Catalyst Awardee

Project Description

Community Based and Participant-led Initiatives to Increase Civic Engagement Among Older Adults


Paulin Straughan; William Tov
Competition Sponsor: Ministry of Health and National Research Foundation of Singapore
Awardee year: 2021

This proposal adopts an asset-based approach to enabling civic engagement among older adults in Singapore by positioning them as both the drivers and beneficiaries of ground-up initiatives aimed at keeping older adults integrated in their communities. It is hypothesized that such an intervention will improve overall well-being for older adults based on findings from the Singapore Life Panel® (SLP). A pilot program is proposed to assess the efficacy of such an approach. 50 older adult residents of an estate will participate by developing and implementing various initiatives in their community under the broad themes of ‘rediscovering Singapore’, ‘cultural exchanges’, ‘volunteering’, ‘physical activities’, and ‘collective purchasing initiatives’. The themes are targeted at specific quadrants of well-being (economic, social, psychological, and physical). We will conduct pre and post intervention surveys to track the overall well-being. If successful, the project will be proposed to be run in additional neighbourhoods. The particular intervention model can be easily replicated in different communities across Singapore, largely due to the fact that it is a community driven initiative and can be easily adapted.

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