Singapore, 16 January 2009

The first combined team volunteering activity between the G&A and the SR/EBR teams was a great success! To celebrate Chinese New Year and bring some festive cheer to needy seniors living in rental units in Ang Mo Kio, Salesforce.com Singapore collaborated with Asian Women Welfare Association's Senior Activity Centre on a unique afternoon activity.

Some 25 employee volunteers set up a gaming hall for 80 seniors to try their luck at winning goodies for the festive season. Seniors were given chips to try their hand at the 5 different games stations where they have to use their wit, memory skills and a little of luck to accumulate extra chips to exchange for prizes such as food items, daily toiletries and even health tonics.  At the end of the game sessions, the seniors were treated to an afternoon tea-break and given a small red packet and mandarin oranges as our token for celebrating Lunar New Year with them.

The interesting part of this volunteer activity is in the preparations. Volunteers were divided into small committees to plan for the extensive logistic arrangements - from buying prizes, getting the food refreshments to creating interesting games suited for the seniors. There were much considerations were put in place to make sure that the event will be boisterous and bring lots of fun to these lonely seniors. On the actual day, volunteers put in their best efforts to make the games challenging yet not too difficult so that the seniors can easily accumulate chips to win the prize they desire. It is a delicate balance indeed!

We received a lot of good feedback from the seniors telling us that this is one of the most interesting afternoons they had in a long time and the thrill of winning more chips energized them a lot. Everyone won something at the games and went home with smiles on the faces.