Every morning (Monday to Friday) in Upper Boon Keng (UBK), a group of 50-60 seniors in their shocking pink T-shirts strolls over to Geylang West Community Centre. What are they up to? HOA! That's what they are going for.
HOA - stands for Health Oriented Ageing activities, is organised by O'Joy since 2013. From humble beginnings at our own premises for a small group of seniors, HOA steadily attracted an increasing number of participants until our training room could no longer hold the expanding number of eager seniors. HOA then moved over to the multi-purpose hall at Geylang West Community Centre in 2015.
As a community-based approach programme, HOA offers three modules of eight sessions each of experiential learning at O’Joy's Centre. The modules include:
Exercises
Arts (Singing, Movement, Wushu, Angklung and Visual arts)
Sharing and bonding over lunch
Conducted 5 days a week, the programme improves our seniors' social situations by forging a social network where they can keep a lookout for one another. Our team of professionals are ready to intervene if there are red flags concerning our beneficiaries' emotional and psychological health.
O'Joy's HOA program is totally run by a team of dedicated, capable and creative seniors as volunteers, under the leadership of one sole staff Chee Hong, fondly known as "Ah Lai" amongst the seniors. By doing this, our objective is to empower our seniors, despite their age, to continue to be active and productive, and to contribute to the community they are most familiar with.