Let's Kaypoh (Eldercare)

Supporting Seniors - Socially isolated seniors

Like Bob the Builder (of good).

Team members:

• Ker Yang Low, Product Manager

• Eileen Chua, UIUX Designer

• Nicholas Lim, Software Engineer

• Josephine Agatha Hemingway, Software Engineer

Problem Statement

Singapore’s ageing population is rapidly growing, with nearly 1 million seniors expected by 2030. Among them, many are less active or social, putting them at risk of isolation, which affects their health and well-being. Despite government efforts and volunteer programs, this issue persists.

Although there are an overwhelming number of citizens (95% of survey respondents) that would like to help these socially-isolated seniors, only 2% of our survey respondents actually volunteer with the elderly. This is because face a few key barriers in doing so: fear of regular commitment (48%), language barrier with the elderly (45%), and it being too time-consuming (39%).

Proposed Solution

We aim to democratise and lower the barriers to volunteering by reducing the dependency on AACs and befriender organisations to allocate and schedule resources such as volunteer visitations and errand running.

We intend to rally the community around the elderly by providing a platform that connects members of the public with one another with a focus on the socially isolated elderly in their neighbourhood to do simple monitoring tasks and errand running.

With this platform, members of a community can work together to check-in and help out elderlies who need it most, and escalate to the respective AACs and befriender organisations should the need arise. As a result, AACs and befriender organisations can now rely on a much larger, closer-to-home pool of manpower to conduct more frequent checks and assistance for the socially isolated, and divert resources more efficiently when needed. In the long run, the younger generation can cultivate organic relationships with the elderly they support.