Case 2: CommuniCare

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.

An example how the new social enterprise ideas are created and put into practice.

Best Social Enterprise idea in Ajujaht (Brain Hunt) Business Competition 2020

Communicare team members (from left) Siim Aksel Amer, Vadim Konov, Norman Vester, Andre-Loit Valli.

Volunteer friends

To alleviate the problem, Norman began working with his university group mates in September this year. Originally a tiny idea, he says, actually came from a push received from the university, where joining the Starter programme helped him to avoid a test. “I went there with my problem and idea and fell in love with it,” he says.

According to Norman, there are a total of 64 active nursing homes in Estonia, with eight of which the CommuniCare team has already communicated with and cooperation with three has already begun. By the end of the summer, the team’s goal is to start working with all nursing homes in Tartu, one in Pärnu and one in Harju County. So far, he says, the feedback from nursing homes has been positive.

The biggest challenge for Norman is the recruitment of volunteers to take to the nursing homes. “This is the most important place we are currently putting our resources,” he adds. Their poor reputation is a major obstacle to finding good volunteers, he said. In order to motivate volunteers, CommuniCare is also launching its own scholarship programme, whereby they provide one volunteer each year with a scholarship of €500–1000 for sporting or educational activities. “The more a volunteer is involved, the more likely he or she is to get that money,” Norman explains. Learning from competitors Regarding the question of whether such solutions and services do not already exist in Estonia or in the world, Norman replies that they do, but their focus is too broad. “Before we came out with our programme, we wrote to and phoned all the competitors. We asked what went badly and what went well for them, to learn from their mistakes,” says Norman about the extensive groundwork.

CommuniCare came to Brain Hunt through a mentoring event in Tartu in the autumn, where during the final round of the speed-dating format event, they had to choose between going to the table of an investor or Brain Hunt team leader Harri Tallinn. Because the team’s goal is to find good mentors, they decided to go to the Brain Hunt table.

At Brain Hunt, the team is primarily looking for good mentors to help make the business model and processes more efficient.

CommuniCare creates a network of volunteers to reduce the loneliness of nursing home residents by providing companions for elderly people.

According to Helen Mikkov, the head of the Social Enterprise Network (www.sev.ee), the team has created a network in a short time, the members of which believe in benevolence and action. “The CommuniCare team represents entrepreneurship and the courage to change the system, seeing opportunities in places where the majority in society may not want to look,” he added.

In addition, CommuniCare Ajujahil won the special prize of the city of Tartu in the amount of €5,000 and the special prize of Saue municipality in the amount of €4,000. In total, the team won €14,000 from the competition for business development.

Among many other awards, CommuniCare have won the title of the best Starter team and tickets to the prestigious business festival Arctic15. They also won the Tartu City Government’s financial award at the business ideas competition Kaleidoskoop.

CommuniCare was established last autumn (2019), and so far its volunteers have visited several nursing homes: for example, they spent time with the residents of the Aarike nursing home in Virulase village, Kambja municipality, Tartu County.

Elle Ott, the manager of the nursing home, was happy to hear about the company’s success and said that these visits and conversations are essential for the residents of the care home. “Very necessary, very pleasant,” said Ott, who added that she initially was rather surprised when she heard that the students wanted to come to the nursing home.

“Before the corona, the nursing homes did not mean much for anyone, only now have they started to be talked about,” said Elle Ott, the manager of the Aarike nursing home. “Even a person who came to us after a car accident and who neither we nor his family were able to motivate to act so that he would not remain paralysed ... even he said after talking to the young people that they could come again.”

CommuniCare has a hundred volunteers in Tartu County and more than three hundred volunteers all over Estonia. Before the lockdown, the volunteers visited the residents of six Tartu County nursing homes: in addition to the Aarike nursing home, both homes in Härmalõnga, the Tartu nursing home, the Tartu Mental Health Centre and the Iru nursing home in Harju County. The company is in negotiations with Benita Home and Nõo Nursing Home.

Brain Hunt Business competition

All ideas submitted to Brain Hunt, which offers solutions to social problems, were nominated for the Special Award for Social Entrepreneurship. The special award was presented by SEB Estonia and the Network of Social Enterprises.

The work continues

Volunteers who visit a nursing home two or three times a month usually talk to the residents face-to-face; sometimes they interact with a larger group. Nursing homes and local governments pay for the communication service, volunteers visit the elderly ones with their own car or a bus.

As, due to the Covid-19 lockdown, volunteers cannot visit their newly befriended elderly friends in the nursing homes, CommuniCare uses the prize money to create digital communication opportunities between nursing home residents and volunteers, which enables communication to continue in similar cases in the future.

“There are many questions about whether our volunteers could also visit single elderly people living at home, but now it is behind legal obstacles,” Vester said.

‘CommuniCare is committed to solving a truly human and profound challenge – loneliness in our hypersocial world. The problem is universal and yet so complex that even the slightest success of CommuniCare in this area could open up many new business opportunities for them, both in terms of target segments and markets. The recognition and strength of the team is the ability to involve partners. This strength helps them to create a strong network of volunteers, but more importantly to develop their service, to move from an initial ‘person-to-person’ solution to a digital communication environment,’

Andra Altoa, SEB Baltic Strategy and Customer Experience Manager