After attesting that craft activities interests the seniors in REACH, we liaised with Lions Befrienders to find out about their existing senior activities. Besides the Batik Workshop that was conducted at Ghim Moh Senior Activity Centre, we also visited Mei Ling Senior Activity Centre to explore the pressed flowers session. Pressed Flowers is another progressive art form utilised by Lions Befrienders. It is an eight-week programme where an external artist will be invited to teach the seniors.
The pressed flowers are made through different stages. With containers of dried flowers placed at different parts of the table, the seniors will pick the flowers and design based on their creativity. While some seniors focus on designing, the remaining would contribute in terms of packaging the bookmark. The pressed flowers made by the seniors will then be sold at Gardens by the Bay.
Our takeaways
From the session, we learnt that Lions Befrienders is utilising the Workforce Development Agency (WDA) fund to run the programmes. The funds contributed to the hiring of external artist from Sense of Art. With this information, we were able to share with the staff in-charge of REACH Senior Cafe regarding the potential funding sources he could utilise in future.
In Mei Ling Senior Activity Centre, we were able to see that seniors in this community are vastly different from the seniors at REACH. The seniors at Mei Ling enjoyed the pressed flowers session, although there was no emphasis on group communication. However, the seniors at REACH enjoy communicating with others. Hence, the visits enabled us to identify the difference of profile of the seniors at Lions Befrienders and REACH. We realised the importance of constantly get feedback from REACH seniors to ensure accuracy in the information we collect, as the information collected will be used to improve REACH Senior Cafe’s existing programmes.
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