22S03

For our JC1 SL Day on 8th Aug 2022, we worked on the 'Silver Homes' project in collaboration with the Central Singapore Community Development Council.

We were tasked with helping the elderly clean their house and we also had to interact with them. Most of the elderly we visited live alone and some of them even had trouble with their mobility and movement, hence it is hard for them to clean their house daily or even regularly. Places such as the windows and cupboards are hard for them to reach since it is high and very dusty. Furthermore, some houses are filled with items. Certain groups focused mainly on cleaning the dust and rearranging the items.

As we clean we would also eventually interact with the elderly and understand more about their livelihood. Since a number of the elderly have some trouble with hearing, we had to converse with them by asking questions loudly yet in a respectful manner.

As a person who rarely does housework, it was challenging at first since I did not acquire the skills needed to do housework efficiently and properly. Initially, we had difficulties understanding what the elderly was telling us to do as she spoke Cantonese, the dialect that none of our groupmates spoke. Nevertheless, we still tried continuing to talk to her and converse with her. We had to ask her which areas of the house we should clean since she did not want us to touch some specific areas of her house. It was challenging but it was also fun as I had the opportunity to spend time with the elderly with my friends. After a while, the elderly soon opened up about her struggles and her physical problems such as her eyesight problem. It was eye-opening to learn about the setbacks of the elderly and what they have to face on a daily basis.

• Seyeon, 22S03

The elderly really could not reach some places like the ceiling, hence we had to help with dusting the ceiling. When attempting to dust the ceiling, even I faced difficulty trying to clean the ceiling, hence I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for the elderly to clean the ceiling especially as they have to deal with the dust. Moving items around the house is also extremely challenging for them too, making it hard for them to thoroughly clean crevices such as the spacing behind the sofa. This made me empathise more with the elderly, as there is always things that we cannot do alone. Furthermore, talking to the elderly was quite fun, as it reminded me of the conversations I had with my grandparents. The elderly I talked to was very nice and did not have her own children, so it was probably nice for her to talk to us too, as she can share her experiences with us. By getting to know the elderly, I hope we made her day better:)

• Chen Kiat, 22S03

After facing certain difficulties, my group split up and went to different houses. After moving around abit, me and my partner Erwin found a place where we could be useful. The toilet of the house that we went to was extremely dirty and other group members were hesitant to clean it, hence Erwin and I decided to step up and started to clean the toilet. Even though there were many times where we were questioning why we were doing this and just wanted to give up, we persevered through and reminded ourselves of the beautiful meaning behind this service learning activity. In the end we saw results from our efforts. This whole experience has been enriching for me as it taught me about the troubles elderly people have to go through when they live alone. It also gave me a newfound appreciation for the things I have currently. In conclusion, I gained great satisfaction from helping the elderly and I hope to do this again soon.

• Narayanan, 22S03

I honestly thought that the project was very tough and demanding. Initially, we were met with difficulties as one of the elderly was adamant on rejecting our services. This prompted us to leave that unit and head on to another group in our class. However, once again we were shifted to another unit which needed much more help. That unit consisted of 2 elderly men and the people tasked to clean the apartment were 3 students from another class. Narayanan and I were assigned the task of cleaning the toilet. When we first struggled to clean up because of the dirty state it was in, we persevered and continued. We got down and dirty and eventually managed to clean most of the toilet. It looked brand new!

• Erwin , 22S03

I learnt how tough it is to actually put in effort to clean the houses as I have a helper at home to clean up the house, so now I have learnt not to take her for granted and appreciate her so much more. I have also learnt to work together as a group to delegate tasks accordingly so as to clean much more efficiently and communicate with each other to get things done faster and more effectively

• Jing Ni, 22S03