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Mari Kooskora, Estonian Business School
CommuniCare SOCIAL ENTERPRISE CASE STUDY
CommuniCare, a student team from Tartu, relieves the loneliness of elderly people. CommuniCare, a network of volunteers created by Tartu students, was chosen as the best social enterprise in the Ajujaht business idea competition 2020. The company received a special prize of €5,000 for developing the idea. CommuniCare’s goal is to encourage elderly people to communicate with the outside world and to make their last years of life dignified. The team creates a network of volunteers to provide elderly people living in nursing homes company and social companions with whom to talk, go for a walk or play board games. “Our goal is to ensure a permanent connection between care homes and volunteers”. The social enterprise works through a social network created through interpersonal relationships and technology, creating a network of volunteers who are sent to nursing homes to spend time with the elderly. Nursing homes pay a fixed amount per month for CommuniCare service for each elderly person living there. The money earned from the service will cover the costs of volunteer recruitment and motivation events. The team, comprising freshman of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Tartu, is involved in the
Brain Hunt Development Programme to create a network of volunteers to provide companions and communication partners for elderly people living in nursing homes. Although the idea was born in England and the solution is being tested in Estonia, the team aims to expand rapidly into the Scandinavian and North American markets. The team began working on their idea in the Startup Lab’s Starter Tartu programme in autumn 2019. Ajujaht noticed CommuniCare’s idea at the Starter Tartu mentoring event and gave them direct access to Top 100. The idea was born when the team leader Norman Vester spent time in England talking to elderly people in nursing homes and spending time with them. “While communicating with them and spending time with them, I discovered that no one was visiting them. Even their loved ones make it there only at Christmas and rarely on birthdays. More than half of those who were there have no loved ones,” he says of a growing problem in society. In Estonia, the problem is even bigger, he says. A survey conducted by the Ministry of Social Affairs in 2013 shows, for example, that 85% of elderly people in nursing homes are visited on average 2.3 times a year.
