Loh Wai Poon and Damien Tan
Young & Old Living On
Loh Wai Poon:
I am now working on a project called “All-Comers Cafe”. This is my brainchild I and 2 fellow participants proposed to MOH in a citizen panel on Elderly Contribution. Recently, MOH is helping us and other projects to let elderly get back to work or to volunteer.
All-comers cafe is an intergenerational cafe where the older and younger generations of Singaporeans can go for socialising, learning, playing sports and games, dialogues, dancing, singing… We want the 2 generations to share activities, talks, learnings together. It breaks down barriers that keep them apart and lead to misunderstanding.
In this cafe, we want volunteers as the leaders and heart of its operations. It is all inclusive! No race, age, religious bar! It is not-for-profit and we want our members/members of public to suggest what programmes/activities should be held in the cafe.
If the cafe leaders (we call them hosts), the champions (the proposers) can work together to launch the programme and run it themselves. I am enthusiastic that it can be a place where the 2 generations can meet, talk and cooperate in activities that will benefit Singapore in various ways.
Elderly employment, disabled employment, etc are welcomed. We can partner other social organisations to bring in existing programmes or activities from their itinerary to our cafe. I’ll do my best to get it set up before I am too tired to carry on.
Damien Tan:
To add on to Mr Poon’s All-Comers Cafe project. The interaction between young and old will create new friendships. With new friendships forged, every 2 years, the young and old will fight it out in a competition called Saltong game (salted because traditional games are played to preserve our Singapore history). Every team will have to consist of an intergenerational pair and a total of 1965 teams will play new and traditional games. The last team standing will be awarded with a $5,000 CPF/PSEA top up and free bus/train rides for 2 years.
To help the young know our history and the elderly relive their childhood, a series of traditional games will be played and the teams with the most wins will progress to the next round. First game will be five stones, 2nd: kite fighting, 3rd: chapteh, 4th: kuti kuti.
Intergenerational pairs will dance battle it out with the latest electronic dance music remixed with classic Chinese songs e.g. songs by Theresa Tang remixed with David Guetta Titanium. The battle will be live-streamed during National Day Parade and Singaporeans will have a 70% voting power in choosing the teams they like the most and Mr. Baey will have 30%.
The pair will also have to create a video of the latest tiktok challenge and the teams with the most number of likes will progress to the next challenge. Mr. Baey will select the tiktok challenge for the competition.
To better allow our young and old to appreciate our garden city, the teams will be judged on their final challenge by the most amount of rubbish they can collect by the beach. This challenge allows the family members of the pair to also participate. At the same time help foster muti-generational bonds in the process.
