The 2-year pandemic caused a lot of disruption across the board. Mass events had to be cancelled, groups were rejected in number, and at certain points we couldn’t even leave the house.
So with the return to normalcy came opportunities for GenLab Collective to not only gather, but conduct events for the masses. One of the very first events was the Gendate event on 15 October 2022.
Conducted at Temasek Shophouse, pairs of one junior and one senior, each at least one generation apart in age, were invited to take part in a series of short talks and activities. The aim was not just to inform these pairs about the importance and benefits of intergenerational bonding, but also to encourage it within their pairs.
Rundown of events
With 8 pairs attending, the event kicked off with a quick introduction and explanation of GenLab’s mission and vision by founder Keerthana. In this introduction, she briefly described the mission and goals of Genlab as a platform for seniors and youth to share and learn from each other, creating moments of intergenerational bonding.
This introduction was then followed by an ice-breaker activity. Each person was asked to write on a provided sticker the name of their partner, their favourite celebrity and their favourite food. Following this, they had to share the answers with their partners and see how many they got correct.
This was then followed by one of the big highlights of the event: a dialogue session on the dos and don’ts of intergenerational bonding. This dialogue session was special because it was headed by Thang Leng Leng, an Associate Professor in the Department of Japanese Studies, and counsellor Anne Lee.
The experience both had in the field of intergenerational bonding certainly gave rise to a rich discussion session. A myriad of topics were discussed, ranging from awareness and intentionality towards seeking bonding time, to great actions such as mutual respect, self-acceptance and empathy.
Right after the dialogue session, our distinguished guests answered some burning questions from our audience. Many of these questions were focused on how best to establish bonds or rebuild broken bonds, to which love, acceptance, forgiveness and understanding the other party’s love language were recommended.
Overall, the dialogue session turned out to be rather critical in helping the audience understand how to practically establish an intergenerational bond.
From there, one of our partner seniors Rossi conducted a clay art session for the participants. The participants were each given newspapers and clay, and were able to design anything they wanted within the limits of what they had.
After a short tea break courtesy of The Temasek Shophouse, the groups played a small game called “Slangs and Dialects”. A bunch of cue cards, each containing a slang term, was presented to the groups, and they had to guess the meaning of the slang term.
With the slang terms stemming from different generations, it was interesting and fun seeing how some terms were unknown to one party but well-known by the other.
After that, the penultimate event started: letter writing to the other party. Each party was asked to write a letter to their partner based on a list of writing prompts given to them. These prompts ranged from a simple letter of encouragement or praise to making a promise to ensure bonding between them and their partner.
Overall, the letter writing was an emotional moment for all involved as everyone poured their emotions into their messages.
Following this, every group had their picture taken in a photoshoot which allowed them to immortalize the moment in a photo.
Overall, the event was a marked success for GenLab, with many participants expressing happiness and joy over being able to take part in such an event. Many also expressed interest in participating in more GenLab events in the future, such as a museum trip in November 2022.
Written by: Theodor Chua Wen-Jie
