HSG students visit retirement home: ‘Students and senior citizens can learn a lot from each other’

‘We students can learn a lot from older people,’ says HSG student Lukas Lehnhoff. ‘And we hope that we can also give the seniors new insights.’ On 4 December, Lehnhoff, together with his fellow students Sophie Harms and Luca Oswald, visited six residents of the St. Otmar nursing home in St. Gallen with four other HSG students. They spent two hours talking and exchanging ideas.

The visit took place as part of the HSG master's course ‘Sustainable Start-ups’. In this course, HSG students develop small social projects with a local impact within a few months.

What do older people regret when they look back?

While researching social problems, the group led by Lehnhoff, Harms and Oswald came across the topic of loneliness in old age. They also had a personal connection to the topic: ‘We all know grandparents or neighbours who are often alone in their old age,’ explains Lehnhoff.

This gave rise to the idea of actively approaching older people. ‘First, we approached elderly people on the street and simply asked them how they were doing and whether they sometimes felt lonely,’ says Sophie Harms. ‘We quickly realised that we couldn't reach the people who were really lonely, namely those who sit alone in their flats watching television.’

The group therefore decided to ask the residents of the St. Otmar nursing home for interviews. After several interviews, the three students found that what the people in the nursing home lacked most was regular contact with the ‘outside world’.

This led to the meeting at the beginning of December. The agenda was kept simple: arrival, brief introductions, coffee and cake, followed by personal conversations. The students had prepared questions in advance, some of which were more personal than others – ranging from childhood memories to what the seniors would do differently today in retrospect.

‘We wanted to know what had shaped the older people,’ explains Luca Oswald.

After the conversations, they made short reflection videos with some of the older people about the visit and their insights.

Visits should take place regularly

The students, residents and nursing staff found the exchange – first in a group, then in individual conversations – to be enriching. ‘For us, it was a change of perspective. You gain insights that no lecture can replace,’ says Oswald. At the same time, the carers were relieved of their duties for a good two hours.

‘Our idea now is that such meetings could take place regularly in the future,’ says Lehnhoff. One idea is to link the nursing home with the contextual studies course ‘Social Engagement in Theory and Practice’ taught by Dr Anna-Katharina Klöckner, lecturer at the University of St.Gallen.

For Lehnhoff, Harms and Oswald, the project shows how quickly results can be achieved: ‘The course encourages you to examine a problem and then get started quickly, to simply dare to do something. We have now implemented a social project, but the entrepreneurial thinking from the course could also be applied to founding a start-up.’