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Week 13:

It’s the end of the module! :(

Since it has been me (Tricia) updating the blog all this while, I ���interviewed” my group mates to ask them about their final thoughts to end off our weekly updates! It has been really fun and rewarding updating this little space each week. Abigail: Social change comes through people. When we change the way we communicate, we change society. This entire project has been a humbling experience that has taught us the interactional and transformative process of dialogue not just between people, but also within communities themselves. The process of community participation should always be the center of our focus; getting to the stories of the people, and deconstructing the barriers to the walls they build around them.

Anton: The use of the CBPR approach in this module has allowed me to gain valuable insights and experience collaborating with the community as a partner instead of a researcher. Due to the nature of the approach, it strays away from the usual campaign planning process whereby voices of the community of interest may be lost in the process of pursuing objectives. The greatest takeaway, if any, is that it is imperative for social change communicators to subvert the illusion of equality present in the society so that the unpopular discourses can be surfaced.

Clement: In order to create an effective message for social change, it is essential to adopt a horizontal, two-way communicative approach in order to understand the issues faced by a marginalised group. This project allowed us to push our boundaries and gain access to low income senior citizens by befriending them and tailoring our key message to the issues they really faced, not the issues we assumed that they faced. It also allowed me to marry the technical skills from my cinematography career with the objective of telling their story for social good, which was a rewarding experience.

Zong Xian: While one person can impact change socially, a single individual is not enough to execute social change. This project has shown exactly how any effort to impact social change requires a team. From the participant to the cameraman to the tactic itself, every single one of these elements is necessary to carry out communication against social change. As we move forward, we must remember the people who might be left behind, because if we want to go far as a society, we have to go together. You can always submit questions, or messages you have to us! We will definitely reply. 

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UNREPORTED came about as a product of our team’s investigation into the low-income group in Singapore. With Singapore’s success as a industrialised, modern, and cosmopolitan society, people who aren’t high-earners are often “left behind”, or even “forgotten”. Our team wants to focus on these marginalised communities and tell their stories, the journeys they undertake, and their trials and tribulations.

Essentially, this is a blog that aims to unravel and tell the stories that have slipped through the cracks. You can learn more about our project here.

Here’s also a guide to navigating the page through the different tabs:

Team: Our team members Participants: Background of our participants Research: Our research methodology Findings: Our findings from the study Updates: Weekly bite-sized updates about our study Stories: Insights we’ve garnered through our interviews Solutions: Our goals, objectives, target audience, media channels, and implementation approaches to how we want to address the issues found through our interviews Videos: The solution we are implementing: click to watch! Gallery: Photo gallery Learn more: Learn more about our project Submit: Submit your own experiences, and stories

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Filming process

The filming process took around one to two weeks, excluding the five weeks we took to film and record interviews. Not only did we film the participants’ interviews, as well as the extra comments they had, we also recorded aspects of their daily lives. This process posed a few challenges for the project. Firstly, when potential interviewees were notified that we had to film their responses, they declined to participate in the interview. Secondly, some interviewees participating in the interview were reluctant to have their daily experiences filmed, which limited the breadth of the video. Participants were also very curious about our filming process. While some expressed skepticism, others were intrigued. One participant requested if we could develop the photos we were documenting on site for keepsake. The videos mostly comprised of interviewees’ sharing their stories and experiences. This included their thoughts about the two themes mentioned above, as well as snippets of their daily routine to illustrate their accompanying thoughts. The seriousness of the two themes is highlighted by the videos’ overall sombre tone. A cool colour scheme was incorporated to emphasize the severity of the message. Emotional instrumental music is also played in the background to signify the elderlies’ feelings of loneliness and vulnerability. The music and overall visuals therefore complement the serious tone of the themes and message we wanted to portray. 

We will upload the final cut of the video very soon!

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Week 13: Final Presentation

Hi everyone! We have finally entered the final week of this module.

Our final presentation essentially just aims to convey to the class our findings, participants, and most importantly, our participants’ stories. We felt that there was definitely more we could have put into our presentation, but with only 20 minutes to share the stories, we wanted to shed more focus on the participants and not on our filming process instead. However, you can find out more about it in the next post!

We would just like to share some overall challenges we faced during the entirety of the module:

1. Unwillingness to communicate Some of the people we met were very hostile, skeptical, and were generally quite mean to us when we approached them for an interview in the earlier weeks. This was not only demoralising but also to some extent terrifying to us.

2. Language barriers We also met very friendly elderly, but as they were Malay / Indian and could only speak in their dialect, it was difficult to conduct their interviews as well since they could not understand our question. 3. No-shows While some agreed to meet us, some also did not turn up at the designated time and date. This often resulted in a wasted trip down to the venue and renewed efforts have to be made to find new participants.

4. Alternative findings We initially thought that participants would be dissatisfied with their living situation, but they were all actually very contented with what they had - citing the intergenerational gap and health issues as their main concerns.

With all these challenges, I’m glad that our project still pulled through! We’ve managed to learn quite a lot from the experience, and we would definitely do this again!

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Stories: Masterlist

Hi! We have about 10 posts on this page, with 5 short stories and 5 long features of our participants. To make it easier for you to navigate, please click on the shortcuts below:

Jane: Short story | Feature Zanizam: Short story | Feature Harry: Short story | Feature Julia: Short story | Feature Tom: Short story | Feature

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feature: tom

Tom, 77, years old, stays in Bukit Batok primarily because he wants to be near his children. He has 2 sons and a daughter. His children are 52, 49, and 45 respectively, and they work at relatively high-paying jobs. Because of this, visits are usually occasional: only once a year during Chinese New Year will they all gather at his house, or sometimes they go to the coffeeshop for a meal. But he usually eats alone.

Talking to his grandchildren is another issue altogether. Read more to find out.

“My grandchildren is already in NS. The younger ones have their homework to do. If we spoke Mandarin to them, they won’t understand us anyway. They are all English speaking now. Even though they have reached a high level of education, but their command of Mandarin is poor. Nowadays, the standard of Mandarin has dropped.”

Blaming the language barrier for the lack of communication with his grandchildren, Tom expresses disappointment and sadness in not being able to talk to them frequently. Other than the language barrier, he also blames the communication gap on the differing interests. His grandchildren rather play video games than talk to him, and he does not know how to learn the technology to bond with them. When asked to give some advice to them, he refused to because he believes that they will not accept it.

Having stayed in Bukit Batok for over 10 years, Tom has a cordial relationship with his neighbours. However, he does not meet up with them that often. His friends are usually busy, and he believes that at his advanced age it is normal for them to have lost contact with each other. He usually spends his time watching television or doing light exercise at the fitness corner.

“All my friends have scattered to different places and my friends are usually busy. At our age, as we lose contact, you won’t know where they have went. Now, we don’t even know if they passed away, unless you happen to see them in the obituaries.”

He is unable to jog or run because he has a condition called varicose veins (since he was 30 years old!) which hurts his leg when he walks. He has to wear a calf sleeve to prevent the condition from deteriorating.

When discussing the topic of education, Tom asserts that he has only gotten a primary school education because he had to go out to work. When he was younger, he only received about 20 cents each day. He had to eat food that he brought from home. He has tried to attend night classes to boost his knowledge, but had to stop because of his work commitments.  He has long forgotten how to converse in English because he often only needs dialect and Mandarin for everyday communication.

Tom used to do a variety of jobs: he was once a hawker selling fishballs and yong tau foo at the markets. Other than that, he also ran a convenience store selling fruits and traditional clothes. However, he expresses reluctance in upgrading his technical knowledge and skills, blaming his old age.

“Now, there’s no point. You won’t remember. As you get older, your memory becomes worse. If I try to learn now, I probably will forget it the next day.”

However, Tom still tries to keep busy by watching informative television programs, such as travel documentaries. He takes his time, and he likes living this carefree style. He also upkeeps a healthy lifestyle due to his diabetes - making sure to eat regular portions of rice, vegetables, fruits, and meat daily. He is very rigid in his dietary plan, maintaining his sugar levels, because he does not want to worsen his current condition.

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feature: harry

Harry, 64, is a man with no kids nor family to fall back on. Both of his foster and biological family have passed on, he is uncertain of the whereabouts of his siblings and would only meet them once a year during Chinese New Year. He currently lives with a housemate who works odd hours as a chef. Harry moved to this 1-room apartment some 30 years ago, after being chased out of his previous residence in Bukit Timah for land redevelopment. Read more about his story here.

 When it comes to interaction with people, he expressed that he finds it problematic and would rather make friends with animals than with humans. He added in the interview that interacting with people makes him fed-up and he does not like to see the “stuck-up face” of people. In fact, he even expressed that he rather spends his life with pets than humans. Through our multiple visits to the residential area, we have witnessed Harry spending time with the cats in his neighbourhood, providing them with food and love.

 Being diagnosed with diabetes, Harry finds it hard to move around because of the damaged nerves in his legs. When asked how he manages his living and medical expenses, he said that his friend referred him to ComCare. He found the application for Comcare rather straightforward and did not find it a hassle because, being diagnosed with diabetes and is unable to work, Comcare readily offered him the medical and financial aid he needed. This was on the contrary of what we expected. We expected participants to lament on how tedious or long the process would take, but that was not the case.

 Besides ComCare, Harry is also receiving benefits from Touch, a welfare organisation that provides him with food on weekdays. Harry did not find the MP in his residential area useful. He does not see the point in meeting him because he can only provide him with food coupons and not money. He also added that ComCare is better when it comes to providing aid.

 With only an education level of Primary 6, Harry’s career options were limited. He started out joining his father in a business venture in the automobile mechanic industry. The stint was short-lived as the company was declared bankrupt in 2 years. He then went on to take up odd jobs in the steel manufacturing lineo. However, due to his temperament, he did not last long in any jobs he took on.

 Harry takes on a happy-go-lucky approach to life, he does not plan ahead and live by the day. When asked to describe a day in his life, he said that there is nothing much to do as he does not have a hobby nor any friends. Harry would spend most of his days hanging around the void deck with the stray cats. He dislikes going to the community centres because he does not like to interact with people. Harry then further expressed a cynical view of the present society. “If you are somebody, they will respect you. If you are a nobody, they won’t give you a damn” he said.

 “I don’t care. I only care about myself. I can’t help anyway, and they can’t help me. Everyone for themselves”

 Harry holds a cynical view of the society as a whole. He does not believe in altruism and does not see any empathy in the younger generation. When asked to compare between people in the past and present, Harry said that the younger generation in the past would acknowledge the elderly whereas the present younger generation would just ignore the elderly and is constantly plugged into their earphones.  

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feature: jane

Jane starts her story by recounting how she was chased out of her old residence in Bukit Timah. The government, wanting to reclaim the area, only gave her a couple of options in choosing where to stay. She chose Bukit Batok.

Having no money since she was retired, she had no choice but to rent her current one-room flat from the government. She chose Bukit Batok out of all the other places - Queenstown, Redhill, Kampung Balu - because it was the most familiar. In spite of this unfortunate incident, Jane isn’t unhappy. She remains jovial and upbeat about the situation, shedding an optimistic light on her current residence.

“Angry or not, you had to move out anyway. Right? So you just moved. I was sad, I was used to my home and the weather was nice there. They wanted the area. “

However, having lived here for about 20 years, she is still not very familiar with her neighbours. She maintains a very casual, hi-bye acquaintanceship with most of them, claiming that they do not much much in common because “[they] walk different paths” due to several reasons, age being one of them.

Her backstory was the thing that blew us away though. She used to stay at Pulau Ubin, studying a little, but her main role was to help fish during the high tide. She recalls it as a fun time, and her gaze was nostalgic as she talked about how her brother and her used to fish together. During the Japanese Occupation, her family had to escape to Singapore via Punggol by boat. Thankfully, there were no major hiccups and she succeeded - but her dad died shortly after.

“I wasn’t scared. During the Japanese Occupation, when there was explosions from the artillery and cannon.. I was afraid then, at the Changi area. The cannon was loud, I could hear and remember the sound. Even the sound of the bullets upon impact on the trees… We are still alive now. We ran around and followed our father. Our father knew what to do.”

As a result, she found work for the British Army as an administrative assistant - getting tea/ coffee, as well as sitting in the office. She learnt English by taking night classes so as to communicate with the British. In spite of her efforts, she only earned around a few hundred dollars each month, but it was enough to get by.

“I didn’t receive any education, how do I work? And I was too old to study and I didn’t have enough money. The times then was very different from the times now. It was hard to study. There were people, who had the money, they did went back to study. People like us, poorer, we had to work.”

After being forced to retire, she usually just sits at home, take walks, or take care with her brother. Her daily expenditures and welfare services are provided by the government. She describes her application process, with her having to go to the Welfare Centre and informing them of her situation.  They then did some routine checks to ensure she is eligible for the subsidy. While she faced some problems - in terms of the tediousness of the procedure - she agreed that they were after all, still doing their jobs.

It was perhaps easier for her, because she was retired, had little savings, and also had to take care of her brother. She was unmarried and had no children. As we spoke about her brother, she brought up very fond memories that she shared: playing 5 stones, fishing, hopscotch and marbles.

Her health issues are quite significant in deterring her daily activities. She has difficult walking because her leg has no strength. She attributes it to a lack of blood circulation, so she tries to do aerobic exercises at the Community Centre. However, she believes she is quite lucky: her nephew hired a caretaker for her so that she does not need to stress herself to do daily chores, like cleaning or cooking. She often gets visits from her younger sister, who also stays nearby.

Overall, she feels that her life is still good in spite of all the hardship. She prefers to be independent, so when people try to offer her help she rejected their offer. Her advice to us was to live life well, to not think so much about the future and just be contented with what we currently have.

“What I would tell them? The things of the past, you guys are having a good life. You guys can eat, go anywhere you want, can study, can go overseas. We can’t do that in the past. We couldn’t even take airplanes in the past, only the rich could. Now, everyone can do it. Even those do it for work travel so often work. There wasn’t such a thing in the past.”

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feature: zanizam

Zanizam’s experiences were so inspiring. He’s tenacious, strong, and brave. He bounces back from every pitfall, and talking to him really made us feel how much we truly take for granted. Click to read more.

A happy-go-lucky man, Zanizam describes himself as a dead man alive again ever since his series of illness that hit him in 2012, causing him to be warded in the ICU. From blindness in one eye, to the bursting of ulcer puffs on his knee and breathing problems, life was never smooth sailing for him. Perhaps the only smooth sailing period for him was when he was out at sea working as a Coolie where he got to travel and explore places after the long hours and hard labour of loading and unloading cargos.

 All these years, his positivity and optimism has kept him sane and content with the life he lives now. Although he knows how to treat himself once in awhile to a good meal at Geylang or for a short getaway to Batam or Johor, he still prefers to do these activities alone, rather than with the company of others. Attributing it to the illness he suffered, Zanizam admits that he has become more reserved and less willing to join gatherings anymore.

“I just want to be independent.”

This is echoed by his distant relationship with his siblings and relatives. It is only during festive seasons that they pay him a visit out of respect given he is the eldest.

With an education of up to Secondary Four, Zanizam did side jobs like gravedigging, gas line contracting, becoming an apprentice and eventually a supervisor then clerk at Johor shipyard. His hopes to work in the government sector were dashed by unsuccessful applications owing to his incompetency and lack of certification. 

Despite so, he is thankful for the education given to him and the lessons learnt from his teachers back then. “I am lucky to have education so we can have a conversation and communicate.” “I mixed with Chinese and Malay friends then. I am also an Orchard boy. I still have contact with my old friends like Peter and Vincent.” Henceforth, while repairing boiler engines under the machinery department of Johor Shipyard, he continued studying and eventually became one of the major department – ISO – founder. Leaving the shipyard in 2000, he attended more courses under CDC and secured a job as a security guard under AWS, for hotel frontlines.

Retired now, he seldom leaves the house and stroll around Orchard Road like he used to do in the past. Zanizam would rather ration and cook his own meals at home.

Content with the amount he receives each month under the CPF MMS scheme which took almost a year to be approved, he understands that such application process requires time and cannot be done within a month or two.

All in all, Zanizam a very simple man and proud Singaporean, hopes that the future generation will be good citizens, study hard and make Singapore proud because they are the ones who will carry and pass on stories like his to their children’s generations and the generations to come.

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feature: julia

Our team sat down with Julia the other day. There’s nothing much to say because her story is so moving and inspiring on its own. Click to read more.

As Julia had difficulty communicating, most of her life’s details were provided by her sister Margaret during the interview as a sort of mediator. The reason behind that would be described in the later paragraphs.

Julia suffered from Down’s Syndrome since an early age, which led to a lot of complications during her childhood in various day to day activities. To complicate things even further, her father was abusive towards her family. During the night, he would stopped her siblings and herself from sleeping. This causes them to be very sleepy during classes. While she at least managed to finish her primary school education, her siblings were unable to cope with the mental strain and decided to drop out, leaving her alone in school more often than not. 

As if her life wasn’t tough enough, Julia found another ailing body condition of hers when she hit puberty. Her menstrual cycles were abnormal, which caused her to only have period every 4 months. Whenever this happens, she loses a lot of blood at once and she would be admitted to the hospital immediately. She was near the brink of death every time this happens and her family had to cope with the additional medical expenses compiled upon their cost of living, which was already difficult to deal with. Her family had to scrimp and save to make ends meet, although she did lament that the cost of living was not as high as it was now.

Because of these compounded medical conditions that she suffers from, she is unable to pick up a skill to get a job or any job so to speak. Hence, she was unable to provide for herself and often relied on others like her family for many years. Through fate and help from her mother, she managed to find someone to settle down with when she was older. Julia’s mother introduce her to her future husband. Although they had a huge age gap with the husband being more than 10 years old than she was, they exceeded the odds fell shortly in love thereafter.

The two of them managed to start a life on their own. Her husband worked as a cleaner for offices to support the two of them while Julia slowly learnt to become a housewife to try and make the family whole, handling the day to day household chores like cooking and cleaning. Because of her medical conditions, she was unable to bear children. Julia’s medical fees was paid for by her husband’s entire CPF savings and they managed to live peacefully until her husband passed away from old age at the age of 82.

Seeing this situation, Margaret stepped in to intervene to help her through the tough time. Margaret helped Julia apply for the 1-room rental flat in Bukit Batok, moving from Hougang to reduce her expenditures. At the same time, Margaret applied for financial aid under Welfare organisations with the help of the Community Centre. Her doctors in NUH also provided a medical letter of proof of her condition to get subsidises as well. As Julia has been used to the lifestyle of scrimping and saving, the financial aid of a few hundred dollars provided by Welfare organisation was sufficient enough for her and they both deemed that sufficient to get by. 

A side story of Margaret was that she had troubles communicating with her daughter-in-law and she ended up getting chased out of her home into a rental flat. Hence, she decided to visit Julia whenever she can.

Now, Julia stays alone in her 1-room rental flat in Bukit Batok with Margaret visiting her every Thursday. Margaret often brings Julia out whenever she can to go shopping or walking around the neighbourhood, often in the nearby shopping centres. They usually go grocery shopping together as Julia is unable to handle finances on her own. This grocery shopping will tide her through the week whilst Julia cooks on her own to provide for herself with the money given by Welfare organisation.

Besides those activities and staying at home to watch TV, Julia often goes to the temple and a support organisation called Fei Yue. Fei Yue provides support in various ways such as supermarket cash vouchers for grocery shopping and food for cooking like rice, canned food and oil. Fei Yue also provides activities for people with financial restrictions in the form a game called ‘Tikam’, which is the olden version of Bingo. Through this game, they get to win the prizes like extra supermarket cash voucher and food. Due to the prizes, this activity was restricted to people with financial limitations, as people like Margaret with children to support her are unable to participate.

While Julia’s life has been vastly difficult, she still puts on a smile and tries her best to portray her best self. She even put on a wig when she thought we were filming her full body. Despite everything she has been through, she has never let that get her down. She offered us food and drinks throughout the interview and joked with us as much as she could understand. She is contented with what she has but she hopes that the younger generation would be kinder and more approachable on public transports.

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week 12: presentations!

Presentations for our project started this week! Although my group wasn’t allocated to the Week 12 slot, we still found our classmates’ presentations very intriguing and interesting. 

For example, one group had participants who complained about the tedious welfare subsidy process, and participants who had financial issues. However, this wasn’t experienced in our group at all, which goes to show how diverse our community is, and how our sample of just 5 participants is completely not representative of the overall community we are targeting.

We are currently doing up our presentation for this Thursday, and we are stoked to share what we have to the class. 

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week 11: presentation on media advocacy

Finished our Media Advocacy presentation this week! 

The readings were actually very interesting, although my team felt that there were many things that could have been done better during our presentation.

The topic of media advocacy was really interesting because it mixes modern technology of mass media with the classic ideas of rallying and lobbying for a social cause through policy changes. However, it was very hard to convey the same amount of enthusiasm we had during our presentation because the basics of it were very dry. 

Nevertheless, seeing so many people participate in our Kahoot! section was really heartening. 53/68 people - and not including our group, means that over 80% of our classmates participated in our presentation in some way or another. 

Of course, we also had a few limitations with regard to the presentation.

1. Finding local case examples for Media Advocacy This was probably the biggest requirement that was the most difficult to fulfil for our presentation. Singapore has a very rigid political climate in which it is very difficult to hold demonstrations or lobbying to call on the government to change, or improve on, certain public policies. As a result, there aren’t many explicit media advocacy movements in Singapore. This made application of media advocacy to a Singapore context very difficult as we had to look for elements of media advocacy in very nuanced and watered-down movements, i.e. the Pink Dot. 

2. Time constraints Trying to keep our presentation to about an hour was really difficult because there were just so many things to say! We had so much data, analysis, and discussion points we wanted to bring up, but we had to cut those out because they were not as relevant to the topic. For example, Abigail had to cut out her quite a bit on how Lovejoy and Saxton derived their findings in their study so as to better focus on the findings and the second case study. 

3. Dealing with the rush of assignments (with is very normal at the end of the presentation) Our group was sort of unfortunate because we were allocated to present last in Week 11. This meant that we are in the midst of polishing our findings, submitting our strategy report, doing the presentation, and then doing the final tactic report + presentation of blog all at once. The insane need to balance and juggle these different assignments at the same time was quite hectic initially. Luckily for us, we started on this reading presentation early so that we had more time to prepare and rehearse. If we had left it to the last minute, I don’t think our presentation would have gone as smoothly. 

Using media advocacy as a potential tactic for our project To be honest, this thought has indeed crossed my group’s mind quite often whilst doing the presentation. Are there any ways we can adopt some elements of media advocacy to strengthen our tactics? Perhaps we could include stronger ‘call-to-action’ messages in our videos that would prompt for social mobilisation. We could also accompany the videos created with flyers and pamphlets talking more about the apathy in Singapore and how we can contribute to improving this culture in our society. While we can’t exactly change public policy for our project, doing this presentation has actually given us some inspiration for our videos and we might go about doing them.

All in all, my group learnt quite a lot from this presentation! Now its time to focus on the last lap - the tactic report, blog presentation, and our two videos!

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goals and objectives

Goals

For this project, we will be using the relationship management goal approach in addressing the issues of the aging society, health issues, generation gap as well as the sense of belonging, particularly towards the millennial generation, age 20 to 36. We believe that the relationship goal approach will allow us to reach out and enhance the relationship between the apathetic public and us in promoting a better appreciation of the issues at hand.

To establish and strengthen social communications platforms between the organization (us) and the public.

To raise awareness and create favourite attitudes towards the issues at hand.

To generate conversations amongst the public to heightened awareness on the importance of health among millennials.

Objectives

Through the video, we aim to tackle the three stages of persuasion in the logical progression of awareness, acceptance, and action. Firstly, the videos will be created to capture the attention of the audience using comprehensible language fitted to an acceptable length of 2.5 minutes each to aid retention of the message. Secondly, we aim to generate interest and alter attitudes by pulling the heartstrings of the audience using emotional appeals in the video. Lastly, we aim to generate conversation and shares on the 2 social media platforms in promoting our cause.

Using the Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant and Timely (S.M.A.R.T) method of forming objectives where possible, we have come up with 5 objectives by the end of 6 months.

To gather 2000 likes on our Facebook page of millennials age 20 to 36, within 6 months.

To reach 10,000 video views on Facebook of millennials age 20 to 36, within 6 months.

To get at least 2,500 video likes of millennials age 20 to 36, within 6 months.

To increase blog traffic via Facebook page of millennials age 20 to 36, by 50% within 6 months.

To increase the number of shares on our blog stories from millennials age 20 to 36, by 80% within 6 months.

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target audience

The primary target audience for this video would be millennials aged 20-36 years old. This is to bridge the intergenerational communication gaps between the millennials and  the elderly. These communication gaps may have come about because of the negative stereotypes of the elderly as being intellectually rigid and forgetful due to their age (Altmann, 2015).  These critical stereotypes and one-dimensional thinking have pervaded the millennial generation to subconsciously think of the elderly to be inferior, and therefore, not of value to society. As a result, targeting millennials is crucial so as to change this mindset. Furthermore, most of the elderly’s grandchildren are in this generation. This will also help foster stronger family ties and build stronger community units. Furthermore, we also targeted millennials because they are the ones with high social media usage patterns. According to American Research Institute (2015), over 88% of people aged 18-29 uses at least one social media platform. Hence, this group are most easily accessible, most susceptible to the effect of social media use (Barker, 2009; Bolton et al, 2013) and the most relevant group to target. References Altmann, R. (2015, February 4). Who are you calling old? Let’s ditch ageist stereotypes ... Retrieved November 15, 2017, from https://www.bing.com/cr?IG=3B76BDF8103A4BACA6A2825D1317FCA0&CID=1BCACFFF50726B390E5CC4C451746A2B&rd=1&h=Jg0hJO2Y_EMd2JS8iSyP Barker, V. (2009). Older adolescents' motivations for social network site use: The influence of  gender, group identity, and collective self-esteem. Cyberpsychology and behavior, 12(2), 209-213. Bolton, R. N., Parasuraman, A., Hoefnagels, A., Migchels, N., Kabadayi, S., Gruber, T., and Solnet, D. (2013). Understanding Generation Y and their use of social media: a review and research agenda. Journal of Service Management, 24(3), 245-267.

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media channels used

We chose to use Facebook and a Tumblr blog page as our media channels to raise awareness and highlighting change. Being social media channels, Facebook and Tumblr are equipped with many interactive functions. People can like, comment, or even share our posts and content. This not only provides us with a platform to interact with our audience, but it also gives us a feedback channel for our target audience to voice out any concerns, or comments they might have.

We plan to utilize these social media channels through video production. We intend to create two videos dealing with Singapore’s apathetic culture with regard to the intergenerational communication gap and health issues. This will be our first step in raising awareness and highlighting the change that will promote a better appreciation of the themes we found in our interviews. Through the interactions generated via the comments section of the video through social media, we hope to create a favourable climate to garner public support and social change.

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implementation approach

For this project, we are implementing the Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) partnership approach. This approach aims to equally involve all target publics that are part of the research process in decision-making (Israel et. al, 1998). It was chosen because we wanted a more interactive model for communication, deviating from previous one-way communication models to merely send messages to a passive audience (Ronald, 2017). By making the communication process more dynamic and interactive, we aim to engage not just our target audience, but our participants as well. This helps to create a more transparent form of dialogue, which is crucial in our goal of facilitating social change through communication. References Ronald D. Smith (2017). Strategic Planning for Public Relations. 5th edition. New York,  NY: Routledge.

[un-reported]

literature review: intergenerational gap and an ageist society

Intergenerational communication is communication that occurs between two or more people from different generations that are used to define their relationship. Intergenerational communication helps the elderly feel less lonely by connecting with the younger generations and is mostly initiated by the former (Crocker and Kaplan, 2015).

The lack of intergenerational communication in Singapore’s society affects our country socially, economically and culturally. As we neglect the elderly, the increasingly aging population becomes more troubled and loses its capacity to contribute to our society as functional human beings.

Ageist employment practices in our society have clearly encouraged this lack of intergenerational communication (Ong and Yacob, 2014). Although efforts have been made by the Ministry of Manpower to curtail this discrimination (Ministry of Manpower, 2016), most Singaporean millennials harbor negative assumptions of the elderly as being intellectually rigid and mentally forgetful. These critical stereotypes and one-dimensional thinking have pervaded our generation (Wan, 2012). This devalues an important, experienced generation in our nation’s history and hinders our cultural and moral development as a nation.

Through our strategies, we hope to reverse the ageist mentality that pervades our society through bonding and ties by facilitating intergenerational communication and getting the millennials to open up and accept a person regardless of age. References Crocker, A. B., and Kaplan, M. S. (2015, September 23). Retrieved from http://articles.extension.org/pages/20271/issues-in-intergenerational-communication

Ministry of Manpower. (2017). Efforts made to protect older workers from age discrimination. Ministry of Manpower Singapore. Retrieved 24 October 2017, from http://www.mom.gov.sg/newsroom/press-replies/2016/1208-efforts-made-to-protect-older-workers-from-age-discrimination Wan, W. (2012). Stop stereotyping of seniors - Singapore Kindness Movement. Singapore Kindness Movement. Retrieved 24 October 2017, from https://kindness.sg/blog/2012/11/01/stop-stereotyping-of-seniors/