As we usher in the New Year, the CN Yang Scholars’ Club (CNYSC) would like to express our immense gratitude and appreciation for all that we have received under the scholars programme. Starting with Academic Year 2015/2016, the CNYSC has kickstarted a number of volunteering initiatives as we work towards contributing more actively to society.
Our first volunteering initiative took place with the Alzheimer’s Disease Association (ADA). Thus far, several batches of CN Yang scholars have made their way down to volunteer with ADA. Let’s proceed to find out more about their experiences!
Volunteering Initiative with ADA
BY CNYSC PRESS & PUBLICITY PORTFOLIO
Earlier this year, we made our way down to New Horizon Centre (Bukit Batok) on a Saturday morning as part of the CN Yang Scholars’ Club Volunteering Session. For this session, we volunteered for the Saturday Extension Programme, which is managed by the Alzheimer’s Disease Association (ADA),
Admittedly, most of us had little to no knowledge of dementia and did not know what to expect. What made this volunteering session different was that a volunteering orientation was organised by ADA before we made our way down to Bukit Batok, providing us with information about the disease and various services provided by ADA. With a better understanding of dementia, many of us became more comfortable and dismissed our reservations about volunteering for a cause we were initially unfamiliar with.
The Saturday Extension Programme is currently offered at selected ADA day care centres on Saturdays. At these sessions, a volunteer is attached to each client, who is a person with dementia, in order to provide individual care and attention. While most clients spoke mandarin or dialects, some were fluent in English and this made communication much easier. Yet, even with the communication barrier, it was relatively easy to engage their clients with the large variety of meaningful activities available and planned for them.
To commemorate Mid-Autumn Festival that fell in late September, a mooncake-making session was organized by regular volunteers. We assisted the clients to knead the dough and mould the mooncakes, but most of their clients had more experience than we did and folded the red bean paste into the pastry with quick precision.
Before arriving for the session, some of us had naively assumed that we would simply help to facilitate simple puzzles but we were proven wrong. In the early afternoon, volunteers whipped out inflatable paper balls (the colourful kinds they used to sell in primary school bookshops) for a game of ‘toss the ball across the table’. We started off slow, thinking that we had to curb our enthusiasm and play a slow game of Ping-Pong. With a simple WHOOSH, the ball flew right over our heads and landed on the floor behind us, leaving all of us stunned at the sheer force of that serve. With newfound determination, we took the game more seriously but ultimately found ourselves challenged and happily exhausted. Apart from helping to engage clients with stimulating and physical activity, this simple game of toss-the-ball served as a reminder for us to volunteer with an open mind.
Before long, it was time for us to leave. Volunteering with ADA has allowed us to interact personally with their clients and offer them individual attention, an opportunity that is usually hard to come by under group volunteering initiatives. It has also helped to build a deeper understanding of dementia, an illness that plagues many Singaporeans but until quite recently has not received much attention. With the services provided by ADA, it has become much easier for caregivers to seek support and provide persons with dementia the care they require. The volunteering initiative was memorable for us all, and we certainly hope that our services have benefitted clients of the New Horizon Centre.