Eduardo Fierro is one of the founders of Kuvu, along with Jon Ander Fernández and Haize Trueba. Kuvu is a social enterprise that aims to end the unwanted loneliness and social isolation of the elderly. To do this, they take advantage of intergenerational relationships by placing young people and adults under the same roof; or through other specific means. In this interview, Eduardo talks about Kuvuz and his new projects.

What is Kuvu and how was it born?
We started in Kuvun almost two years ago, when we were studying at LErN (Entrepreneurial Leadership and Innovation) at Mondragon University. We created the 20/75 project, where we wanted to improve the quality of life of the elderly. Thus, we began to identify the problem of unwanted loneliness. Many older people suffered and others did not, but that was their biggest fear. We started researching what the possible solutions might be and found that there was a sharing program within a network called Home Share International, and we started thinking about what technology we could use to create that impact. Thus was born Kuvu.

Kuvu is a social enterprise in which we have a mission to improve the quality of life of the elderly, avoiding unwanted loneliness and social isolation, and we do everything through this common line to unite different generations.

We have a marketplace, for the elderly, perhaps because the children have left and want to share the house, but they are scared. That’s one of the main reasons why an elderly person doesn’t want to share their home. We have created several services. In them, we help them choose the right person based on their hobbies or the way they live. Then we also help them in the protection of coexistence. We have a type of contract that is unique in Spain, which guarantees the protection of the elderly and, on the other hand, allows young people to obtain a cheaper home in a different environment. The profile of the young people who approach us is a little older.

On the other hand, with Covid, we created an app where we look to do the same thing. An elderly person may not want to share their home, but they do want to share moments. We call this app Kuvu Moments Share, and here we offer help when it comes to shopping, doing some business or having a coffee ... and we do it through a network of volunteers, which means we connect the elderly with the young people as close as possible. We try to do it between neighborhoods.

How does it work?
We have a part of the collaboration with public administrations and institutions, mainly to expand the possibility of sharing the house. But we do everything through Facebook. Despite the stereotype there are a lot of older people who have Facebook. We do advertising and digital marketing and target older people with information so they can share the house with others. Many of them contact us, many register directly on the web. We have been creating a nice platform to make registration easy and if they stop for a moment, an alert will be triggered and they can manage it over the phone and we can do it digitally. There are some people who call us on the phone or come to the office and others who do it digitally. We are based at the BBF, Bilbao Innovation Factory.

Young people are contacted digitally and we have made collaboration agreements with universities. Here we have agreements with all the Basque universities, Mondragon, Deusto and the UPV / EHU, and each one puts it on its website as a low-cost accommodation program or solidarity program, from which many people enter because they are interested in living with an elderly person.

Because we care so much about security, our growth is a little slower. We work mainly in the Basque Country, Bizkaia, and the Community of Madrid.

What are the most common problems and complaints among the elderly and the youngest?
The reality is that there is a lot of fear. Older people usually spend four or six hours a day on television. He is very sensitive to what the media can say. Through the news, the image of young people is very stereotyped, that they go to parties, drink bottles ... which causes a stereotype towards the young on the part of the old. So when it comes to living together, many people are afraid of what coexistence will be like, they will have parties at home, what will happen to the kitchen ... these are elements that worry them, which add to the fear, for example in an adult who has only been 8 years old.

The young person who comes to us also has stereotypes about the older person. He doesn't know if he will have to take care of himself, how healthy he is, if he has to give him medication ...

In the end, neither case is real. The elderly are completely autonomous, lead a normal life and have a very young spirit, they want to share their home because they want to live another experience, and the young person is a little older, maybe studying for a master’s or doctorate and no longer wants to live with young people.

What else does Kuvuk offer?
When the coronavirus started, we created an initiative called Covida, which we did in a completely altruistic way, trying to cover the elderly who could be vulnerable and could not leave their homes because of the quarantine problem. We have created a support network for these people, who are the most isolated due to the digital divide because they do not know how to use social networks, mobile phones or video calls.

We created a national network and tried to speed it up. Especially in the Canary Islands we have received a lot of support from the Government of the Canary Islands. We are in all the Autonomous Communities, including Ceuta and Melilla, and right now there are more than 3,500 seniors and about 1,500 volunteers online. We manage about 850 media directly and others indirectly. What we have given is very strong security, legal verification, personal knowledge ...
What we have done now is to develop this application that was born out of pure philanthropy and we are turning it into a sustainable network of support for the elderly. With the support of the Government of the Canary Islands, we will launch the first marketing in the Canary Islands in October.

What did you find in the pandemic?
We are a company and we need to survive. For us, the coronavirus has had a huge impact, precisely because we reached 150 owners in March, we made a lot of investments in advertising, we made a new version of the platform ... and from there, we lost almost 80%. The investment round we made couldn’t be closed due to fear of companies ... but since we didn’t want to stop and created Covida, we were very active in the quarantine. Covida motivated us a lot and we created the impact and now the Government of the Canary Islands has bought two apps to launch there ... That way we have been able to survive. The housing sharing part isn’t so intensive right now, even as customers continue to come in, but we don’t make ads because we don’t understand the moment.

And then there’s a lot of fear. This situation is a bit of a bubble because people are receiving aid and it seems we don’t have a serious economic crisis, but what we noticed in customers is that they had to stop renting rooms because their children came home, for example, older people who had to leave home and share rooms. ..

What are Kuvu’s future plans?
The approach we have now, after breaking everything with coronavirus, is to pause Kuvu HomeSharing so intensively, even as we continue with our customers and continue with our line of accommodation. We will open in the Canary Islands in 2021, together with the Government of the Canary Islands, which wants to promote the project there. The opening plan for Barcelona and others will be paused until later.

In the part of the application we talked about, the idea is to create as much impact as possible, for free and non-profit, but what we are proposing is to create a sustainable network of support for the elderly. We would like to continue to create an impact in India. We would like to apply the Covida network, a new version that we will launch in October, to all the Autonomous Communities of the State. Therefore, the idea is to start creating a sustainable network. We have a vision of creating a solidarity market where companies can work together to earn money and help young people. We are creating some incentives to encourage young people to get involved in the network.
We also opened a specific app for single-parent families who were Covida users, as many single moms and single dads started accessing it. We have found that these families experience a worrying level of poverty, despite their jobs, especially with regard to women. We spoke to the Basque Government to see if the project will be released in the Basque Country.

How would you encourage young people and adults to use Kuvu?
Let them feel completely free on the net. They can call us to answer any questions ... Young people, especially in the network, have the whole process online, people who can do a compatibility survey and connect. Older people, dare to call them, go to town halls and there they will talk about us. And even if we’re not in a region, we’ll try to find a network that has a support program to help them. Let them call, no problem.