The Team of Younger Volunteers Became Like the Elderly’s Grandchildren, Playing Games with Them, to Help Them Stay Away from Dementia

Getting the younger generations involved, in helping to keep the elderly’s minds active, from the Newspapers, translated…

The Hsinbei Social Services Department’s Voluntary Army Terms set up a “Goose Volunteer Unit”, and the young men who are serving their alternative service terms started volunteering at various not-for-profit organizations, awhile ago, the group of young men went to an elderly daycare center, to accompany the elderly with Alzheimer’s to play games, and it’d made the elderly smile, as they said goodbye, an elderly woman who was demented said to one of the volunteers, “My grandchild, do come and play with me again.”, it’d made this group of big boys feel moved to tears.

This, is the third service term for the Goose Volunteer Unit, led by Kuo who graduated out of M.I.T.’s department of engineering, with all the team members using their separate expertise, from the information technologies, to food and restaurant, to kinesiology and medicines, designed a series of games, of courses that can help prevent dementia from progressing too quickly.

The group went to Banciao’s public elderly daycare center, and showed their carefully designed activities, anywhere from memory cards, a game of floor-ball, dancing, making snacks hands-on, it was amazing, how these young men had, interacted with the elderly population.

a photo of the activities at the nursing home, photo courtesy of UDN.com…

The medical student from Kaohsiung Medical, Huang had even performed the “two-step getting out of bed”, and did a script of tripping and falling, making the elderly laugh out loud, but the elderly were able to, immediately remember how they should get out of bed correctly too.

Huang said, that his own eighty-year-old grandfather had Parkinson’s, and would have tremors in his hands, and, walked in smaller steps, that until he became a medical student, that was when he’d learned, that these illnesses had, troubled the elderly, and so, he’d hoped that in his time of serving, he can use his knowledge, to get more people to show more empathy, kindness toward the elderly. As the activities came to an end, the severely demented elderly woman, “Grandma Jing-Mei” pulled on Huang’s hand, and asked, him, “My wonderful grandson, when, will you come back, and play with me again?”, it’d made Huang wanting to stay longer.

So, this would be, an excellent program that they have here, to get the younger generations involved in accompanying the elderly who had been diagnosed with dementia, because these elderly needed more accompaniment from the younger generations, and, these young men being there, can help ease the loneliness of the elderly adults in the home, and, it’d helped these young men empathize more with the conditions of deteriorations of the elderly population too.