Senior Citizens at Commonwealth Drive

Similar to the previous project on mentoring youths, the partner was FaithActs, a Family Service Center (FSC) at Commonwealth Drive.  The Capstone team worked with the FSC on serving the senior citizens in the area. Activities included weekly interaction sessions with the senior citizens, a “Healthy Food” Seminar, a half-day trip to U-Town, and home visits. Through our time together and from our research, we learned that many of the senior citizens had diabetes; but they were not always clear that they should be avoiding certain foods and they were sometimes unsure if they should eat more or less of a particular item.

Reflections by Capstone team members

Overall, the whole module was pretty interesting as it adopted a different learning style. No more boring lectures in the auditorium and lessons were mostly “conducted” during our visits to FaithActs. I like the amount of freedom given for our project as we can choose to work on any topic that we are interested in and had fewer restrictions than the other modules. Also, we were given a chance try out new ways of doing things. The learning process was also relaxing and meaningful. (Tan Jinyu)

The (Rummikub) session ended and the rest of the capstone group left but I decided to hang around for a little longer and continued playing with my Rummikub group as I felt a great reluctance to leave. Finally at around 11.30am, we decided to call it a day. I found myself feeling very sad that this was my last visit and I thanked the ladies for letting me join in with them. They were most gracious and seemed genuinely sad that our visits were over. I bid goodbye privately (to one of the senior citizens) – I think I will miss her the most. She is really one of the nicest people I have met over my three years in Singapore (Keren)