this will work sooner or later. At that point we will simply launch our service in the local community, and work on removing any fear of immigrants that might work against us.

This is not to say that we will not prepare for the barriers, simply that our general tactic is “learn by doing”.

We are constantly improving our value-proposition, networking and working on getting positive PR in order to make it easier for us to convince new markets and customers of our worth.

We work and have contact with many organisations working with elderly people and immigrants in Denmark (such as Ældre Sagen with more than 900.000 members). The only one of these which is international is the Red Cross.

Our partnerships most often help us to get sign-ups from immigrants or elderly people. The partnerships are also part of a larger strategy to become a well-known and trusted player on the market of integration and elderly care.

Elderlearns main customers are local public administrations. Concretely in Denmark this means municipalities. Elderlearn is currently also getting a large share of its revenue from state grants and charitable funds. It is the long term plan to rely on the income from the municipalities, and this income is growing steadily.

The municipalities in Denmark are responsible for elderly care and integration. Combating loneliness has been a focus area in Denmark the last couple of years. Integration has also been a focus point due to the large number of refugees that has arrived in Denmark, particularly due to the war in Syria.

This means that there is a market for efficient ways to solve these two challenges.

The concrete products Elderlearn sells are “projects” consisting of a certain amount of matches over a certain period of time. The amount of matches will depend on the amount of elderly people and immigrants in the municipality/area. The time period is most often one to two years. Concretely we have sold to 14 municipalities. 7 of these have had projects finished whereof 5 have been renewed and 2 are under negotiation.

A growing concern amongst most local public administrations in Europe is finding enough care workers for the growing number of elderly people. Elderlearn has found that more than half of its participants become more interested in working with elderly people, and because of this we have also started helping the municipalities recruit care workers.

Elderlearns is currently financially sustainable but wishes to become dependent only on contracts with municipalities. The state grants and donations from charitable funds are dependent on certain types of development projects and are thus not suited for financing daily operations.

Elderlearn has a steadily rising income from municipalities and would already be able to sustain its daily operations from the income from the municipalities, if no development work was being done. At the current level of development Elderlearn expect to need roughly 20-30 paying municipalities (depending on size) to be independent of charitable funds and state grants.

The revenue comes mostly from Danish municipalities with some additional revenue from speaking at events and helping out the Senior Association from whom we rent our office space.
For confidentiality reasons we will not be able to provide the number split per customer but rather a total number.
The most informative number to present is our revenue in 2019 which was $139.069 

Further we have gotten several grants/donations They have come from the following institutions:
- Fonden Ensomme Gamles Værn: $52.500  (February 2018 - February 2019)
- State grant (Innobooster): $51.000  (January 2019 - June 2019)
- State grant (Board/Center for Public Health): $327.000 (July 2019 - June 2021)
- Nordea Fonden: $107.400 (February 2020 - March 2022)

Our estimated expenses for 2020 is $308.000

Elderlearns main expense is salaries consisting of around 75-80% of the expenses. Expenses for rent, accounting, marketing etc. constitute the rest of the expenses.