Jia Ying Community Services

Activities on 7 April

Home visits and cleaning

✓ We aim to improve the living conditions of the elderly, many of whom are frail and unable to maintain basic home cleanliness. By cleaning and refurbishing their homes, we make their homes – which are mostly rental and one-room flats – a better place to live in.

Gifts and cards for the elderly during the home visits

✓ Medicated oil and insect patches can be included in these gift packs

Reflections (Yi Chen and Shi Huan)

For this home visitation, Shihuan and I visited Mdm Wong's apartment and interacted with her using the Chinese Language. We mainly discussed food topics as well as music interests with Mdm Wong. Besides that, we played simple games which did not require much physical movement such as ‘Have I ever’ and animal charades. We also went through some safety tips and reminded her to walk slowly and not to over exert herself. On top of that, we also reminded her to drink lots of water and herbal tea due as the weather has been very hot. The experience was an unforgettable one. We feel that it has been meaningful and we have learnt a lot from it. One of the main things we learnt was to be considerate and sensitive when asking our questions as they might get hurt or offended easily especially if we do not phrase our questions properly. We felt that we could have made Mdm Wong more comfortable by preparing questions to ask beforehand as there were a few awkward moments when we did not know what to say. Mdm Wong had personally expressed her gratitude and told us that she had really enjoyed our company.

Reflections (Belinda and Sakeena)

It was daunting to step into a house not knowing how the lady inside is, and whether or not we would be able to communicate with her effectively, but when we stood at the door and saw her wheeling her way to open the gate for us, we felt as if all our doubts were for naught because she smiled at us brightly and as time progressed, we saw how kind and caring of a lady she is, talking about her kids and allowing us to look around her house. In the span of 45 minutes, we saw how she moved around the house in a wheelchair. Communicating with her, allowed us to get more insight on her life and at the end of it all, we couldn't bear to leave and wanted to spend more time with her. Through our conversation, which lasted for roughly an hour, we learnt many things about Mdm Tijah. Precautions have been taken to prevent accidents and a small slope leading from her living room to her kitchen allows her to move with ease. Mdm Tijah also says that she enjoys the company of young volunteers like us who keep her company as it also reminds her of her grandchildren.

Reflections (Flona and Sher Ri)

We had many takeaways from this experience. We learnt about the hardships that our pioneer generation went through, in order for Singapore to be the way it is currently. We appreciate what the pioneer generation have done for us, Singaporeans. If not for them, Singapore would not be as educated, peaceful and harmonious as it is now. Also, as most of the elderly live alone, they might tend to neglect their safety for convenience sake. Hence during this trip to an elderly lady’s home, we used cards to advise her and emphasized on safety aspects so as to prevent accidents from happening. This has been a very meaningful experience for us as we got to listen to her personal experiences and empathised with what she had been through. We also helped her in cleaning the house as she had constraints in moving around. Overall, we feel that the response from our home visit was good and we hope to have further experiences like this again.

Handwritten cards by 3S

3S in action!

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