With the first centre opened in 2016, Woopie Club now celebrates its 5th anniversary and has recently opened a new centre in Cheung Sha Wan. We currently run day care and home care services from Monday to Saturday, and will soon launch a new support service for caretakers of the elderly this year.

As families move abroad in recent months, elder parents are often left in Hong Kong, and we step in to follow up and address their needs. As a platform, we generate resources to assist caretakers in carrying out their duties, and have lately identified a service gap in caretakers of the elderly, whose demands are unmet.

For instance, where a caretaker cannot visit the spouse due to COVID-19, we could act as a case manager to line up relevant resources, such as helping with bathing, house cleaning or connecting the beneficiary with the Society for Community Organisation. We also circulate information related to elderly care, promote Community Care Service Voucher , and train our staff to enhance service quality.

How do you advocate for the public to become carers for the elderly?

We believe holistic elderly care covers not merely rehabilitation or cognitive training, but also ageing in place. Society should treat the elderly as part of families, not a separate group. If our family members fall ill, any one of us may suddenly find ourselves becoming a caretaker. In fact, there are at least 130,000 elderlies residing at home need help in their daily. To this end, we have launched some pilot schemes and will soon roll out a 24-hour hotline service with the hope of empowering caretakers of the elderly.

What has inspired you in the JC ENGAGE journey?

Our marketing has been campaign-based, usually with some marketing fee allocated, but we seldom have the chance to stand behind the camera and create a video from scratch ourselves. We did this thanks to JC ENGAGE. After the workshops, we found that we could actually publish the video already, regardless of the voting result. It also means a lot to us that we invited service users to share their real life experiences and bring focus to their personal perspectives to be shared with the public.