Following our visits to two of Lions Befrienders’ Senior Activity Centre, market survey findings from our target beneficiaries and desktop research, we shortlisted a few craft ideas for further discussion with REACH Senior Cafe’s manager. This includes the creation of a DIY massage ball, light movement exercises with towel and paper bead necklaces.
After our discussion, we decided to go with the massage ball due to its’ one of a kind unique selling point since it is not seen in the market yet. This was inspired by the Traditional Chinese Medicine wrap in the olden days.
As there is no clear guidance or directions to go about creating a massage ball online, we decided to collect some materials and tried making what we envision the end product to be. During the first few tries, we tried to secure the tennis ball with a piece of cut cloth. However, it was not the ideal massage ball a senior can use since the ball could easily fall off.
We continued to adopt different ways to secure the ball and even tried out different designs like the photo below.
We then presented the massage ball to the senior cafe manager who provided us with constructive feedbacks on how the massage ball can be improved in terms of tighter securement of the tennis ball and more grip allowance for the seniors.
From the feedbacks, we moved on to brainstorm on ideas for improving the massage ball. Ultimately, we utilised the commonly found cable ties in provision stalls for securement and braided recycle cloth to further extend the massage ball handle for better grip.
After many rounds of trial and error, we finally arrived at our final product as seen from the photo. Considering the fact that we will be facilitating the craft session for the seniors and senior volunteers on 22nd December 2017, we recalled our two site visits at the Senior Cafe to ponder on the possible challenges we may face during the actual implementation. Some of them include seniors having different learning pace or not being engaged due to sitting arrangements.
Hence, in order to prevent this from happening, we prepared craft instructions for those who are independent learners, planned for live demonstrations to aid visual learners and facilitated the senior volunteers to join in the session to befriend, enhance interaction level and provide assistance to the seniors during pair work.
Besides focusing on crafts, our group also wanted our activity to be more sustainable in terms of providing health benefits for the seniors who expressed interest in light movements or complained of body aches. Hence, we researched online to see the kinds of light exercises that is doable with a massage ball. We realised that acupressure is the perfect fit. As we only had a limited period of time during that session, we shortlisted 10 acupressure points to work on. As we wanted our seniors to use the massage ball practically, we brainstormed of ways to ensure the same knowledge on acupressure could be passed on to them without our presence and came up with the idea of developing the 10 Acupressure Points collateral.
Apart from that, in order to address the sustainability issue, we decided to transfer these 10 acupressure knowledge to the seniors volunteers so that they can encourage seniors to utilise these balls effectively to relieve their body ache after every cafe session. To resolve the issue of a one man show for the cafe activity engagement, we also discussed with the senior cafe manager to involve the senior volunteers to come up with future activity plans. Hence, we will be arranging for a training session with these senior volunteers to co-create activities with them and empower them to develop a sense of ownership for the cafe.
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