Over 4,000 hours of volunteering, 82 elderly people involved, 87 trained and active volunteers, 36 maintenance interventions in senior housing. These are some significant data that illustrate the balance sheet of the first year of “Guess who’s coming home”, the project dedicated to single people over 75 living at home at risk of isolation promoted by the Amplifon Foundation and the Milan Community Foundation with the Aquilone Foundation and La Bottega di Quartiere, launched in December 2024 in Milan in Municipality 9, the one with the largest number of seniors without a proximity network.
The project proposes a model of care and relationships that focuses on the sociability of seniors and aims to make them feel part of the community. The objective is to reduce the isolation of the elderly through moments of relationship and improve the conditions of their homes with maintenance interventions such as painting or repairs, building a community of volunteers of different ages, united by the desire to support and accompany elderly people in their daily lives.
Volunteer activities range from home companionship to accompaniment in daily errands (shopping, pharmacy, medical visit), from support in technological tasks (unlocking the phone, processing reservations, activating email inbox) up to a series of external activities in the area, such as theater shows, concerts, workshops and meetings – and related dedicated transport – in which 80% of the elderly participated.
Who are the older people followed by “Guess Who’s Coming Home”? 74% are women between 85 and 89 years old who often reside in public housing. Single people who do not meet the requirements for access to municipal social services, but are considered fragile – due to physical and social problems – and are therefore followed by the “Social Guardian”, the main contact channel with which the expert operators of the Aquilone Foundation intercept the elderly.
As for the volunteers, at the end of 2025 there are 87 – of which 13 are Amplifon employees – they are on average 44 years old, the majority are women with a medium-high educational qualification and a clerical occupation. Most are new to volunteering.
It is estimated that in Milan over 40% of the approximately 180,000 elderly residents over 75 live alone. In the second year of activity of Guess Who Comes Home, the aim is to strengthen the autonomy of relationships between elderly people and volunteers and encourage the creation of self-managed territorial groups. Home health monitoring will also be implemented. “Guess who’s coming home” is a project activated in a specific area of Milan, but the idea is to develop a model of care for seniors that can also be replicated elsewhere.
