In this digital world, some elderly people feel lost and as such shun technology. We need to be mindful of the needs of elderly people. I think certain businesses can work towards being mindful not to alienate elderly members by ensuring their practices can help give the elderly a smooth experience. Additionally, although building digital capabilities may not be among the top in their list of priorities, I feel it is essential that they should be given a chance to pick up new skills to stay socially connected in the digital age.

Existing measures
Some businesses have been mindful not to alienate elderly members, and have devoted resources to help the elderly utilise digital resources. One such business is Golden VIllage Cinemas. When they initially introduced the automated ticketing machines, they also deployed ambassadors to help those having difficulty using the machines, and screened instructional videos. The company also tweaked the design of the machines after receiving feedback that the touch screen was positioned too high, especially for the elderly. They have made these changes to allow for ease of purchasing tickets for all, including elderly people. In this age of mechanisation and digitalisation there is also a need to ensure that elderly people are able to build digital capabilities and are given ample time to upskill themselves when necessary. The IMDA (Infocomm Media Development Authority) launched a project titled ‘Senior go digital in May 2020, with the aim of helping all seniors to build digital capabilities which may help their job prospects and work efficiency, thus allowing them to lead engaged, informed and fulfilled lives. Platforms like MySkillsFuture, which granted people aged 25 and above a $500 credit top-up as at 31 December 2020, allows seniors to pick up a range of skills by applying for courses online, building digital capabilities in the process.

Unaddressed gaps

I feel businesses need to be more age-friendly. I feel that there also could be a lack of initiatives that involve people visiting elderly homes to see if they would want to develop new skills. Face to face interactions may be more effective in convincing elderly members the use of picking up these skills.
 
Proposed solutions

Not to alienate elderly - see that businesses on certain industries adopt good practices to always have staff available to help anybody in need, allowing people who need additional assistance  to familiarize themselves with some practices. Could also ensure that products are designed in view of making life easier for elderly members

Building digital capabilities - have volunteers visit homes of the elderly to hone their digital skills. The first step is to get them interested into learning and we might be able to do that by making them aware of the uses of digital capabilities

Problem identified/Underlying Problem: Children (esp less privileged children) who are interested in learning coding and programming may lack exposure in the area (according to research coding is dubbed as one of the most important job skills of the future) due to the highly costly lessons (weekly coding classes can cost from $300-$500/month & workshops start from $280 and can go up to $1400) and resources such as laptops needed for coding and programming which they may not be able to afford or parents are not willing to sponsor, resulting in them not being equipped with basic coding and computing skills essential in the 21st century

Unaddressed Gaps of current measures: 

This website can be published using popular social media platforms such as instagram to raise awareness and reach greater masses of people/target audience

Tutorials guide students step by step and there are plentiful real life examples that make it more relatable and fun, with cartoons and games involved. Pace of tutorials are also at such a rate that it is not too fast to follow with a voiceover that stimulates that human classroom interaction.

According to a recent study by the World Health Organisation, about 76% of Singapore adolescents aged between 11 and 17 years old do not get at least one hour of moderate-to-vigorous activity every day. Additionally, according to figures from the Ministry of Health (MOH), the proportion of overweight children in mainstream schools, aged 6 to 18 years, increased from 11 percent in 2013 to 13 percent in 2017. 

Given the above the background information, it is evident that the majority adolescents in Singapore do not place enough emphasis on their physical well-being. This underlying issue may lead to detrimental effects on the health of adolescents in Singapore, such as obesity, diabetes, lack of fitness among others. 

Current Measure #1: The Ministry of Education (MOE) in Singapore has pushed out the Healthy Meals in Schools Programme, which encourages healthier food and beverage choices in schools, achieving this through an integrated programme involving teachers, canteen vendors and students.

Current Measure #2: The National Physical Fitness Award (NAPFA) is a standard physical fitness test for Singaporeans as part of Singapore's Sports For Life programme. NAPFA was conducted across certain phases of students’ school life. NAPFA was launched in January 1982 as a standardised assessment of overall fitness for the general population, and to some degree incentivise the maintenance of physical fitness.

Solution #1: Students/Their parents can make a conscious effort to re-arrange the contents of the fridge or their kitchen cabinets in their household. By making unhealthy/junk food less accessible and loading up ready-to-eat healthier food options in the fridge will enable everyone to gradually develop a habit of consuming healthier food options because of the increased convenience of accessing them. 

Solution #2: The school can mark up the prices of less healthy food options, and mark down the prices of nutritious food items to encourage greater consumption of healthier food options. Alternatively, the Students’ Council can introduce food coupons that can be redeemed when students buy up to a certain amount of healthy food options. 

Solution #3: The Physical Education (PE) department/Students’ Council can organise schoolwide running competitions, where the class which collectively runs the greatest distance stand to win attractive prizes. This encourages healthy competition amongst the student population to lead a healthier life, and at the same time bond with their classmates. 

Desired Outcome #1: Enable the younger generation to consciously choose and consume healthier food options to maintain a nutritious consumption lifestyle, which would be beneficial to them in the long run. 

Desired Outcome #2: Motivate the younger generation to maintain a higher frequency of exercise so as to cater to their physical fitness. 

Significance of Problem:

The plastic problem is a global problem, affecting the environment due to its toxic and non-biodegradable nature. 

The major impact of plastic bags on the environment is that it takes many years to for them to decompose. In addition, toxic substances are released into the soil when plastic bags perish under sunlight and, if plastic bags are burned, they release a toxic substance into the air causing ambient air pollution. Improper treatment of plastic waste can also lead to the accumulation of harmful substances which cause health problems. 

Specific to plastic bottles, according to research on plastic waste, a million plastic bottles are purchased every minute of the day. Evidently, this is a widespread and significant problem.

Existing Measures: 

To address the problem of excessive plastic consumption, the government has most prominently focused on reducing the use of plastic bags through monetary incentives and disincentives. The government has also focused on plastic recycling by educating and encouraging people to recycle. In addition, non governmental organisations have also partnered with a range of f&b companies in the BYO campaign where the participating companies offer discounts for people who bring their own containers and bottles for food and drinks. 

To address the problem of plastic bottles, the government has mainly relied on recycling to reduce the impact of plastic on the environment. This is done through projects like the Reverse Vending Machine where people deposit plastic bottles to receive rewards. However, these measures have been overall unsuccessful.

Unaddressed Gaps:

The government implementation of measures to reduce plastic use is extremely slow - many other countries have taken more decisive steps to cut plastic use (e.g. by banning plastic bags). In addition, the current measures are not sufficient since they mostly focus on plastic bags and containers and not on a wider range of plastic products.

As for recycling, the plastic recycling rate in Singapore is at a low 4%. One reason the rate of recycling for plastics is low is that many consumers are not aware that there are many different types of plastics, and not all of them can be recycled. For example, PET bottles and plastic bags can be recycled while straws, disposable cutlery and styrofoam packaging cannot be recycled.

Desired outcome:

Reduce the use of plastic especially in areas less focused on at the moment.

Intended Overall Approach: 

Campaign to raise awareness about how to recycle plastic and alternatives to plastic packaged products (majority paper/aluminium packaging etc). This campaign would seek to achieve two things: 1. In the short term, to increase the recycling rate of plastic. 2. In the long-term, to encourage a change in consumer behaviour to favour the use of products which use less plastic and are more environmentally friendly. 

Research suggests that women have a prevalence rate for depression up to twice that of men. In Singapore, this is very ture – women in Singapore, particularly those aged between 18 to 34, are more prone to depression than men. I would like to focus on one major social factor contributing to this gender depression gap, which is the unfair societal expectation for women to play dual roles at work and at home. In today’s Singapore, women have already started shouldering the responsibility to contribute to the household budget. Yet when it comes to children and elderly family members, women are still the primary carers. This has led to the conundrum that women are subjected to higher levels of stress than men. 

If you consider “work” and “family” separately, either of them can help to achieve accomplishment and personal aspirations. But only when they come together and achieve a balance(? can people appreciate the fulfillingness they brought, otherwise people will just be stressed-out. (“Family without work” can also be terrible sometimes, for example, some SAHMs). Flexi-work/mom preneurship are great methods to achieve work-life balance as the working hours and locations are more flexible. In addition, the resources and skills required to run some small businesses could be quite accessible for moms. 

Some community-based programmes, such as Project Cookoh in Jalan Kukoh, who help housewives start home-based businesses. They market the homemade products the mothers’ sell and source money for the moms to attend cooking classes and attain certification. By doing so, the organisations aim to help SAHMs to earn extra income for their families, and more importantly, to gain financial independence.

NGOs such as Mums@Work Singapore, which contains all sorts of information, suggestions, tips and courses to encourage people to become flexiwork moms or even mompreneur.

Government has some initiatives such as Career Trial, which provides opportunities for jobseekers to try out jobs and assess new careers. To benefit women with caregiving responsibilities, they are currently enhancing the trial to include part-time jobs, so that the moms can have better work-life balance.

The major UG is the assumption made that all moms under high pressure, especially those who are out of workforce and stay at home taking care of their family, are able to recognise the sign of depression and are aware that starting something new and finding something to look forward to, for example, running a home-based business (to create some good in the world, to earn extra family income and to forge fulfilling connections) can enhance their mental health. Therefore, they are not motivated to seek part-time jobs or start their own businesses, which makes all the suggestions and opportunities provided by the organisations and government useless.

Campaign or movement:

Contact with the organisation and initiate a movement on facebook, sharing success stories, hearing other mom’s voices

Ensure that moms know how to prevent/deal with their depression caused by work-life inbalance. (increase both awareness and willingness)

83% of people eat at or buy takeaways from hawker centres at least once a week. As Covid-19 increases the demand for takeaway food or delivered food, more and more disposable packaging, ranging from plastic utensils, styrofoam boxes, oil paper wrappings, to plastic bags in general, are being used. An survey done by an alumni from the National University of Singapore's Master of Science (Environmental Management) programme had found that there was an extra 1,334 tonnes of takeaway packaging - equivalent to the weight of 92 double-decker buses - generated from takeaway and delivery meals during the two-month circuit breaker. 

Causes: 

This creates significant waste, and contributes negatively to Singapore’s sustainability. All disposables, whether made of paper, plastics or degradable materials, leave a carbon footprint in their production, transportation, and disposal processes. However, from the hawkers point of view, these disposable packagings are the most economically viable options, and switching to other alternatives would incur greater operation costs that they simply cannot afford. In addition, there are insufficient affordable alternatives to such packaging that are readily available. 

Current solutions: 

Unaddressed Gaps：

People: Current measures do not meet the needs of the hawkers as no alternative is given to help them transit away from using disposable packaging. Current measures are in effective as diners are not permanently incentivised to bring their own containers.

Persuasion: Current publicity channels by BYO are quite on point, with regularly updated Instagram page and website. However, BYO has branched out to do other campaigns, with no new efforts or initiatives put into this campaign. 

Procedures: Reward system implemented for consumers are not consistent and sustained. Hawkers can be better rewarded to take part in such campaigns.

What I want to do:

In recent years, reports of large scale cyber crimes are becoming more and more prevalent. Ranging from OCBC phishing scams to the prime minister's medical data being leaked. Victims in Singapore lost at least $633.3 million to scams in 2021. The sum lost is almost 2.5 times the $268.4 million stolen by scammers in the previous year. This shows that although the implementation of online services in important infrastructure has made many tasks more convenient, it comes at a risk. Online Security for older generations who are out of touch with the digital world are certainly an easy group for scammers to exploit. 

One cause of compromised online security is the lack of knowledge of the internet. Elderly in Singapore use their phones less often compared to the younger generation. With the lack of knowledge of proper usage of the internet, it is easy for them to compromise their online safety. Additionally, the elderly are not as familiar with the common tactics used by scammers and lack the proper vigilance to protect themselves. Cyber security talks and warnings are commonplace in schools to inform the youth of such threats but such measures are not as common for the elderly. Hence,the elderly are more vulnerable

One impact is financial loss. An article by CNA on 8 October 2019 revealed that an elderly man was tricked by scammers impersonating to be a police who told the elderly man that he was in trouble for money laundering and starting a pornography business. He was transacting the money to the scammers but was stopped by the son who suspected it was a scam. However, they still lost a few thousand dollars. Another example is the recent OCBC scam, scammers approached OCBC customers, sending replicated messages that has been sent out by OCBC bank, the messages seemed credible enough for OCBC users who were unfamiliar with online scams (mostly elderly) to believe, which incurred a 13.7 billion Singapore dollars loss in total.

OCBC has unveiled tighter security measures such as OCBC bank said it has stepped up its security measures, including initiating transaction notifications for fund transfers through PayNow and inter-bank payments for amounts as low as one cent. In a media statement on Friday (Jan 21), the bank also said that it will implement a 24-hour cooling-off period for key account changes from Jan 31. The bank has set up a dedicated customer service team, which has been made permanent, to handle customer queries and reports on fraud.

The OCBC hotline also contains a dedicated option for customers to escalate reports of suspected scams, said the bank. These changes come after at least 469 OCBC customers were affected by an SMS phishing scam, with losses totalling at least S$8.5 million.

Police visit residents to help educate them about the dangers of scams. 

 

Why is this issue significant? 

This issue is increasingly significant and prevalent due to the rise of covid 19 pandemic when circuit breaker safety distancing was implemented in Singapore from April 2020. Schools and workplaces were closed and parents had to balance telecommuting with parenting responsibilities. With this in mind, there is an increasing parental stress and increased harsh parenting which lead to negative parent-child relationship. In extreme cases, child abuses cases are reflected during the pandemic/economic recession times. Parents are often very stressed as they have to maintain their financial stability during this difficult period of time while taking care of their children at the same time. 

 

Research has shown that negative parent-child relationship will lead to the deterioration of children’s mental health such as the rise in depression and post traumatic stress disorder. In 2019, there were more cases of students from the top schools in Singapore being referred for treatment at the Institute of Mental Health than ever before. Even before the pandemic struck, the suicide rate in Singapore jumped 10% in 2018. In terms of children suicides, it may be caused partly by an increase in social media exposure that leads to more stress, as well as increased expectations placed upon children by parents. Hence, it is evident that increasing parental stress will  lead to a emotional meltdown experienced by children, eventually affecting the parent-child relationship.  

 

Causes for parental stress: 

 

Current measures: 

 

 

The Positive Parenting Programme (Triple P) is an evidence-based programme that equips parents with techniques to promote their children’s (aged up to 16 years) psychological, social and emotional competence. Triple P is built on a tiered system that provides different degrees of parental support. Parents will get to participate and engage in seminars on topics such as positive parenting, raising confident and competent children. 

 

Outcomes: 

About 85% of parents endorsed the programme as being relevant to their parenting needs. Parents with secondary school-going children showed a sustained 31% reduction in their emotional distress scores, and a 22% reduction in their child’s problematic behavioural scores.

 

Unaddressed gaps: Even though there are quite a lot of positive parenting programmes going on where parents will gain insights on how to support their children in a positive manner, however these programmes are pretty one sided (only to teach parents on the theory but there might be a lack of platform for parents to exercise what they learnt and to interact with their children meaningfully due to reasons such as busy work schedule (meaningful interaction is very essential in aiding negative family relationship) 

 

What to do: 

 

Intended outcomes: 

Problem identified: There has constantly been news reports on teenagers‘ mental health. Our society needs to pay more attention to it as the matter is getting worse due to the rising stress teenagers have nowadays. When push comes to shove, there can be dire consequences. 

Current measures: There are existing health organizations providing psychosocial support and recovery programmes for youths with emotional, psychological and psychiatric issues in the community. There is a hotline where people can call and seek help from. Unfortunately this is not very well-known.

Unaddressed problem: 

Possible model to employ: 

Outcome
Hopefully when more people recognize and pay more attention to the issue, less teenagers suffer from mental health problems

The Problem

Current Measures & How it is helping?

Poor health and mental illness isolate them from society. But a widening community network is striving to ease their loneliness and make sure they’re taken care of.

Unaddressed Gaps

What can we do?

One issue would be lack of knowledge regarding challenges the intellectually disabled face in Singapore. The intellectually disabled face various difficulties in many different aspects, such as education, working in the real world and even functioning normally in day to day life. They could suffer from communication issues and be unable to coherently speak, or suffer from more severe issues such as their movement being impaired. There already exist a few measures that were implemented to aid the intellectually disabled, such as the setting up of special schools like Pathlight to support them. Various movements also exist, such as MINDS, which have 9 branches each targeting different groups of the intellectually disabled, like MINDS CW which stands for "children's wing". Despite this, many still lack sufficient knowledge about the intellectually disabled. Unaddressed issues would be lack of publicity of these measures and lack of active contribution from the public. Thus a few measures could be organizing talks or events in schools or within communities. This would allow for more to know and understand the situation and thus contribute more significantly.

Background: The Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics (HOME) aid that it receives about 15 cases of alleged maid abuse a week. These cases comprise verbal, physical and sexual abuse.

Current Measures: 

Unaddressed Gaps:

Possible model

Desired Outcome:

Context: 

Food waste makes up about half of the average 1.5kg of waste disposed of by each household in Singapore daily. Of which, more than half of household food waste can be prevented, with rice, noodles and bread being the most commonly wasted food items.

Current Measures:

Unaddressed gaps:

Desired outcomes: