After one year of working in and leading the local service group Lions Befrienders, I figured it would be time to reflect on the process and learning over this year.

#LO1 Awareness: Throughout this year, awareness was built within our service group in ways such as knowing which elderlies we service are unable to walk, which changes our activity routine every session. We learned to be aware of our movements, the elderlies’ reactions.

#LO3 Initiative: Our group constantly takes initiatives to achieve better. We constantly change our activity routine to diversify and spark our service partner’s interest. We planned a thank you letter at the end of the year in the form of a group video, sent to the service group.

#LO4 Commitment: Every group member, when first joined the service group, committed throughout. Which I am extremely grateful for. It’s this commitment and perseverance that keeps me going, too. Every member shows up every week during our session, no matter if it’s scheduled for a live call or a reflection. Everyone seems to be extremely enthusiastic about working towards our service group’s common goal of assisting the elderly.

#LO6 Global Value: The issue of an ageing population not only applies to Singapore but also everywhere else around the globe. And it is an issue that has to be tackled. Our service group is filled with global value hence the reason why we joined the service group at first.

#LO7 Ethics: Ethics is an important area of focus within our service group because elderlies are a vulnerable population and that there is an equal (and large) amount of respect and responsibility from our group members to the elderly. We make sure that they are doing just right and just enough so they are physically active. We often give them advice so they can actively age not only on a Monday afternoon but also at home.

Through the work of this year, I learned how our service group can make a difference in the elderly’ lives in the local community, and more importantly, we learned about the global community, and our service group tackles an issue that is persistent around the globe.