Behind the campaign: Bake Against Poverty
Online income - a way out of old-age poverty
Bake against Poverty on euronews Good Morning Europe (2021-04-28)
In a nutshell
“Vollpension BakAdemy” is an e-learning platform for seniors to provide baking courses to earn extra income. “Bake Against Poverty“ invites grandmas and grandpas all over the world to apply as baking teachers. With this campaign, we want to contribute to reducing old-age poverty and isolation among the elderly.
The challenge
Old-age poverty: Coronavirus accelerates a global problem“In most countries, the risk of poverty increases with age.”
(Income Poverty in Old Age. An Emerging Development Priority; social.un.org/ageing, 2015)
By 2030, the group of people over 60 years old will double and increase to 2.1 billion.
There are hardly any aggregated global numbers on old-age poverty,
however, the UN explicitly warns that the way increasing poverty in
people over 60 is handled, will be decisive in whether the UN’s Sustainable
Development Goal “1 No poverty” can be obtained. Coronavirus increases the problem significantly, solutions have never been more relevant than today.
Old-age poverty: a world-wide issue
60% of all older people world-wide live in developing countries, where social and pension schemes are rare. In these countries in particular, old-age poverty has become an increasingly bigger problem. However, the UN increasingly observes poverty and interdependencies in particular in older women in richer countries, as well, due to outdated pension systems, missing credit periods etc. This is the reason why old-age poverty is becoming an increasingly bigger problem in OECD countries.
An example:old-age poverty in Austria
Old-age poverty and loneliness, as well as isolation at an old age, are a growing problem around the world. We are fighting this by generating employment opportunities for seniors affected by old age poverty, and creating places where old and young can be together, off- and online.
The campaign
Extra income for the Granny through online baking courses: Locally tried and tested solution goes global!
Since 1 October, 2020 we have had more than 100 online live-courses with more than 500 participants in our Vollpension BakAdemy. In several weekly courses, people interested in baking learn how to bake the secret recipes in grandma’s and grandpa’s baking books; our seniors generate a crisis-resistant income source.
Now we want to make this tried and tested model of digital senior empowerment internationally accessible. For this, our grannies made a video and call to action.
Sticky rice with mango by a grandma from Bangkok, Quindim by a grandma from Rio de Janeiro or cardamom rice pudding by a grandma from Mumbai are only three examples of courses which could perhaps be available in our BakAdemy in future.
This way, we create an attractive course programme for baking aficionados and the possibility to earn some extra money for seniors around the globe.
Now we want to make this tried and tested model of digital senior empowerment internationally accessible. For this, our grannies made a video and call to action.
Sticky rice with mango by a grandma from Bangkok, Quindim by a grandma from Rio de Janeiro or cardamom rice pudding by a grandma from Mumbai are only three examples of courses which could perhaps be available in our BakAdemy in future.
This way, we create an attractive course programme for baking aficionados and the possibility to earn some extra money for seniors around the globe.
The project in detail
We will start with an international call of action on 22 April 2021. It is meant for seniors and their close relatives, children, grand-children and other family members, we call them granny‘s sparring partners.
The applications received will be evaluated and adequate candidates will be selected. On 15 October 2021 we will go live with our international course offers.
We will send the seniors a live course package with appropriate hardware, training for the platform, format and schedule, as well as connection to our website.
Campaign goals
Impact goals
Vollpension BakAdemy
Our BakAdemy is a knowledge transfer and e-learning platform, making grannies’ baking knowledge accessible around the world.
We create an additional, scalable and crisis-resistant possibility to earn additional income for seniors in Austria and around the world, and become the world‘s biggest provider of digital jobs for seniors.
Our OMAsterclasses (high-quality on-demand video baking courses) and live baking courses (baking coaching for small groups through video conferences) get our seniors on the internet, and create additional possibilities to connect generations – now also online.
We create an additional, scalable and crisis-resistant possibility to earn additional income for seniors in Austria and around the world, and become the world‘s biggest provider of digital jobs for seniors.
Our OMAsterclasses (high-quality on-demand video baking courses) and live baking courses (baking coaching for small groups through video conferences) get our seniors on the internet, and create additional possibilities to connect generations – now also online.
In 2020, after only 5 months of development, we created our digital baking academy with 3 OMAsterclass video courses (12 hours of high-quality video content in total), live baking courses taught by our seniors, an online shop and a recipe database.
In only 3 months, we managed to generate a turnover of more than 150,000 EUR – 80,000 through partnerships with companies and sponsoring by renowned brands such as Dr. Oetker, Drei, iSi, Joya, Kenwood, Riess Emaille, Gmundner Keramik or AEG. This way, we managed to establish a second stable and scalable pillar for our Vollpension.
About Vollpension
Since 2012, Vollpension has been developing solutions for the challenges of old-age poverty, isolation and the increasing gap between generations in Vienna, Austria, and additionally is a leader in this topic in the German-speaking region. Our core topics of old-age poverty and isolation among the elderly have never been more relevant than today.
Our “Generationencafés” (or, as we like to call them, generation-bridging cafés) had on average 200,000 guests per year up until 2020. Then the corona crisis hit us all, and Vollpension, quite severe. Shortly before we had to shut everything down, we fled to the internet with all 45 of our seniors – and that with success! Now we want to move the formula we developed last year – seniors earning extra money by sharing their knowledge about baking on the internet – out into the world.
The present project brings us one small slice of cake closer to our vision that not a single person needs to grow old in poverty and isolation by drawing attention to old-age poverty, and by providing seniors all over the world with the opportunity to earn money online.
Bake Against Poverty is supported by
