Delivered With Love: #LoveOurSeniors 2022
The second edition of CapitaLand’s #LoveOurSeniors volunteering initiatives returned with more beneficiaries, more tenant volunteers, and more heartfelt reflections.
Often, the smallest actions go the longest way when it comes to giving, especially in terms of volunteering. We might think that we have to fork out significant amounts of time, money, and effort in order to make a meaningful impact on the lives of others, but the simple act of delivering a loaf of bread or care package to a senior in need, or even spending time to help seniors resettle in their new homes can be hugely impactful for both the givers and receivers.
Introduced in 2021, our inaugural #LoveOurSeniors volunteering programme saw CapitaLand and tenant volunteers banding together to deliver essential care packs, bread, and hot meals to our elderly beneficiaries. Some rallied their colleagues and teammates to participate together, while others brought the whole family down—spouses and kids included—to do good as one.
This year, we saw a total of 386 tenant volunteers participating actively across our #LoveOurSeniors volunteering activities alone, an increase from last year’s 308 tenant volunteers across our larger Giving As One volunteering campaign. We also got the chance to reach out to a larger number of elderly beneficiaries through our programmes, both old and new.
If you missed out on this year’s programmes, or would simply like to relive the joys of volunteering, here’s what went down during our various #LoveOurSeniors volunteering initiatives this year.
Bread Delivery
In mid-June, we started off our #LoveOurSeniors initiative for the year with the first of three bread delivery sessions. Like last year’s edition, our tenant volunteers were split into groups of two to three to deliver loaves of bread to our elderly beneficiaries via their own cars or public transport.
This time round, for all three delivery sessions (the first in June, second in August, and third in October), we focused on connecting with resi-dents staying in the Jurong, Bukit Batok, and Choa Chu Kang estates.
Though our beneficiaries were spread out across these big neighbourhoods, our volunteers pow-ered through each session, and came out of it not only with a strong sense of fulfilment, but also with new friends.
“It’s been a while since my last in-person volunteering experience due to the pandemic, so it was good to be able to physically move about and de-liver the bread,” Jeanette Lim, Head of Develop-ment and Incentives at Chubb at CapitaGreen, tells us.
A frequent volunteer herself, Jeanette participated in both the June and August delivery sessions as she felt that it would be a meaningful and enriching experience. “It was quite tiring as the households were spread across the neighbourhood, but it was definitely a rewarding experience that provided me with a sense of purpose and connection to the community.”
In fact, through this experience, Jeanette befriended her fellow volunteer that she was teamed up with for the June delivery session, and managed to get her to volunteer with her again in August. “We realised that we have so much in common apart from our interest in volunteering, and we even work in the same office building, so we have kept in contact ever since.”
Essential Care Packs Delivery
Towards the end of September, we brought back one of our more popular #LoveOurSeniors initiatives from last year, and gathered over 266 volunteers to pack and distribute over 5,000 care packs to elderly beneficiaries across eight different charity organisations islandwide.
Our tenant volunteers powered through the packing and delivery process during our Essential Care Packs Delivery sessions to serve the elderly community islandwide, and made a total of about 1,965 home-based deliveries this year.
Images courtesy of CapitaLand.
This year, we partnered up with our tenant Grab, whose drivers volunteered to ferry our tenant volunteers around for the door-to-door delivery. Our tenants in the logistics industry, namely RichLand Logistics, FedEx, Gebruder Weiss, and Omni All In, also partnered us to carry out bulk deliveries of over 3,035 packs to various charities centres islandwide.
Our logistics tenant volunteers (clockwise from top left: RichLand Logistics, FedEx, Gebruder Weiss, and Omni All In) were a great help at the Essential Care Packs Delivery session, transporting care packs in bulk across the island with their vans.
Images courtesy of CapitaLand.
Consisting of daily essentials like toothpaste, analgesic balms, powdered drink sachets, and more, these care packs were curated and packed by CapitaLand staff with the elderly in mind, and delivered with love by our tenant volunteers, many of whom signed up for the event with their colleagues to spread a bit of care and joy to the elderly community.
Sin Ming 26 Resettlement Project
In October, we introduced the Sin Ming 26 Resettlement Project, a new volunteering activity under our #LoveOurSeniors programme. For this project, our volunteers were tasked with helping the elderly residents of Block 26 Sin Ming Road relocate to different parts of Singapore as part of HDB’s Relocation Exercise, happening from now through September 2023.
Split into teams of three with a designated group leader, our tenant volunteers were briefed thoroughly on the task at hand, and across the span of two days, helped our elderly beneficiaries pack up their per-sonal belongings, move them to their new homes, and unpack them.
Apart from providing physical aid in the moving process, the CapitaLand Hope Foundation (CHF) has also provided financial support of over $165,000 for our beneficiaries to purchase furniture and appliances for their new homes.
We might have come to the end of our second run of the #LoveOurSeniors initiative, but we hope that through participating in or simply reading about this programme, you’re inspired to go out there and volunteer more often.
No matter which community you choose to lend a helping hand in, we believe that the experience will be a very rewarding one, for both yourself and the beneficiaries you help. In the meantime, we’ll get busy planning for next year’s #LoveOurSeniors initiative. We hope to see even more of you then!
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