What does philanthropy have to do with drone football?

Philanthropists are testing and incubating ideas that can later be scaled up by governments and corporates.

- Paul Tan

A group of white-haired men and women, including one in a wheelchair, have clustered in a room and are focusing on plastic balls flying in the air. Inside each ball is actually a drone operated by a senior and the participants are trying to outmanoeuvre each other and get their drones into the circular goal. Although this is just a training session, there are broad smiles when someone scores and the occasional shout of "Goal!"

Drone soccer is just one of the many interesting projects funded by the Community Foundation of Singapore in a collaboration with the Agency for Integrated Care. The collaboration, whimsically named the "FUN! Fund," identifies innovative programmes to engage our seniors. While the fund was started at the tail-end of the Covid-19 pandemic to promote active ageing, today it has broadened to include programmes that could unlock new ways to battle social isolation and boost physical well-being for the longer term.

One important demographic for this fund is the senior male. As reported in the media, our Active Ageing Centres have found it harder to draw male retirees to their activities, possibly due to cultural factors or the nature of the programmes. Hence there is a conscious attempt for the FUN! Fund to support projects such as carpentry and 3-D printing workshops that could draw in more men.

To help fund more of such innovative approaches, I contend that we need more generous Singaporeans to step up.

THE POWER OF PARTNERSHIPS

Some fair-minded readers may wonder: Why do you need philanthropy for this? Why can't the Government fund all of this?