Elderly care and connection
Day centres, home visits and help staying in touch for older people living alone after their families migrated for work.
34
Day centres
4,100
Older people supported
2,700
Entitlement claims assisted
Weekly
Companion call cadence
What the problem actually is.
Migration has left a particular kind of household across rural India: an older couple, or one surviving parent, in a village where their children no longer live. The pension arrives, the house stands, and the isolation is total.
The work is simple and mostly human. Day centres that give a reason to leave the house. Home visits with a health check. Help with the paperwork that pensions and entitlements require and that increasingly assumes a smartphone.
The digital piece matters more than it sounds. Teaching an eighty-year-old to make a video call to a son in another state is not a technology outcome; it is the difference between hearing from family monthly and daily.
Who this is for: Older people living alone or without family nearby, particularly in high-migration districts.
The work, specifically.
Each of these is funded with its running costs included - stipends, repairs, follow-up - because that is what decides whether it survives past the first year.
Day centres
A place to go, with a meal, company and a weekly health check.
Home visits
Regular visits to older people living alone, with escalation where health or safety is a concern.
Entitlement support
Help claiming pensions and benefits, including the online steps that now gate them.
Staying in touch
Devices and patient teaching so older people can call family who have migrated.
Companion calling
Volunteers who call the same person every week.
34
Day centres
4,100
Older people supported
2,700
Entitlement claims assisted
Weekly
Companion call cadence
Named projects inside this programme.
Kerala · since 2023
Grandparents' Line
A weekly call from the same volunteer, and a device set up so older people can reach migrated family themselves.
How it works →
Three things that would make a difference here.
- Become a companion caller - one call a week, same person.
- Fund a day centre for a year.
- Help at an entitlement clinic if you know the paperwork.
Contributes to
- SDG 3 Good health and wellbeing
- SDG 10 Reduced inequalities
Related programmes
Fund it, staff it, or send us your old laptops.
Tell us which programme interests you and roughly what you have in mind - money, equipment, time or expertise - and we will come back with something specific rather than a brochure.
