In April Dutch partner Stichting Digitalezorg.nl signed the collaboration agreement with the National Foundation for the Elderly (NOF). Within the collaboration the NOF will recruit and manage the volunteers and request from elderly during the trial period.

The National Foundation for the Elderly is a charity that promotes quality of life for elderly people in the Netherlands. The primary focus of the Foundation is combatting loneliness. Approximately 200.000 Dutch elderly feel extremely lonely. Their only social contact is once every four weeks.

MyMate functionality is an interesting add-on to their own matching platform, called Match. Match offers the elderly to submit a request. Volunteers can respond to that request by signing up. The coordinator of the NOF closes the match by linking the elderly person to the volunteer. MyMate is an interesting add-on, because it provides the functionality of giving feedback by the volunteer, plus it offers NOF more control on the matches in case the elderly person cannot submit their own requests.

It is planned to run a two-staged trial of each 6 weeks, during which the volunteers and the coordinators work with MyMate. The trials is planned to start in May 2018.