Xiohoo takes learning online for seniors

Singapore

JUDY Tay is using WhatsApp to make video calls and group chats with her family and friends during the circuit breaker.

Madam Tay, who is in her 60s, picked up these smartphone skills when she started attending a bilingual training programme run by social enterprise for tech learning Xiohoo, which involved classroom and post-class Q&A sessions.

Her goal was to be able to shop online to buy groceries, clothes, and household appliances. However, Covid-19 threatened to throw a spanner in the works, as all seniors' activities are now suspended.

But Xiohoo staff banded together and focused their efforts on conducting training online so that seniors like Madam Tay can continue learning at home by watching Xiohoo TV on Facebook and browsing through teaching materials shared via WhatsApp.

Co-founders Adrian Teo and Allan Tay said they launched Xiohoo in 2018 because seniors in Singapore faced challenges in using smartphones and computers in a digital economy. Xiohoo is xiang zhu in Mandarin and Teochew, which means "to help each other".

A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU

Friday, 12.30 pm

ESG Insights

An exclusive weekly report on the latest environmental, social and governance issues.

Sign Up

"Our aim is to help seniors become IT-savvy through our training programme where we teach them tech skills - from the basics of phone usage, using WhatsApp for messaging, navigating buying and selling online, to advanced skills like photography, videography, word processing and website creation. So far, more than 1,000 seniors have attended our programme," said Mr Teo.

The co-founder, who is in his 40s, said that there were challenges posed by the pandemic. For example, all classroom courses had to be suspended.

"This makes it difficult to meet our business and social impact goals this year. In the second half of the year, we hope to see an improvement in the situation, and be able to go back to achieving the social milestones that we had set for ourselves. We are also currently looking for sponsors for our videos," said Mr Teo.

Learning online poses a challenge to the seniors, and Mr Teo said that they had to go the extra mile to help them connect online to watch the videos.

Mr Tay concurred: "Most seniors are familiar with WhatsApp, so we also share the step-by-step videos through this channel."

He also sees an opportunity amid the crisis as "in the classroom environment, our class size is limited by the space constraints, typically not more than 25 seniors per class.

"With Xiohoo TV, we can have more seniors attending each online course. With online courses, we can also extend our programme to our neighbouring countries, which are also facing similar challenges of engaging their ageing population".

Mr Tay, who is in his 30s, added that there has been active interaction on the Facebook page.

"The result has been encouraging. Therefore, we will continue to share eLearning videos through our social media channels after this period. In the case of Xiohoo, we noticed that our seniors are most vulnerable to the virus and therefore have to stay indoors with limited activities to engage them at home. Furthermore, with reduced interaction with family members, they were feeling bored, restless or isolated.

"As a social enterprise, our focus is to care for our beneficiaries, so we stepped up and made use of the technology to connect and engage with the seniors by providing content to keep them physically and mentally active. This in turn provided an avenue for conversations."

Madam Tay said that through the videos, she has learnt how to star messages and make video calls on WhatsApp. Her next goal on the Xiohoo platform is to understand the different between e-payment, PayNow, PayLah, and eWallet so that she can shop safely online.