21S16

Our class project focused on the lonely and socially isolated seniors in Singapore. We worked with Lions Befrienders, an organisation that aimed to improve the quality of life of these seniors. For the first 3 weeks, we split into 3 groups to plan 3 appropriate activities that we thought the elderly would enjoy under a National Day theme to celebrate National Day with them. We came up with Pictionary, Origami Folding and Zumba. In the following two weeks, we sent our proposed plan to Lions Befrienders to vet as well as conduct a dry-run of our programme. On the day itself, we organised the 3 activities in our respective teams via zoom.

We believe that we did well in engaging the elderly as there were many nice interactions between us and the elderly. The elderly were thus participative during the programmes planned. We also had great teamwork and came together as a class during the programme such as helping to translate sentences or simply participating in the activities as well so others do not feel alone in organising the activities.

However, we could’ve improved in our Pictionary activity by drawing it in real time instead of using a video as the video was too fast and so it was too rushed for the elderly. Furthermore, our Origami video could’ve been recorded better as it was quite blurry so it was hard for the elderly to properly follow the steps.

Overall, we felt that this experience was worth-while and enriching as we were able to give back to the community as well as brighten the day of the elderly.