Youngster.co - Connecting Generations

Overview

Youngster.co is a certified social enterprise that connects young people (‘Youngsters’, aged 16–25) with older adults (‘Learners’/seniors) for paid technology-mentorship sessions, delivered in accessible community venues such as shopping centres, libraries, aged care and retirement living settings, and via 1:1 at home visits.

The programme responds to two compounding needs: digital exclusion among seniors, and disengagement, loneliness and under-employment among young people. Independent research cited in Youngster.co’s own programme materials found that roughly one in two young people report feeling lonely and isolated, while the aged-care sector faces a worsening workforce shortage (around 20% of aged-care workers leaving the sector each year). At the same time, many older Australians are excluded from essential services — banking, healthcare, communication with family — by a lack of digital confidence.

Youngster.co’s model addresses both needs at once: seniors get free or low-cost, patient, one-to-one tech support from a young person, while the young person gains paid work experience and builds communication, empathy and problem-solving skills. Since inception, the programme has delivered 15,051 intergenerational connections (one Youngster helping one senior, one time) across 94 partner venues, reaching 8,084 distinct older people and 635 distinct young people.

Purpose/Objectives 

  • The project aimed to: bridge the intergenerational gap by creating structured, mutually beneficial contact between young people and seniors, reduce digital exclusion among older Australians, and create genuine paid work and skill-development opportunities for young people. 
  • For older participants: build lasting confidence and independence with everyday technology (phones, tablets, video calling, online safety, apps), and reduce social isolation through regular, friendly contact with a young person. 
  • For younger people: gain real paid work experience, develop communication, customer-service, empathy and problem-solving skills, and build employability and life skills with a pathway toward the labour market. 

Participants

  • Who were they: ‘Youngsters’ — school students and young adults who deliver the tech-help sessions — and ‘Learners’ — older adults who receive support. Learners are drawn from the general public, aged-care and retirement-living residents, and NDIS and community-housing clients; Youngsters include school volunteers and paid staff. 
  • How many took part: in the most recently completed full financial year (FY 2024/25), 2,155 people took part — 1,739 Learners and 416 Youngsters (56% women overall). Since programme inception, a cumulative 8,719 direct beneficiaries have taken part (8,084 Learners and 635 Youngsters), 62.2% of whom are women and girls, and 0.3% Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. 
  • What were the age ranges: Youngsters are typically 16–25 (school students, generally 16–18, for group sessions; 18+ for 1:1, home-visit and NDIS work). Learners are predominantly seniors aged 60 and over, with no upper age limit.
  • How were they recruited/involved: Learners are recruited through partner venues — shopping centres, libraries, councils, aged-care and retirement-living providers, and NDIS/housing organisations such as City West Housing. Youngsters are recruited through schools, word of mouth, community champions and online sign-up, then vetted (police checks, training) before being matched to sessions.

Activities/events

  • Weekly or fortnightly group sessions (typically 2-hour blocks) at shopping centres and libraries, where 2–4 Youngsters each run a series of ~30-minute 1:1 slots with 8–12 seniors, supervised by a vetted Lead Youngster. 
  • Individual 1:1 sessions (around 1 hour), mostly for NDIS, Support at Home and community-housing clients, delivered by Youngsters aged 18+; these are now booked on a recurring basis rather than as one-off support. 
  • A Transition to Work pilot programme, delivering structured life-skills and employability sessions specifically for young people, in partnership with a Transition to Work provider, with plans to expand through Workforce Australia providers. 
  • In FY 2024/25 this activity totalled 4,185 connections — 3,500 group-session connections and 685 1:1 sessions — an estimated 2,435 hours of intergenerational contact (+40% and +53% respectively on the prior year), delivered across a national network that has grown to 37+ venues.

Evaluation

Every session is followed by a feedback survey, shared back with partner venues. In July 2026, Youngster.co also commissioned Social Impact Hub to conduct an independent evidence and measurement review. This produced an Outcomes Map cross-referencing every documented outcome for Youngsters, Seniors and the Community against Youngster.co's Theory of Change and Program Logic, drawing on a retrospective pre/post confidence survey of Youngsters (June 2026, n up to 67 per measure), a retrospective pre/post confidence survey of Seniors (June 2026, n up to 30 per measure), an Employment Outcomes survey of 57 Youngsters (January 2025), and an Outcomes for Seniors survey of 30 participants (March 2025). Each outcome was then independently benchmarked against six established, external evidence frameworks spanning youth development, seniors' wellbeing and community cohesion (detailed below).

What would be done differently in the future?

Youngster.co has not yet secured funding for a full Social Return on Investment (SROI) study and intends to complete this analysis, self-funded if necessary. The independent review recommends a small set of validated, low-cost instruments to strengthen future measurement — including the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale and the WHO-5 Well-Being Index for youth self-worth, employability and wellbeing, and a five-item community cohesion sub-scale adapted from the Scanlon-Monash Index and the ABS Social Capital Framework. Youngster.co is also building an AI supported purpose-designed web app to improve onboarding, communication and attendance tracking, and is trialling partnership-based approaches (councils, aged-care activity coordinators, community champions) to lift senior attendance at lower-performing venues.

What were the outcomes for the older people?

Every session addresses a concrete problem: 96% of seniors report their technology problem was fully or mostly solved, and 92% rate the session 5 stars; practical digital participation in key tasks rose from 27% to 67% over the same reporting period.

Retrospective confidence surveys (June 2026) show improvement across 13 of 14 measured digital and social skills. The largest gains: staying in touch with friends and family (+0.64 on a 5-point scale, 76%→92% reporting high confidence, n=25); using technology overall (+0.58, n=19); installing and using apps (+0.50, n=22); and keeping a phone or computer secure from scams (+0.52, n=21). 

Benchmarked against the AIHW's Person-Centred Framework for Older Australians, Youngster.co's strongest (‘Strong’) alignment is on Social and Community Engagement; against the WHO Active Ageing Framework, its strongest alignment is on the Participation pillar. Against the Australian Digital Inclusion Index, the programme shows ‘Strong’ alignment on three of six digital-ability sub-dimensions — Operational, Social and Mobile skills — the core skills seniors most often seek help with.

Qualitative evidence reinforces this: seniors consistently describe feeling valued, respected and appreciated by their Youngsters, and a sense of contribution and legacy in passing on life knowledge — illustrated by Kathryn's case study at HomeCo Plumpton Marketplace, where she attended 19 sessions, rating every one 5 out of 5.

What were the outcomes for the younger people?

Every one of the nine confidence measures tracked in Youngster.co's retrospective survey (June 2026) improved. The largest gains:

  • Listening to understand others' problems: +0.75 (67%→96% reporting high confidence, n=67).
  • Connecting with older people in your community: +1.06 (46%→94%, n=52).
  • Getting and keeping a job: +0.89 (49%→82%, n=61).

All 13 Youngsters who started with zero confidence in getting and keeping a job improved across every skill measured — evidence the programme reaches, not just retains, already-confident young people. Separately, 88% of Youngsters report improved communication skills and 70% say the programme helped them get a job elsewhere (Employment Outcomes survey, January 2025, n=57); 21% of job-seeking Youngsters had already secured paid employment at the time of that survey, citing their Youngster.co experience as a contributing factor. 217 Youngsters have completed enough sessions (10+) to become eligible for a fully-funded Google Career Certificate, and all active Youngsters are eligible for a formal work reference.

Benchmarked against the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent's Core Science of Adolescence, Youngster.co shows ‘Strong’ alignment on five of six developmental domains — most notably Meaning & Purpose Through Contribution, described in the independent review as ‘the most direct alignment between Youngster.co's design and the UCLA framework’ and the programme's ‘primary developmental mechanism.’ Against the Brotherhood of St Laurence's Transition to Work evidence base, the programme's ‘Strong’ alignment on Work Skills and Tasters (Real Work Experience) is described as ‘the core differentiator’ from classroom-based or mentoring-only youth employment programmes, because Youngsters do real work for real seniors rather than simulated training.

What were the outcomes for the community?

Youngster.co's own programme records show 15,051 intergenerational connections to date, independently verified as part of the July 2026 Funder Engagement review.

  • Framed through the OECD/ABS Social Capital Framework, every one of those connections constitutes bridging social capital — a tie across one of the most significant demographic divides, age — which the independent review identifies as the programme's core community-level mechanism, describing it as ‘the construct that most precisely captures what the programme produces at a community level.’ 
  • Benchmarked against the Scanlon-Monash Index of Social Cohesion, Youngster.co's strongest, most defensible community claim is on Acceptance and Rejection: structured, positive intergenerational contact is one of the most robustly evidenced mechanisms in social psychology for reducing age-based prejudice (the ‘contact hypothesis’), and Youngster.co's own data — Youngsters' confidence ‘connecting with older people’ rising from 46% to 94% — is a direct measure of this effect. 
  • 1,620 Youngsters have been onboarded from 3,043 applications, with 595 actively delivering sessions; the average participating Youngster completes 9 sessions over 6.7 months, evidence of a sustained, not one-off, community relationship. 94 partner venues have hosted the programme, and direct payments to Youngsters represent a further, direct economic contribution to the communities involved.

Funding 

The programme is primarily funded through trading revenue — fees paid by shopping centres, libraries, NDIS, Support at Home and housing providers and, on a smaller scale, labour-hire and software income — supplemented by grant funding from philanthropic sources.

Sustainability/Developments 

The programme is continuing and growing: trading income (excluding grants) grew 31.4% in FY 2024/25 and total connections grew 40% in the same period, evidence that impact is scaling faster than cost. Key developments underway include a purpose-built AI powered web app to replace the current browser-based platform; a second core revenue and impact stream built around life-skills programmes for young people; continued expansion of shopping-centre, library and aged-care partnerships. The organisation’s long-term ambition is to reach 1,000,000 intergenerational connections across Australia.

Priorities 

This programme is not a side project — it is Youngster.co’s core mission and sole activity. As a Social Traders–certified social enterprise, Youngster.co exists specifically to bridge the intergenerational gap: every strategic priority (sales growth, operational risk management, the new app, the youth jobs pilot, and the pursuit of further grant funding) is aimed at deepening and scaling this single programme rather than diversifying away from it.

National Objectives

Youngster.co operates in Australia, so the Scottish Government's National Strategic Objectives do not apply directly. However, the programme's outcomes map closely onto the same broad wellbeing domains those objectives represent:

  • Wealthier and Fairer – genuine paid employment and skill-building for young people. 
  • Healthier – reduced loneliness and isolation for seniors, and improved mental wellbeing and confidence for both age groups, evidenced through survey and testimonial data. 
  • Smarter – improved digital literacy for seniors, and employability, communication and life-skills development for young people, including a Google Career Certificate pathway and Transition to Work programme. 
  • Safer – a rigorous youngster vetting, police-check and risk-management framework, including automated nightly police-check monitoring and a home-visit exemption process introduced after safety incidents. 

Stronger – 94 partner venues activated nationally, building social capital and connection across schools, seniors’ organisations, councils and libraries, and the business community.

Additional resources

Feedback from participating youngster

Feedback from participating Senior

Materials and resources created for and by the programme include:

  • A Theory of Change and Program Logic , refreshed as an Outcomes Map that cross-references documented outcomes against external evidence frameworks (the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent's Core Science of Adolescence, the Brotherhood of St Laurence's Transition to Work evidence base, the AIHW Person-Centred Framework for Older Australians, and the Scanlon-Monash Index of Social Cohesion). 
  • An ‘Outcomes for Young People’ survey report, using retrospective pre/post confidence measures across communication, customer service, empathy and problem-solving. 
  • A public case-study and photo gallery (tools.youngster.co/external-gallery), including an impact summary page with word-cloud visualisations of the life advice seniors share and the tasks Youngsters help with. 
  • Written and video case studies, including a Transition to Work case study, a library-activation case study, and shopping-centre case studies. 
  • Youngster training, vetting and police-check policies, and a home-visit exemption process.