Creating value by bridging the intergenerational gap
Many of our elders feel lonely, they have problems of self-esteem, socialisation and depression. A surprising fact is that
twothirds of the older adults who said that they felt lonely were either married or living with a partner of some kind. But
loneliness is not only an issue for older generations. Nowadays there is growing concern about the loss of values and the
increase of loneliness in youngsters, there is a lack of intergenerational communication: many young people is not enjoying
the opportunity to learn from experience and values through the direct contact with elderly people. The society has evolved
in this sense while formal and non-formal education is not covering this issue. In this context, the objective of Adopt
Grandparents is to implement a social business model to connect elderly people living in care homes and youngsters. They
will carry out shared activities where: - Elders will enjoy direct contact with young people sharing experiences and interests. -
Youngsters complement their education through the contact with the experience of elderly people within a complete
programme of activities. Adopt Grandparents provides a Social & Education Training Programme for youngsters with a
formal roadmap for young trainees and a visits schedule for the elderly under the supervision of instructors. After three years
operating as a non-profit organisation, Intergenerational Technologies SL was constituted as a company to launch Adopt
Grandparents initiative as a social economy business. For the time being Adopt Grandparents has been launched in Spain
and Portugal and the plans of the company is to scale to global level. SME Instrument Phase-1 and Phase-2 will be
extremely beneficial in helping the company to accelerate development and market penetration of the solution in target
segments, boosting the company’s growth to 242 employees and € 23,017,094 revenues by 2024.