SINGAPORE — Amid the rising number of COVID-19 cases in Singapore, R/GA has launched an initiative that connects seniors who need groceries with people around their neighbourhood who are willing and able to help. Called ‘I Go For You’ / ‘让我来’, this initiative aims to help protect the elderly from the highly infectious disease by encouraging them to stay at home while young and well-abled members of the community help with their marketing and essential errands.
‘I Go For You’ is accessible to all seniors, especially non-English speakers who want to buy groceries during the circuit breaker. To make a request, seniors can call a hotline and make a request in their own mother tongue, and will be asked to share their postal code. Requests will then line up in the ‘I Go For You’ database for volunteers to accept. Volunteer shoppers can accept nearby requests in the database using the ‘I Go For You’ chatbot on Telegram. They will be provided with their senior’s contact number to ask for a shopping list, delivery address, and discuss payments.
In this initial launch, the ‘I Go For You’ hotline will operate in Mandarin Chinese, and will roll out with English, Malay, and Tamil in the coming weeks.
“COVID-19 has impacted lives in many ways unimaginable before. We wanted to make a difference to the community we live in and to demonstrate real impact. The future of humanity is what drives us as a group of thinkers and makers, so we wanted to create something that helps one of the most vulnerable groups in the community,” said Dorothy Peng, Managing Director, R/GA Singapore.
“With ‘I Go For You’, we hope this initiative brings people together to help senior citizens in their communities stay safe by staying at home,” Peng added.
Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Member of Parliament, ex-Minister for Communication and Information, and Advisor to SIT, said, “I welcome this initiative as it will certainly help our vulnerable seniors to stay safe. This is a good application of technology that will improve the quality of life for our seniors. I applaud R/GA for doing this wonderful community service.”
Leveraging its Smart Design and Technology Center of Excellence with the Singapore Economic Development Board of Singapore, R/GA created this service to ensure innovation was applied agnostic of age group and digital savviness.
If you would like to volunteer your help and be a part of ‘I Go For You’, please download the Telegram app and search ‘IGoForYou’.
